That’s really the whole point. Scientists don’t claim to posses absolute truth. I think most scientifically literate people will tell you that Truth cannot be possessed, only persued. And that is the purpose of science. We pursue the truth, and in that way old ideas are updated and replaced if they are wrong. This is not an arbitrary flip-flop, with no way of telling if the updated view is actually a correction. That is entirely the purpose of science.

Think of the scientific consensus as a statue being chiseled to represent some live model. Scientists look at the real situation, say a posing woman (gravity). Our first attempts to understand the real situation just lead us to a large block of marble that is the right height width and depth, but it’s just a cubic volume.(things fall “down”)

Newton comes along and chisels it down so that it is a beautiful, and accurate representation of the model. Most people who look at the woman and the statue of the woman can see no difference. But SOME people notice that there are some details missing. Laplace takes up the chisel and carves out that little dimple in her cheek that everyone else had overlooked. Now it looks closer to the woman than ever before.

Einstein comes in years later, many people have taken up the chisel and improved the statue so that it more accurately represents the posing woman. Einstein says, you know what this statue looks almost exactly like the woman, but nobody bothered to carve the ground she stands on. It’s just un-carved blocky debris. It will be a much better representation if I integrate her into her surroundings.

He goes to work improving the statue. It doesn’t ruin all that came before, but instead adds to it. Improves it. Makes the statue representing the woman more accurate.

Einstein is thought of as a revolution in science, and rightly so, but when he described the fact that E=MC2, that did not change the fact that what goes up must come down. Newton still runs your life. Everything he proposed is still right as far as any physics you will experience in your day.



This is a misunderstanding of terms.

Falsifiable doesn’t mean “almost certainly wrong, so the reality could be the complete opposite of this”.
Falsifiable means that it makes a very specific prediction and you can test that prediction to see if it is accurate. and if that prediction is not reflective of reality, then it is incorrect. And that doesn’t mean that if one thing is wrong we just throw the whole thing out.

Take the FTL neutrinos. If that proves to be accurate, we don’t just throw out relativity. It has to be corrected, or find a better explanation, and because of all the corroborative evidence in support of relativity already in place, that new explanation would be mostly the same as relativity, but with some correction to account for the FTL behavior.

We know that in some respects general relativity has already been falsified because of the implications it has for particles that we know are incorrect, otherwise quantum mechanics wouldn’t work. And likewise, quantum mechanics doesn’t work in the realm of relativity.

Though both theories are falsified in those extreme realms that they aren’t able to deal with, they have been demonstrated to be certainly correct in other realms where the predictions bear out.

That is not based on assumptions, but evidence. When that evidence is in accord to the predictions made by scientists then they were right. Empirically. Objectively. And verifiably. Not through any force of assumption. That means anyone who wants can perform the same experiment and confirm through independent means that they were indeed accurately representing the state of the universe.



Here you seem to be asserting science acts as a governing body. That isn’t the case. Science is a reporter. It observes, puts observations into words called “laws”, sure, but those are simply our descriptions of what happens, and when we discover our descriptions differ from reality, then it is the “law” which changes to fit nature. We don’t try to deny it and assert our words in place of what can be demonstrated to be true.



This is true. Instead, science relies on confidence, or error bars, if you like. Though we can’t say for 100% confidence on most things we can look at the odds and determine what is the right determination beyond any reasonable doubt. And though there is always a degree of error, and the acknowledgement that there could be some margin of error, that margin of error is usually identified. It might not be perfect, but we can send space ships past the outer solar system and beyond with that math, and I’ll take that any day.

We make all kinds of choices on weaker statistical confidence, and arguing with the empirical measurements and determinations based on that evidence is a losing position.



But do you really appreciate the power of science, I wonder? Limited though our senses are, we do have instrumentation that can detect particles that are ludicrously small and elusive. The very seems and threads of the universe have been exposed this way. Things that exist far outside our ability to sense organically. Science can, has, and does accept what cannot be seen with our own eyes.



And like me, I doubt you would get them to categorically rule the possibility out. You would be able to get answers from them from a position of statistical confidence. Think of this. Is it possible for a random gust of wind to assemble a sand castle? There is nothing in physics which indicates that that is impossible. But statistically, there are a disproportionately gigantic number of other ways for the sand to be arranged, vs that one very specific shape. “Could” it happen? Yes. “Will” it happen? No. With confidence.

And that is dealing with something which we know is physically possible. There is no evidence at all that anything like a conventionally described god is even possible in our universe.
Could there be A god? Possibly. Is there a god? No. Not at all likely. With confidence.
If there was a god, is it Jesus? No. Even less likely.

And of course every instance of something previously believed to be magical and which is now understood has turned out to be resoundingly non-magical.






I was actually drawing a contrast between your behavior and past trolls, and how that difference has been surprising, as most who bother to chase this rabbit are usually trolls.



As always, I think that word does a disservice in this context, RT.




Yep.





Well said.