On Tue, 07 Feb 2006 09:46:26 +0000 (GMT), John Cartmell
wrote:

In article ,
Andy Hall wrote:
I hope that that clarifies the situation for you.
It does. You jumped into the middle of a discussion with an idea that didn't
fit and refused to deny your apparent espousal of a grossly unreasonable idea.
Now that you have sloughed off that idea it is all far clearer.


There was never an espousal of an idea and if you had taken the
trouble to read what I wrote properly, you would have realised that I
carefully and explicitly explained that I was not taking a position on
ID and why. Moreover, I restated that repeatedly and you chose to
ignore it.

There was no sloughing off or anything approaching that.

The reality is that the extent of what I was suggesting was in context
and clearly defined.

Please don't try to pretend now that there is some change of position
on my part just because you didn't bother to read what was said or
chose to read into it what you wanted to read.




The answer to your simple question - divorced of all the context that turned
it into something else - is that you misunderstand science. There is no need,
no likelihood, of the boundaries of *what science is capable of doing* being
altered.

That's something else.


Science is entirely capable of studying all that you suggest (and
more) and do it scientifically - and I mentioned some such ideas myself in
this thread (placebo/healer studies). All that is needed is to give scientists
the funding to make such studies.

... and for them to be sufficiently within the realms of acceptability
that people are willing to risk reputation to consider them.



All the rest that you mention are part of
science. String theory is central in science - not as an accepted yet as a
true idea of course but one that has much yet to be tested - and a Theory of
Everything (so called) is an idea to stimulate research and (at the moment)
nothing like any accepted scientific Theories despite its name.

This appears to be the only one currently considered to be mainstream.

--

..andy