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→Atheist Science
: I do think that the past is not falsifiable (i.e. able to have a scientific test devised to check if the claim is wrong), but that doesn't mean that you can't check out ideas about the past. There's other ways of checking than scientific tests, such as seeing if another witness corroborates the story, seeing if it's logically consistent, etc. Even these methods may not be able to "prove" that the history is correct, but you can often decide if it's is ''probably'' correct (and yes, scientific tests can help towards this, too). So, I could not "falsify" (scientifically test) whether the Pentateuch was written by two marsupials and a ham sandwich, but I could quite readily conclude that it's ''extremely'' unlikely to be true given that we know of no marsupials or ham sandwiches that could write, let alone see (in the case of the sandwich), etc. Of course we could apply Occam's Razor also (remembering that Occam's Razor is a guiding principle, not a test of truth). Just because it's not scientifically testable doesn't mean that we can't make a reasonable judgement of the claim.
: I do think that the past is not falsifiable (i.e. able to have a scientific test devised to check if the claim is wrong), but that doesn't mean that you can't check out ideas about the past. There's other ways of checking than scientific tests, such as seeing if another witness corroborates the story, seeing if it's logically consistent, etc. Even these methods may not be able to "prove" that the history is correct, but you can often decide if it's is ''probably'' correct (and yes, scientific tests can help towards this, too). So, I could not "falsify" (scientifically test) whether the Pentateuch was written by two marsupials and a ham sandwich, but I could quite readily conclude that it's ''extremely'' unlikely to be true given that we know of no marsupials or ham sandwiches that could write, let alone see (in the case of the sandwich), etc. Of course we could apply Occam's Razor also (remembering that Occam's Razor is a guiding principle, not a test of truth). Just because it's not scientifically testable doesn't mean that we can't make a reasonable judgement of the claim.
: [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 07:44, 18 December 2007 (EST)
: [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 07:44, 18 December 2007 (EST)
First, it is not the technology of TV that makes eyewitness report unreliable, it is that eyewitness talk to one another or to other people. And I guess that there were other people around. And there have been some fairly famous cases were scores of eyewitnesses got it wrong. Also in court, or CSI, physical evidence is more useful to turn down a conviction than any eyewitness.
And make up your mind if the past is falsifiable or not. You can't claim that its not, and then say that you can use logic, other eyewitnesses, or physical evidence from archeology to show that it is highly unlikely. This is exactly what science does, looking for the most likely explanation, and it applies as much to the past as to the present. And logic, eyewitness accounts (to some extend) and archaeological evidence, are generally to test an hypothesis.
It seems like you want use the strict eyewitness standard on others, but use a more reasonable standard for yourself. You want it both ways. But under your strict eyewitness standard, you weren't even able to show that the gospels were legit, while the non-canonical gospels weren't. You aren't, for example, able to distinguish between the gospel of Luke, Thomas, and Joseph Smith. All you could produce was secondary evidence, but no eyewitness accounts of them receiving or not receiving the divine word. [[User:Order|Order]] 20:56, 18 December 2007 (EST)
===Legitimate views===
===Legitimate views===