However, lack of theoretical observability is a compelling argument for non-existence. So, something like an electron with zero energy.

Definition: Something that exists is a construct with a isolated energy content > 0 J.

Done.

(By the way, if you pull something like "beauty", "beauty" is a quality defined by the flow of electrons across a potential barrier in a central nervous system. This has energy. Thus, something can be beautiful, and this definition very neatly ties in "the eye of the beholder", so to speak.)

However, neither of your examples are fundamentally untestable, just practically. For a given question, you can construct an axiom to develop a system to answer that question, perhaps to the exclusion of another but you could, in principle, do this. It reduces to a choice of which questions you wish to answer.

Similarly, while a full-scale big bang model is impractical, it's not theoretically unobtainable. Collapse the entire universe into discrete BH chunks that will self-aggregate and wait, for example (I don't even want to image spacetime distorted on that scale ..)

There is no reason to assume that there is any fact that is not scientifically constructible. "Faith" based elements are not even constructible in principle.

Um. No.

Or, (slightly) more eloquently:

I will not get into a religious debate on slashdot of all places, but the challenge of you must show that it would be more miraculous for the testimony to be wrong than for the event to have actually occurred. Is rather obviously false. Are you saying that you always believe the thing that is simply the least "miraculous"? That would put you firmly in the group that believes 100% in current science, not even allowing the possibility that humans make mistakes, especially in science.

This is wrong or misleading on a few levels.

1. Disbelief in current science is quite obviously not a miracle, or all the fundies wouldn't be doing it.
2. "Disbelief in current science" is also misleading. Science works on refinements. GR is a refinement of Newton's gravity. We did not throw out Newton and say he is wrong forevermore, merely consigned him to a set of low-velocity, low gravity regimes. There is not a scientist on this planet that disbelieves in Newtonian mechanics, and not one that doubts it is rather incomplete.
3. Humans make mistakes. This is graduated, however. There is "Completely false", "Incompletely true", and "True". Few things fall into either extreme, and you are attempting to shoehorn everything into both extremes and exclude the middle.
4. Operation on the least miraculous is better known as adhering to "Occam's Razor", or a form of Logical Positivism. I am quite pleased to say I follow both.
5. It is in fact science's great strength that it is continually refining, and that it's current proclaimation is never the final word. It should never be a mark of pride to say that your convictions don't change. You must be willing to adapt to new information and situations.

To date, there has been no evidence to suggest that there is anything that is fundamentally excluded from a rational, evidence-based theoretical construct. The truly ridiculous thing is to ever act on "miracles", because there is no such thing, and there is no evidence to suggest there ever has been.

The idea that religion is valuable is also questionable. Lack of religion promotes value in life, society, and your fellow human beings because this is all you have. On a not-so-practical level, it's also more honest — you're not being nice to play to a deity's favor, you're doing it to operate well in society and treat your fellow humans well. You never see humanists/atheists glorifying death, because, well, such an idea is perverse if life is all there is to things.

Calling this a "belief", "religion", or "faith" is like saying "I don't watch baseball" is my favorite baseball team to win the World Series.

Things like your chatter about people being woken up after being clinically dead? Well, there's a reason that qualifier is there. They quite obviously were not dead. When someone has been dead for three days, is cold, succumbing to rigor mortis, decomposing, and dessicating, then wakes up -- give me a call. If you actually believe that can happen, well, I lost this discussion before I started.

Apologies if the discussion is disconnected/rambly. I went up and down editing what I said a few times, so it makes sense in my head. Maybe not so much on-screen.

To pick a nit, GR is actually seemingly complete for all domains larger than a characteristic size, and though we've been looking for refinements, we've not found any yet. That's the whole crux of it -- GR works perfectly, if not in the quantum domain, and quantum works perfectly, if not in the GR domain. Whoops. Otherwise, good post.

You overstate the value of eyewitness testimony. Particularly in places where it is inconsistent, reliable and rigorous researches will disregard it, and there is a lot of psychology work to indicate that even that position may be generous to eyewitnesses. For example, try this simple test. That alone speaks volumes.

"Appeal to the masses" is a fruitless line of inquiry. You should be embarrassed for bringing it up. It does not matter one iota what "most of us rely on". That only speaks to the laziness of "most of us" (I, for one, try to read the sources involved where applicable. I don't just take things at face value).

The fact of the matter is that it is not whether or not an individual knows about a topic that validates it. What validates it is its capacity to be verified or falisified. Religion utterly, painfully fails here. It is capable only of making interpreted assertions based on a 2000+ year old fairy tale. Even tales of Ceasar have multiple records for varied individual with corresponding archaelogical evidence that agrees with this. Religion cannot do this.

So far as E = mc^2, read the 1905 paper by Einstein. It's fairly short and a pretty easy read (it is actually a supplement to his main paper of "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies"). It has two testable assumptions (c = 299792458 m/s for all individuals and physics acts the same for all individuals), and the rest falls out of nothing but those assumptions.

^^ Exactly this. If even one person got it, they had to give them the source code with no restrictions, which is de facto the same as MS publicly releasing the code. The GPL is viral. I actually don't like it, myself -- I prefer the LGPL. If I write something for someone to use, they can use it on their own terms. It annoys me that people are against the LGPL, actually.

Amusing fact: I'm working on publishing a math-heavy work in a biology journal with the original written in TeX. They only take Word. Oy. But the journal is pretty awesome and said they'd try to find a way to use the TeX for the final version if it gets to the publishing point.

Seems to me they really *are* shooting themselves in the foot with this. Consider people like myself:

• Look at D&D rules via OGL SRDs
• Download some PDFs and realize they are a bit easier to find information in, and I enjoy much of the artwork
• Purchase several dead-tree versions to the tune of a few hundred dollars. Cash to WotC.

The 4th ed policies make SRDs harder, and with no PDFs to help draw me to paper versions ... well, they'd entirely have lost customers like me, and several of my friends who did the exact same thing. Bad idea, WotC.

Your numbers are problematic ... I should point out 4.7+6=10.7. Couple this with the 200% increase according to the study linked by jeorgen, and you get an anticipated autism rate of 10.7+2x10.7=32.1/10k. That is to say, a number slightly higher than what you quote.