Christianity is heading for a full allegorization

[polymath257]

@Angrboda

I mean, you can't falsify a correlation. But from a correlation, you can develop a hypothesis: "ice cream trucks cause drownings." Then you arrange an experiment. Create a dozen or so "Truman Show" neighborhoods in which all factors are the same, except some neighborhoods have more ice cream trucks. Then you see which neighborhoods have more drownings. Rinse and repeat.

It might not be practical, but it (in principle) is a way science could detect the strength of the correlation.

That wouldn't work because you can't assume the cause results in a one-to-one correlation.  Once you interpret correlation as causation you're stuck, because anything you try to add to that is basically a refutation of your previous commitment.

No, you have two hypotheses:
1. that ice cream trucks cause drownings
2. that both ice cream trucks and drownings are 'caused by' summer.

The trick is to find situations where those two hypotheses give different predictions and then test those situations. That is exactly what was proposed.

---

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

In reduction, you replace an explanation of a phenomenon in certain terms with an explanation consisting of the things which compose and explain those terms.  So in chemistry, one might explain a chemical reaction in terms of the valences of the elements being used in the reaction.  A reduction would be to explain that reaction in terms of the electrons and particles and their bonding in the individual elements because valences represent the practical physics of how electrons and such work to give an element its valence.  Thus explaining the phenomena in terms of electrons and other elementary particles would be a lower-level explanation than explaining it in terms of valences.  Likewise, explaining drownings in terms of the physics of the particles and forces that are involved in ice cream trucks and drownings would be lower level than explaining it in terms of ice cream trucks, drownings, and an unnamed mediating force or mechanism.

And what if there is no 'lower level'. By definition, all you can have at the lowest level is correlation.