Christianity is heading for a full allegorization

[polymath257]

Sure, scientist can make a mistake and be biased in his research, but that is where many other scientists come in and test his claims and make scientific consensus, so that in the end science is objective.

Yeah, that's a bit of a fantasy, though. This may be your hope or expectation of science, but science isn't necessarily self-correcting or objective, and it certainly isn't omniscient (as I've heard some people like to say).

Like I said earlier, there are known limitations to science. See Thomas Kuhn and his notion of paradigm shift. Simplistically speaking, there is a specific framework in which scientists operate that makes it very difficult for new radical ideas to be readily embraced (even if they end up being true). There's often quite some resistance to these ideas (at least at the start). As such, it is more reasonable to say that scientists, collectively speaking, do not automatically opt to correcting errors made by any one individual scientist or erroneous positions held by the consensus. Certain circumstances need to occur first because these radical (but true) ideas become accepted within the scientific community.

First, Kuhn's analysis of the Copernican revolution shows how little he knows about the evidence that was available at the time. And, frankly, this paragraph shows the same thing.

The first, most important part is that we *cannot* know whether a particular result is the result of experimental error, incorrect predictions from a theory, or that the theory itself has problems. So, we should not expect there to be 'automatic' error correction--it is impossible without a good deal of evidence what the error actually is.

In the case of the Copernican revolution, the actual evidence in support of the new position simply wasn't available until Galileo and Kepler did their investigations. So we would not *want* the scientists at the time to automatically go for the Copernican system, especially since it ended up (in the version Copernicus gave) being more complicated than the Ptolemaic system.

But, for example, look at the development that happened after the Michelson Morley experiment. A number of different proposals were made, from questioning he results of the experiment itself to aspects related to the ether and possible length contractions. This was all before Einstein submitted his proposal (which was in line with some of the other theoretical work previously). Once a good theory was found, the shift happened fairly quickly because the evidence was already there.

In comparison, quantum mechanics took decades between the first realization that the plum-pudding model of the atom couldn't work (because of the existence of the nucleus) to the realization that electrons, say, have a wave aspect. This involved heated debates on all sides with evidence proposed, questioned, and explanation proposed and debated.

If you expect that working science expects to reject a consensus view and adopt another view quickly, then you misunderstand how science *should* work. It *should* be a process of figuring out what from the old system works, what the different possibilities are for a new system, weighing the evidence and figuring out if it is mistaken (which often happens), etc.

There are also gaps in our knowledge that we may never be able to fill through science. For example, the hard problem of consciousness. To this point, despite many attempts, it has been very difficult to find a proper starting point to solving this problem scientifically. See also the gap between relativity and quantum. Additionally, see the many interpretations of quantum mechanics taken seriously within the scientific community (Copenhagen vs MWI for example), hard to see any consensus there in the foreseeable future.

Many doubt that there even *is* a 'hard' problem of consciousness. And the 'soft' problem is being worked on with major advances in process. The different interpretations of QM are mostly philosophical rot. The theory itself is very clear about what it predicts and the observations agree with it. Anything else is probably useless metaphysics.

More relevantly, putting aside whether science is truly self-correcting or objective or even omniscient (as some people elsewhere have said!), the statements that you (and others) have made about science do reflect an ideology. One that is often politically-driven and unshakable. How many times have atheists (for example) used science as a weapon to combat opposing philosophies and claims made by religious people? Do you see yourselves eventually thinking that evidence is more than just physical evidence, that maybe you should start taking the idea of revelation seriously? That maybe this world doesn't necessarily behave in a natural way (as in the laws of nature do not operate in a consistent manner)?

I'll be more than happy to take revelation seriously when it gives testable predictions of sufficient detail that is can be taken seriously. if you want to propose non-physical evidence, please present it in a way that leads to testable predictions that can be tested via public observations.

I'm not sure who has said that science is omniscient. It is *by far* the best way to eliminate falsehoods that we have found. Simple logical consistency is very far from being sufficient.

I certainly don't take revelation seriously and set a high bar for what constitutes evidence. And I don't mind saying that I hold to an ideology when it comes to my views of the world and the way it generally operates (including that science is the best way to attain conclusive knowledge about selective aspects of the world, despite its limitations). We shouldn't be so averse to the term, and we needn't feel so insecure if our views are compared to those of religious folks and called ideological views just like theirs.

Agreed. There is an aspect of ideology, but I would argue that it is more the cautious aspect of science that frustrates people than the fact that it actually reaches conclusions eventually.