I appreciate the perspective and generally agree with your comments, but I disagree with the bolded. Science itself is a social and political activity as well. And while it was certainly practiced slightly differently back then, the main pattern-seeking/knowledge-seeking directions were the same, and the general empirical approach was also similar.

I'd also point out that I suspect tame_deuces doesn't have any early Medieval scientists in his mind. I think he's probably thinking of Enlightenment figures and possibly the time period just previous to that.

Fair enough, I was mostly just trying to make the conceptual point clear - that investigation of the natural world on its own terms can be an integral part of a belief in the supernatural - I don't mind interpreting science very broadly for the most part, and I certainly agree it is a social, political, cultural etc. activity itself.

Wrt the bolded, what convictions might religious scientists hold that could 'get in the way' of scientific enquiries? You've been telling me that science and religious beliefs are not incompatible....

You claimed that the scientific paradigm acquires knowledge using the assumption there is no God. An assumption that there is no God is a truth claim about the world, i.e. a premise in the argument. Thus, if these scientific theories actually make this assumption, it should show up in the reasoning. So, show me where it shows up in their reasoning. Your claim about the difficulty of showing the absence of something doesn't apply. According to you, they are assuming that there is no god in their theory. That is a positive claim.

As tame_deuces pointed out, I'm not claiming that the supernatural is part of science, just that science (mostly) restricts itself to claims about the natural world and natural explanations. In my view, you misunderstand this restriction as being equivalent to assuming that there is no god. That is an invalid inference. It doesn't follow from science not being able to effectively theorize about the supernatural that the supernatural doesn't exist. Thus, your claim that theism and science contradict each other fails (on these grounds anyway).

Okay? Maybe "incomplete" more accurately describes your own view, but it doesn't hold the same meaning as "incorrect," so now you are describing a different view from the one I was arguing against. My guess is that most Christian scientists would agree with the claim that science as an epistemology is incomplete, that you need revelation, or theology or philosophy as well. So if science doesn't claim to be the only way to find truth about the world, what's the problem?

As for whether there is still a conflict, tell me what it is then.

What is the obvious contradiction? Science doesn't acquire knowledge and understanding as if there isn't a god. It doesn't claim that there is no god. It does seek to explain what we observe without using god. Stop just making these claims and support them.

Nope. The bolded is clearly false. If I acquire knowledge using a paradigm that assumes there is no God, then a theist will have a problem with that paradigm (although it can still be useful to them). If I acquire knowledge while firmly believing there is no God, then a theist will have no problem accepting that knowledge. Why should they care that I am an atheist unless my atheism is in some way a relevant part of my knowledge acquisition?

Also, how does this address my criticism? I said you are conflating two different claims:

1) Scientists are supposed to assume there is no supernatural when doing science.
2) Scientists shouldn't make hypotheses about the supernatural when doing science.

So I guess the supernatural can be part of science.

I don't see the relevance of this point, so I'm not interested in rabbit-trailing it right now. My main interest in this thread is contesting your claims that:

3) Science, or the scientific method, assumes there is no god.
4) Science and theism are mutually exclusive.

No one is claiming that there are any scientific theories that "include the supernatural".

How is it so difficult to accept that you can believe in god, and also investigate the world using scientific methods? Almost no theist fits into your ludicrous straw man of what religious people think and do.

Nothing I said conflicts with that. Your inability to differentiate "religion and science are mutually exclusive" and "personal beliefs can conflict with science" is somewhat silly and seems disingenuous.

Because hopefully you are aware of the meaning of the English word "can".

Please consider two groups of people:

1. Religious people for whom their religion and Darwinism are in conflict, and thus they reject Darwinism.

2. Religious people for whom their religion and Darwinism are compatible with each other, and thus they accept both.

At least with respect to evolution, "religion and [evolutionary] science are mutually exclusive" would be true for persons in group one, but false for persons in group two.

Therefore, "religion and science" can be mutually exclusive for some religious people, but not necessarily for all religious people.

edit: As y'all probably know, I'm entrenched in group one.

Does anybody ITT disagree with the bolded statement?

When did we decide that precognition is a supernatural phenomena? Science certainly didn't do that, it can't..

I'm mulling over the rest of your points/questions, I feel like I'm repeating myself a lot and you're clearly not seeing what I'm saying as efforts to support my claim although that is exactly what I've been trying to do.

You're agreeing that there can be a conflict. The conflict occurs when the belief and science are mutually exclusive.

My point has only ever been that while science is a very broad term, and much research can be done that can loosely call itself science, perhaps because a part of the scientific method is being used, or because the research is occuring in a field that is considered to be a science, or it's a scientist that doing it, the closer you get to something that can justifiably describe itself as a scientific theory, i.e. the accepted explanation for something, the more supernatural beliefs of any kind are going to conflict and be mutually exclusive to the naturalistic criteria being applied to that judge that as a 'scientific theory'.

Acting as if god doesn't exist, and making a truth laim about god not existing, are differences that don't matter wrt to the results achieved. Same difference for all practical purposes.

It's difficult because there's an obvious conflict, which is why this is a debate that has been going on for a very long time.

This is a complete non-sequitur.

1) If the conflict were obvious, one would expect that there's no debate to be had.
2) The existence of a debate doesn't actually imply anything at an intellectual level. See anti-vaxxers, for example.
3) The only debate is with you, not with anyone else on this forum. Both atheists and theists think you're not making any sense. There is plenty of evidence of many scientists that are successfully doing science while religious (and their science is accepted by the scientific community).
4) If it's obvious, you should be able to point out the contradiction explicitly.

Your fundamental problem is that your belief is not intellectual. It's emotional. Your antipathy towards religion is in the way of your intellect. Because you are so negatively predisposed against religion, you have built a barrier around your beliefs that's so thick that knowledge will not penetrate it. And you seem to like it that way. You want to be able to try to pound on religious figures and religion all the time. You do not want to accept anything positive about religion ever. You have even stated that changing your view from "religion is a net negative" to "there is insufficient evidence to prove that religion is a net negative" is a substantial change in your underlying beliefs.

You might simply be incapable of the type of reasoning required for you to grow out of it on your own. Maybe you need therapy of some sort for something in your past.

Perhaps the failure of being able to support your claim, combined with the available evidence of people disagreeing with you and the absence of people agreeing with you, plus the evidence taken from the scientific community might be an indication that you're wrong. But despite the posts in this thread AND the other thread(s) over the last couple months in which you've attempted to defend this perspective and the myriad times you've simply just had to repeat your baseline assertions, you continue to hold your position.

You're not honest. You don't want to learn. You are willfully ignorant.

People studying physics act as if psychology doesn't exist. The vast majority of people* studying psychology act as if physics doesn't exist (insofar as their studies are concerned). Therefore, physicists make the truth claim that psychology doesn't exist and psychologists make the truth claim that physics doesn't exist.

* There are some psychologists out there studying our intuitions about physics.

This thread too huh?

Anywhere and any time it happens. I'm not sorry this isn't a safe space for ignorance. And I'm especially not sorry it isn't a safe space for willful ignorance.

Here are words that appear around the things you've quoted.

Whether you like it or not, there is an evidentiary basis upon which the accusation of ignorance and willful ignorance is being made. If you disagree with the analysis provided, by all means make your case.

Otherwise, you're just proving the impotence of your public shaming campaign.

Edit: You realize that your constant whining makes me want to do this more to see you whine more, right? I think you look far worse trying to defend MB than I do actually engaging in the topic that's actually being discussed. You may not like my tone and you may not like that I address MB, but I'm at least talking about the content of the thread. You just pop your nose in to complain without even trying to add content.

The reason you are confused by my (and everyone else's) criticism is because I am criticizing a premise you see as so obvious that you (I guess?) can't even understand the grounds on which it can be criticized. You think that the scientific method is operationally atheistic, because it tells scientists to theorize as if there is no God. My criticism of this claim is that science is not operationally atheistic. That is a false description of the scientific method. The scientific method doesn't tell scientists when doing science to act as if god doesn't exist.

Instead, the scientific method is silent about the existence of God. Insofar as it methodologically naturalistic, it says that you can only study the natural world in science. That doesn't imply that there is no supernatural world or god, only that you can't study it using the tools of science. Since that implication is invalid, claiming that the scientific method is functionally atheistic is false. That would be like me claiming that basketball statistics are functionally atheistic because they limit themselves to measurable, observable aspects of basketball player value. You can't validly infer from the silence of science (or basketball statistics) about God that they explicitly or implicitly are claiming there is no god.

Now, there is a way in which you can refer to science as functionally atheistic (or scientists acting as if there is no god). That is, scientific theories don't rely on any claims about God and so are compatible with atheism. Fine. But in this weak sense, we can just as accurately refer to science as functionally theistic, since in this sense it is also compatible with theism. Since that latter claim is what you want to bar, you can't be here using this sense of "functionally atheistic" if you are making a valid argument.

This topic is not something I really want to focus on here, but this response is pure dogma. You claim: science can't study the supernatural. I ask, what about this study of precognition, which is typically understood as being supernatural? You say, well, since science can't study the supernatural, precognition must not be supernatural, or that study isn't science....

What I do when I'm in situations like yours is not focus so much on defending my own view as trying to lay out the view/criticism of the people who disagree with me as clearly as possible until I'm confident I understand their criticism.

Quite possible. It would explain why the last time I brought this up you kept repeating how no no you weren't obsessed with mightyboosh because you only quoted him four times in some prior thread. The multi-thread fervor with which you go after him (ex repeatedly in threads he doesn't even post in) does seem to have picked up the pace since so maybe I have a larger effect on your poor behaviour than I thought. Of course he has you on ignore, which makes your windmilling WILLFULL IGNORANCE at him time and time again fecklessly hilarious. And I see you're dropping in Mightyboosh quotes from that prior thread where I recently called out your bizarre obsession.

I almost never defend him. I criticize your obsession with with insulting a guy who has you on ignore. And if that makes me look obsessed, so be it, but I'll be playing catch up for a long time.

It should be noted that this seems to be an an inherent problem with naturalism (both ontological and methodological). Anything you claim to be able to study you are also implicitly claiming is "natural". At which point it seems (to my eye at least) that you would simply be going in circles.

Which is why I prefer simply to apply the principle of empirical method: We can study what we can observe and measure (and in practice, that which we can reproduce). Then we don't really need taxonomic definitions of phenomena.

And we can leave the classification bit up to the debates outside of science, which at this point is probably where they belong.

Okay. Game on, I guess.

Yes, precognition is either not supernatural, or it's something that science can't address unless it treats it as a natural phenomena, whether it is or not.

Those criteria I listed that you didn't want to rabit hole are the criteria that the supernatural fails to meet, are the reason that the supernatural has no real explanatory power and are the reason that it's discounted by the scientific method. I'm backing up my claim, again, by pointing out the logic of those citeria and the work that they are doing. Every major scientific theory does meet them.

First you think I don't know what you have and haven't said, and now you think I'm not already, and haven't always been, trying to understand your viewpoint. Disappointing. I've actually agreed with you about everything except this one issue of science and religion being mutually exclusive and you may be thinking that all the points you've made lead to an inescapable conclusion that science and religion are not in conflict, but they lead me to the entirely opposite conclusion.

You didn't answer my question about whether or not it was you who said that a common reason that theists abandon their faith is scientific explanations. Do you remember saying that? If you didn't, do you agree that it can have that effect? If so, then why? If there is no conflict between science and religoin, why does it cause so many problems for theists?

Why would you be 'going in circles'?

And what methodology would you use to study it?

Okay, I'll let this go.

Yes, I don't think you understand my criticism of your position. I'm fairly confident of this, because you continue to treat different concepts as if they are the same, even after I pointed out you were doing this. You still aren't, as far as I can tell, distinguishing between "acting as if god doesn't exist," "making a truth claim about god not existing," and "ignoring the existence or non-existence of god." If you want to argue that these actually are all the same concept, then you would be addressing this criticism, but I haven't seen this argument from you.

Yes, I do remember saying that. I still think it is true. I don't think it is because science and religion are mutually exclusive, but because some forms of religion make anti-scientific claims and because the success of science has significantly lowered the status and utility of religion. I'll grant that there is a conflict between science and some versions of religion. I don't think there is an inherent conflict, or a contradiction, between theism and science.