The fight over Darwin - Teaching evolution in schools

[Final-Fan]

appolose said:

Khuutra said:

appolose said:

No, it's true.  Part of the reason many observations are needed to make a claim is just to test one's own understanding of said observations.  One observation contrary to an established idea is not going to disprove it because you don't necessarily trust what you think you've observed.

But that's not even the point:  back to my example with Rath.  We observe that matter cannot be created physically, and we also observe that it was created.  Notice that the latter is not a contrary observation of the former.  A contrary one would be that we observed matter being created physically.  In this example, that is not the case.

I would also respectfully request that people stop saying I don't understand science.  I already know you think that, since we're arguing over what constitutes science and its methods.  It's the argumentative equivalent of putting "QED" at the end of what you say.

I would argue that the argumentative equivalent of that is just saying QED.

And yes, it takes more than one observation, but all it takes is a repeatable phenomenon that contradicts a theoyr and the theory's gone, out the window, bye-bye.

As to matter: uh..... that's not actually what the conservation of matter and energy says, to the best of my knowledge. Relativity allows that matter isn't anything except for jellied energy, and matter is destroyed and converted into energy all the time. It's the sum total mass + energy that never changes, and there has never been a point in history where that sum total has ever changed, ever. Ever. Not even the Big Bang, because everything was there to start with.

Either way, it's unnecessary.

That's what I said; enough observations will unseat the idea.

My scenario with Rath was hypothetical; I was just proposing a situation in which two observations contradicted.   We're discussing the possibility of a supernatural answer.

He was just pointing out that multiple phenomena are not necessary.  

And supposing that it was shown that mass was being created without any apparent use of or decline in energy, that might unseat much of physics but science is not capable of concluding that a supernatural force is the cause of any phenomenon.  "For reasons unknown" is the closest it can come.  And "for reasons unknown" is all that would happen, not "oops we can't answer this (YET) so I guess the scientific method should be discarded".