(March 15, 2010 at 7:21 pm)theVOID Wrote: That's not true, the manifestation of supernatural or non-material entities (should they exist) in reality would still be measurable, so it's false to say science operates on the assumption of materialism, it is simply the case that everything ever observed in (or acting upon) reality has a (most likely) materialistic origin. The simple fact that the best explanations for any phenomenon (in terms testability, repeatability, explanatory power and the ability to make predictions) are materialistic in origin does not mean the supernatural is discounted by default.Materialism is the philosophical idea that the only things that exist are matter and energy.
Measurable things are material by their nature (since measurement is based on matter and energy). To say otherwise would be like saying you could measure how good a soul is, or how large God is. If anything "supernatural" or "non-material" existed, it would disprove materialism, and we'd have rework science from these new perspectives. Science as it stands today would not work. How can we have a material theory of gravity if we discover that there is a supernatural force that does this instead?
If science doesn't operate on the assumption of materialism, why do you think we discount homeopathy as science? We discount it because what it claims (water has memory) has no basis in the material world. Same with every other alternative medicine.
