Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] [RELIGION] creation myths

[Stephen Montgomery-Smith <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Rick Buford wrote:
> Stephen Montgomery-Smith wrote:
>
> > But I really feel that you have ducked the main question.
> >
> > How is it that we really rigorously know that the scientific method is 
> > going to work?
>
>
> When you get in a plane, do you trust it will fly? When you take 
> medicine, do you get better?
>
> I'm sorry Stephen, but you are doing the same thing Christian accused 
> Mike of earlier. If you're not wearing skins from animals you killed 
> with flint weapons, then science quite obviously works.

I'll say more if there are more replies, but for now let me simply say 
this.  The question "how is it that we rigorously know that science 
works" is not some obtuse question that I have dreamed up to try to 
outwit atheists I might talk to.  It is a question that bothered me 
greatly in my teenage years, caused me to read about mathematical logic 
in my college years, and obviously has bothered not only me but a lot of 
other rather bright people (Popper, Kuhn, Polanyi, Descartes, Haldane, 
Medawar, probably even Einstein if I had read enough of his writings).

I trust that the plane I get in will fly, but it is a matter of 
convenience or necessity rather than a sense that it is knowledge of 
which I have rigorous proof.  I have to live my life day by day, get 
food on the table, find things to enjoy, etc, but this doesn't answer 
these deep unanswerable questions (as Popper called them).

Stephen

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