Belief (Evolution)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Saturday, January 08, 2011, 09:07 (5067 days ago) @ xeno6696


> Inference is not knowledge, and this is a point that no theist can ever defeat.-No, inference is not knowledge. I happily and gladly concede that point, even as a theist as long as we apply that same requirement to all scientific endeavors. I would however argue that inference is commonly accepted as knowledge, both in the scientific community and the religious. That does not make it right. I would also argue that inference is the basic stepping stone of knowledge and probably the most important intellectual development that humans ever made. Of course, to be clear, I am referring specifically to the ability to take abstract and seemingly unrelated data and infer a connection and set of rules, thus giving us a basis for the testing and refining of knowledge regarding those data sets. This is after all one of the main aims of the scientific method, and would be impossible without the use of 'inference as knowledge'. Most often, we infer certain things and tout them as fact, or at the very least the 'most probably solution', and immediately begin testing new hypotheses based on the assumption that the inference was at least summarily correct. This allows us to disprove and/or refine the inference. Out of the subjects of which we have written books loaded with fact, it can almost be guaranteed that most of the facts will be disproved at some point in the reasonably near future.