[ExI] Science or Scientism?

[William Flynn Wallace]

If God existed, that is to say a intelligence who created and operates the
world, then Teleology, the idea everything has a purpose or goal, should be
one of the fundamental aspects of physics; a world with Teleology should
exhibit different phenomenon than a world without it and so should be
accessible to the scientific method.   john clark

I don't see how that follows, though certainly it could.  The idea that god
has a purpose doesn't mean that we have one.

I have measured this one myself:  could a vine have the purpose of
climbing?  It looks that way.  If you don't give it something to climb it
sort of sits there; whereas if you do, then it grows much more rapidly up
the support.

I am stumped at the idea of how teleology could influence phenomena.  How
could you measure that?
  bill w

On Tue, Nov 6, 2018 at 1:54 PM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Nov 2, 2018 at 7:30 PM Stuart LaForge <avant at sollegro.com> wrote:
>
>  >
>> *there are many reasons why a hypothesis could be unfalsifiable. For
>> example, limited resources. I could hypothesize that crashing red-giant
>> stars together would make a blue giant star. Since we cannot yet crash
>> stars together on purpose, my hypothesis is unfalsifiable which does not
>> necessarily make it true or false.*
>>
>
> It's always nice if a theory is falsifiable but I think philosophers like
> Karl Popper emphasised it too much, even if we lack the ability to falsify
> a idea it's not necessarily useless. There is actually a hypothesis that
> you describe above used to explain the existence of rare Blue Straggler
> Stars. Globular Clusters contain some of the oldest stars in the universe
> and consist almost entirely of small red stars because the clusters are so
> old anything larger should have run out of hydrogen fuel and burned out
> long ago, but there are a very few giant main sequence Blue Straggler Stars
> mixed in among all those old small red stars. Blue Stragglers seem to be
> very young but there is almost no gas or dust in Globular Clusters, so how
> did they get made? The hypothesis is that 2 old red stars collided only a
> few million years ago and merged forming a giant blue star. The star isn't
> really young, the collision just gave it a facelift that makes it look
> young.
>
> Another unfalsifiable idea would be the theory of continental drift,
> although I suppose both could be said to be unfalsifiable in practice but
> not logically unfalsifiable such as the hypothesis an irresistible force
> could move a unmovable object, or the theory that the entire universe was
> only created 5 minutes ago complete with dinosaur bones in the ground and
> memories of me being in the first grade.
>
>>
> > *A third reason a hypothesis could be untestable is that it is
>> logically impossible to falsify. For example, solipsism would fall into
>> this category*
>
>
> I agree.
>
>
>> > *as would many other religious claims.*
>>
>
> If God existed, that is to say a intelligence who created and operates the
> world, then Teleology, the idea everything has a purpose or goal, should be
> one of the fundamental aspects of physics; a world with Teleology should
> exhibit different phenomenon than a world without it and so should be
> accessible to the scientific method.
>
> * > Now I state that it is self-evident that the intersection of the set
>> of unfalsifiable hypotheses and the set of unprovable truths is non-empty. *
>
>
> I agree, and that's why even unfalsifiable hypotheses can be useful.
> Unlike pure mathematics science does not demand perfection, it does not
> insist that every part of it be proven to be correct, it only wants every
> part of it to be shown to be probably approximately correct.
>
> >
>> *I am reminded about an apocryphal story that when Voltaire was on his
>> deathbed, a priest urged Voltaire to renounce Satan. To which Votaire
>> supposedly replied, "I am sorry, father, but now is not the time to make
>> new enemies."*
>>
>
> I hadn't heard that one before, I love it!
>
> John K Clark
>
>
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