ant wrote:As for a strict scientific methodology involving testing, replicability, and prediction, psychology, sociology, anthropology, fall very short of said methodology. For these areas of "science" are subject to unobservable truths, and lack both testability, and replicability.
I think you're right, these fields aren't in the same category as the hard sciences. Are they still referred to as soft science? Experiments can give us some information, but it's easily contested and problematic.
ant wrote:It can only be a personal opinion expressed by individuals who reject anecdotal tales of "miraculous" events. There is zero scientific basis to support any such contention.
Zero basis to
contest the anecdotes? Unless there is first evidence to
support the anecdotes, there is no reason to contest them, scientific or otherwise. You can find an anecdote of every possible informational permutation. There's anecdotes for talking spiders, jello hailstones, thousandth dimensions, and even dwarfs living under the mountains.
There's math in this mess somewhere. Should we entertain an infinite number of anecdotes, or should there be a filter in place that narrows the field a bit? Of course, there aren't an infinite number. But there are far too many to analyze every one. An anecdote alone isn't enough. Or with Scientology or Alien abductions in mind, even groups of anecdotes aren't enough.
ant wrote:As a sidebar, there are documented reports of "medical miracles" described as such, due to the highly improbable, virtually impossible nature of their occurrence.
As millions or billions of people fall sick over the course of generations, the laws of probability predict that one in a million or one in a billion "virtually impossible" instances of healing will happen.
With that said, we still are nowhere near complete understanding. But we need not reach further than necessary when attempting to explain seemingly miraculous events. In our ignorance, we often overlook the mundane explanations for more majestic ones. Sometimes, it's just math playing tricks on our psychology.
Stahrwe wrote:The irony is that scientific progress has, in a sense, led to more chaos rather than less.
This tells us that reality is more complex than we thought it was before science came around. We came up with simplistic explanations. It's much easier to attribute some mysterious phenomenon to an intelligent agent than it is to attribute it to a physical mechanism. If you conclude that an intelligent agent is the cause of something, the mystery is contained.
Stahrwe wrote:Where these questions arise, the secular scientist's position is that science will eventually provide the answer. That approach is the other side of the, 'God of the gaps,' canard which the secular scientists invoke against creationists.
There is a track record that lends support to the scientific position. Many of the technologies today are based on understanding that had previously not been understood. If a large percentage of our previous questions have turned out to be answered by science, we know many of the current ones will as well. On the flip side, many of the questions we thought were only answered by an appeal to a deity turned out to be naturalistic. You seem to be fairly dismissive of these trends Stahrwe.
ant wrote:it's highly disingenuous to point the dirty finger at other institutions while turning away from the horrors caused by a morally relativistic secular community that uses science as its handmaiden to justify its actions (eugenics, racial superiority, etc).
I think it's human nature to put blinders on with this sort of thing. If you haven't noticed, agnostics/atheists on Booktalk condemn the horrors caused by the abuse of science and technology. What I see more often is the dismissal of the horrors caused by religion. Not by you, perhaps, but Stahrwe always has a rationalization ready for the atrocities that use religion as justification. I think eugenics was motivated more by a warped philosophy than it was science. After all, science may tell us what IS, but in developing an OUGHT you need philosophy or religion.