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Fragment of a discussion from User talk:Tmtoulouse
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How do you know what the limits of science are to make such a grandiose claim?

We used to have gods to make life happen. Now we know that isn't the case.

We used to have gods to make the sun rise. Now we know that isn't the case.

We used to have gods to heal the sick. Now we know that isn't the case.

We now have gods to create the universe...

See a pattern here? These beliefs are only beyond science that is possible now. You can only comprehend what actual observation of the universe can discover now. The world is like a giant ice sheet of ignorance. We constantly chip away at this with observation, reason, theory and prediction, learning new things as we progress. Meanwhile this vast icy sheet of ignorance is where God hides, and it's shrinking. Can it keep hiding forever? Yes, there'll always be that one last piece to chip away at. But by doing this you diminish your belief so much as to make it pathetic. Why call it God if it's so weak that it has to constantly run away from observation?

Now, back to the original point, what makes this different to other beliefs? Homeopathy originally was invented in the 17th century and appeared to work - though only because it was less harmful than the prevailing medicine of the time. Medicine since overtook it in effectiveness by stopping killing patients long enough to treat them properly. But the alternative medicine still exists, but now retreats back into the ice wall of ignorance, hiding itself from observation. The claim that active ingredients were infinitely diluted was blown apart and then replaced by less falsifiable means.

This is absolutely no different to a religion, which does the same thing but tries to invent things like metaphyiscal realms to hide in. The only option is to admit it's meaningless or shrink it down until it becomes pointless.

Consider the claim "When we die, we go to another universe, inaccessible from this one, except through death." How could science possibly disprove this claim? Isn't, the grandiose claim, the claim that science will one day be able to disprove this claim? You have absolutely no idea how science could even begin to disprove that claim. It is inherently untestable by science. To claim science will one day be able to disprove it is grandiose, putting an excessive and irrational faith in the power of science.

The fact that other supposedly similar beliefs have been disproven by science, is no evidence against this belief. Science can't disprove it. Science will never be able to disprove it. You have absolutely no evidence to the contrary, just analogies to radically different kinds of claims which science can disprove.

Homeopathy is disprovable by science because homeopathy claims "X is an effective remedy for Y". By a double blind trial, we can compare X to a placebo. If X really was an effective remedy for Y, we would expect to a statistically significant result that patients with Y given X have better outcomes than patients given a placebo. In the absence of such a result, we can conclude X is not an effective remedy after all. Thus, science can disprove homeopathy.

Science can't disprove the claim "When we die, we go to another universe, inaccessible from this one except by death". What kind of statistical test can we perform for this claim? There is none. So this is a radically different claim from "Homeopathic remedies are effective". Science can disprove claims that homeopathy works, it can't disprove this claim.

If science disproves homeopathy, and homeopathists refuse to accept the findings of science, then so much the worse for them; but that is irrelevant to the question of those who accept a claim which by definition science cannot disprove.

(((Zack Martin)))09:48, 5 July 2011