I'm quite enjoying this back and forth, so to address your 3 points.
subfield said:
Thank you for your response.
I would like to write three things:
First: I object to the sentence - "Do this a million times, and every time it will fall.", and the phrase "you can cite fact after method after theorum after report of provable, repeatable, observable, recordable evidence". The first has no basis in fact. The second claims provability of something that has no deduction (in any recognized calculus, from any consistent set) and whose truth is therefore not established.
If i had said 'should' rather than 'will' would you object? Also you can object all you like, but that statement has been proven to be true over the centuries, with rare (often explainable) exceptions any object you choose to drop will fall towards the ground as expected. Also science is almost exclusively deductive logic, as for our gravity example read ; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_potential for the calculus. Anyway my second statement actually stated very little, to say it claims provability is not correct. I simply intened to highlight how science cites numerous, varied examples to make a claim wher religion makes use of (almost exclusively) one.
Second: it is not the belief that I hold akin to blind faith - it is the assertion of this belief. To say that the rock will fall in 99% of the cases is not the same as saying that the rock will fall. In one, you make a prediction (loosely, a guess) - in the other, you tell us what will be, when you cannot rightly do so.
You are correct, it's not the same as saying the rock 'will' fall, but i can as good as guarantee it will. If we never made assertions we couldn't guarantee were true no one COULD ever make a claim. Our entire world veiw is based off of learning from experience, and to disregard information that has so far been correct almost every time (I say almost only to cover my bases, i have trouble finding examples of the theory of gravity being countered without some manner of trickery). As a different example, sticking your bare hand in a fire, the first thing you notice is heat, then pain. After this experience would you put your hand in a fire again? If you were to put your hand near another fire you should feel the heat, anyone with a functional brain would expect further contact to result in pain, and they would be a fool to expect otherwise. I can safely make this prediction as every recorded incident of flesh + fire ends the same way, millions of steaks, chickens, hams and burn victims every year reinforce this fact.
Third: there are fields where truth, once shown, holds now and for all time. Take for example, again, first order logic. I am afraid that saying the demonstrations from that field are nonsense is a dangerous path to go down. Nonsense by what metric? I'll leave you to ponder that.
I defy you to produce an example of something that is true and can
NEVER UNDER ANY CURCUMSTANCES be proven false. Science is flexable, as new discoveries are made we constantly are learning, adapting and improving our understanding of the world. With science eventally we may disprove gravity, halt ageing, make 1+1= something other than 2, and if you fall for my trap and produce an example of this point then you are a hypocrite, as you cannot claim to "know" that your 'proofs' will never be disproved. Whereas I simply am making informed predictions based on the information we currently find to be 'true'. For again, if we disregarded experience of the past in our expectations of the future we would never expect anything to behave, at all, without this rationale it would be as reasonable to expect the computer you currently sit at to spontaneously take flight and start producing muffins from its ventilation.
And i'd bet it's not done that lately.
