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>>62
>If you scrutinize something with scientific methods and there is an outcome there is no alternative by definition
??? what? No. The exact opposite is true, no conclusion is final in science. That's it showing its philosophical roots.
Where the Abrahamic relgions have fallen foul is when their leaders have insisted that they know best in areas of conflicting progress, clearly bullshit, and they have tarnished theology as a result. But this doesn't inherently imply that theology is flawed, any more than scientists who dogmatically spew "sceince is best".
Science doesn't state "what we understand" by any stretch of meaning. It does state "we can understand such and such like this", and in many cases it is amazing, revelatory and extremely satisfying. However, there is a horrible flaw in empirical science in that in oreder for it to "work" it must assume some very broad assumptions, the main one being "what we have observed before necessarily must occur again", and this cannot in fact be proven to (a) actually occur (b) actually be a necessary part of experience.
Also, it broaches it's conclusions in entirely impersonal terms as a neccessity, yet our experience of the reality being described may differ wildly, and it is in this area that it's usefulness wanes as a method of inquiry.
>>63
Look again. Scientfic enquiry excludes metaphysics, hence it's new name.
>There's no reason to think the mind can't be emulated, even if it is a simple mind of something such as a worm. A computer could perhaps be wired to let you see as though the worm would see, give you input which it may experience in one form or another.
Pure speculation, as irrrelevant as a christian saying "God will reveal the answer in time" to anything they find difficult to address. It is not inevitable that "science will find the answer", and to postulate this is intellectually dishonest.
>You're basically telling us that things can't be interpreted.
No, I saying that interpetation is entirely dependent on situation, i.e. what sort of conclusion we will find acceptable to a discussion. Like what I've typed over and over in this thread.
So if the question "why am I so depressed?" can be answered by a list of brain chemicals and their interactions to the satisfaction of the person asking the question, then yeah, science has provided the answer. But frankly that's just not going to address the question for a lot of people in the same way that a particular piece of music does, for instance. To pretend otherwise is dishonest.
Experience of life is not a list of communicative labels, it is experience. That's not a difficult or mystic concept, you experience your own life more than you do anything else. Empirical science is not very good at describing it, that's all, and so for legitimate questions about experience, it's not the best tool of inquiry, and is in fact inferior to theology in this instance.
This doesn't make the creationists correct by the same measure: they are applying a similar dogmatic misinterpretation to religion in an area where religion is an unsuitable method of enquiry. They are tits, they will not examine the virtues of other methods of human enquiry in this instance and insist that their's is best because it works best elsewhere.
If you can see that they are wrong, fundamentally wrong, it can only be by choice that you are not applying the same line of reasoning to "science is best" dogma.