Agreed, this person would not be left with a lot of karma to burn ;-)

Oh I agree with you, what I know of their story seems completely wacko to me.

But a lot of the scientific hypothesis we use right now, like the earth is round, seemed completely wacko once too.

Ok ok... I know this example might be seen by most people as more then just an hypothesis ;-)

Fascinating! Some science is coming out of this whole thing :)

So creationism might not be a total waste of time after all.

Interesting ! Thank you for those links.

So, like I said in another comment, that would mean, regarding this story, that they can give PhDs to these people all they want. But that could never be seen as a PhD in a scientific field.

I agree with you :)

I understand this wiki entry might not be completely accurate. But there must be a common definition of the scientific method available somewhere.

Are you saying the "scientific community" does not have a common definition of the scientific method?? Because if so, we are screwed, and we are all wasting our time.

Would you agree?

Thank you, I get it now.

So, like I said in another comment, that would mean, regarding this story, that they can give PhDs to these people all they want. But that could never be seen as a PhD in a scientific field.

I see what you are saying. Thank you for taking the time to explain this to me.

So that would mean, regarding this story, that they can give PhDs to these people all they want. But that could never be seen as a PhD in a scientific field.

I was defining the practice of science as following the scientific method.

I thought that the scientific method used the word "evidence" for these supposedly "facts".

I understand what you are saying. That creationism is "Not even wrong". I don't know much about it and was just curious to know if we are sure that they are not predicting anything we could use to try and prove them wrong.

I was talking about the claims religions make, are they predicting anything that explains some observations that we can't otherwise explain? I know that we might not currently have ways of testing their claims, but maybe one day we will.

I think we too often use bad language when we talk about science in definite terms. I hear too often things like: "We proved that...".

We never prove anything in science, we just very very slowly disprove everything we can. And by doing so, we narrow ever so slowly the expanse of explanations to ever more useful ones.

Valtor

Is there such a thing as "scientific fact"?

I thought science was about disproving hypothesis, not proving fact. Or am I missing something?

Valtor

So what you are saying is that, the hypothesis does not make any predictions, so it is "Not even wrong" ?

I'm as far as it gets from an expert on creationism, but are we certain that it does not make any predictions that we could test to try and disprove it?

Valtor

Out of curiosity, I would like to know why it is not valid? Are you saying that experiments were done and we were able to disprove it? That in my mind would settle the matter.

I always thought that at lot of what is proclaimed by religions can be proven wrong. But some core stuff would probably survive the scientific method. That would at least clean up religions, from a scientific point of view of course.

What I find interesting, is that the parts that could survive might actually be usable in science. At least for something like social science. And then as science advances, we might be able to disprove more of it, and maybe one day even disprove the existence of God!

We just don't know, but I find all this fascinating.

Valtor

Disclaimer: I do not believe one bit in creationism.

I agree that the scientific method needs to be applied to creationism. But I would like to know if by following the scientific method we could disprove creationism?

Can we disprove creationism? Because science is not about proving anything, it is about disproving hypothesis and then we work with the ones that we can't with all our might disprove. As long as an hypothesis has not been proven wrong, it stands!

So I'm just curious, did we or can we disprove creationism?

Valtor

I know it's a dupe, but I still love to see Gates say: "But that is just the start of the crap..."

It says it all right there. At least Microsoft knows about the problems with Windows. It is said that realizing there is an issue is the first step to resolving it :)