Atheism, Theism, Science & Philosophy

[Love]

True enough, two very different interpretations of any given body of evidence could be offered (and this is encouraged). However, one "interpretation" will have predictions and experiments nestled within it - and if one -does work- better than the other, that's the one we go with- if neither, it's inconclusive and we have very strong reasons to suspect that there's something going on that we are not aware of (particularly if two diametrically opposed hypothesis yield the same results). Even in this scenario the strength of the scientific method trumps the subjective nature of our experience. Meanwhile -other methods- don't even leave the starting gate if what we seek as an explanation for any given phenomena. I think that in the interest of full disclosure - one should probably at least give a nod to the failings of any alternative one prefers for any given thing. There may be limits to reason - but I don't see any limit offered here. Meanwhile the limits of -no reason- start at the ground floor and continue no further, because there is nowhere to go from there. Personally, I think that people who prefer something other than reason or the scientific method as a means to gain knowledge are polishing brass on the titanic, not because I think that reason or the scientific method have no limits, but because the alternatives are -complete- non-starters. The limits of what we might choose to call "true" are not specific to any method, they are all encompassing....some methods just appear to have a better chance of getting closer to the podium (and, to be frank, make no claims to the contrary).

I agree with you on all points. However, if you delve into scientitic concepts of extreme complexity such as quantum mechanics, the interpretation of the evidence presented leads to extremely complicated disagreements on the fundamental mechanics of the theory. For instance, quantum mechanics has over 25 different interpretations, including: "many worlds interpretation", "Copenhagen interpretation", "quantum information theories" and the list goes on. For theories, in which empirical evidence is observable at the macroscopic scale (in fields such as evolutionary biology, for example), it is much easier for scientists to interpret the evidence in a relatively similar manner. This is obviously not the case in fields like quantum mechanics.