The limitations of science (The limitations of science)

by George Jelliss , Crewe, Friday, February 19, 2010, 11:42 (5390 days ago) @ dhw

dhw writes: "You say I dismiss evidence that you evaluate as reliable, and place it on an equal footing to evidence you evaluate as unreliable. I do not dismiss any evidence. However, I do put all these forms of evidence on an equal footing, because in my view none of them are reliable enough to prove that life did or did not come about by chance, that the brain cells are or are not the actual source of consciousness etc., that there is or is not a God. My evaluation of the evidence is subjective, just as your dismissal of some forms of evidence as "worthless" or "negligible" is subjective."-So according to dhw then everything is just a matter of opinion and we can never arrive at any agreement. The core of the problem then lies in dhw's statement: "I do put all these forms of evidence on an equal footing". This is his statement of his agnostic faith, which is not merely that "we don't know" but that "we cannot know". Because any evidence, however flimsy, must be given the same 50/50 valuation as every other. Every gap in the evidence is equally probable to be filled in every possible way, and on this methodology the sensible joining-up-the-dots solution is no more probable than any other.

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GPJ