Christianity is heading for a full allegorization

[LadyForCamus]

Science can handle the possibility that correlations are false. If the correlation between drownings and phenomenon x becomes apparent, the next step is to formulate a new hypothesis that can be falsified and continue testing.

For example: more people swim in the summer. Also more ice cream trucks rolling around in the summer. Let's see if "it being summer" (or something else) doesn't better explain the supposed correlation.

If poly is taking up the mantle of Humean skepticism, then I think your criticisms are apt. But I don't think these criticisms are good criticisms of science in general. If only one experiment could be done ever, then yes... a false correlation is devastating to gnosis. But science can take hundreds of cracks at a problem. So one bad result doesn't seem like an issue to me.

How do you falsify a correlation?  Typically, confounding factors are considered better explanations because lower-level phenomena correlate with drownings in a way that ice cream trucks do not.  But this requires assuming that the causative mechanism of the confounding factor is lower level than that of ice cream trucks, which is a conclusion you can only reach through an argument from ignorance.  If correlation is causation, then the concept of a confounding factor evaporates and you have no way to privilege the confounding factors as explanations over that of the ice cream trucks.

Pardon the dummy interjecting. What do you mean by “lower-level phenomena”?

Like @vulcanlogician pointed out, you can’t falsify a correlation. Or, the only way to falsify a correlation between two variables is by showing that there is, in fact, no actual correlation between them. But the demonstration of a correlation between two variables, by itself, tells us nothing about cause and effect one way or the other. A correlation is simply a description of the relationship between two variables. It doesn’t assume how or why. But how many confounding variables are intertwined with the relationship between ice cream trucks and drownings versus neural activity and qualia? Or charged particles and electric fields? I don’t think that to say ‘a strong correlation, after known confounding variables are ruled out or controlled for, can be sufficient evidence of cause and effect’ is quite the same as claiming ‘a more detailed mechanism of action doesn’t exist or can’t be found.’ It may be reasonable to tentatively conclude, based on strong correlative evidence, that neural activity is the likely cause of conscious experience while acknowledging that we don’t yet have a complete understanding of the exact mechanistic explanation.