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Malcom Mal Reynolds Malcom Mal Reynolds is offline
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Default OT Atheism vs Christianity et al : was Flashlight temptation

In article ,
wrote:

2. Scientific consensus can and frequently does change. This limits
its epistemological authority.


Scientific consensus doesn't exist. the basis of Science is
repeatedability. if a scientific claim can't be repeated by other
scientists, the consensus is that it wasn't valid OR that more research
needs to be done with better tools and methods.

That's the wonder of religion, it has no comparison to science. in fact
there is no religious consensus, which is why we have so much religious
turmoil. You seldom see scientists bombing each other because they've
debunked another scientist


The progressive nature of scientific inquiry is essential to its
value. Done rightly, science can correct its own errors. But this
presupposes science can make errors in the first place. And if that’s
true, we must ask: How do we know what could be a current error in
scientific consensus, and what do we know is absolutely true?

This is an important question to ask religious skeptics who appeal to
science. A likely response is that science may be wrong on almost
everything it says, but it almost certainly isn’t wrong about what it
doesn’t say (i.e., if science hasn’t revealed God by now, it’s not
rational to think it will). But this objection misses the point. One
doesn’t wait on science to exhaustively explain something before
believing it. If that were so, then 99 percent of human beings on the
planet wouldn’t believe in the most basic realities of existence, or
would be irrational in believing without having exhaustive scientific
knowledge. If current scientific consensus points away from the
existence of God (a highly disputable point), then who’s to say that
consensus cannot change? If it can, then science’s intellectual
authority is limited, and the expectation i