Accepting an imperfect universe: The Birth of Science and the primacy of observation

[Mr Spinkles]

With regards to the initial discussion point of who claims infallible knowledge, is this assumption you have described significantly different than a theist conceeding that it is logically possible that God does not exist, however they have faith that God does exist.

I'm not sure I understand the question. Clearly there's a difference between making an assumption (and conceding that it is in fact an assumption) and having faith--i.e. having confidence in something irrespective of the evidence (or lack thereof) for it. In my opinion, this difference is subtle but significant.

I said "Ditto" because my latter statement was based off of my original understanding which I misunderstood. So just ignore that part..

Ah, okay gotcha.

I see what you mean. Do you think that a theistic world view would hinder or contradict Science?

Not necessarily.

Right, but his reasoning for that statement was "Once you allow for supernatural agencies, you abdicate any right to any assurance about much of anything." So, if I follow his logic, he is saying that the possibility of an epistemology is destroyed because there is no assurance about much of anything.

Yes. But methodological naturalism does not lead to "no assurance about much of anything". In fact, it leads to lots of assurance about lots of things. What it doesn't lead to is *absolute assurance* about anything. But an epistemology is possible as long as there can be *some assurance*.

I appologize if I am mis-representing your position. I was building off of your statement that started this line of discussion, "I would argue that we are imperfect, and therefore our knowledge is imperfect. Science, in stark contrast to religion, admits this fact."

Well, when I said that I didn't really mean to say that religions hold that we know everything...what I meant was that religions hold at least *some* things as absolutely/undeniably/undoubtedly true. It has since been pointed out to me that this is not true of all religions (like Daoism) so I realize that it was a rash generalization on my part.