(September 2, 2014 at 12:20 pm)Michael Wrote:(September 2, 2014 at 12:08 pm)Diablo Wrote: No I don't. It is wrong to say that the universe has a beginning because we don't know if that is true.
Oh well, I'll have to disagree there. I think often in science (and, in this case, philosophy) we work with uncertainty, and just bear that in mind when we reach a conclusion. In medical research, for example, we work with samples of patients. We can't be certain that the general population will respond in the same way as our sample did (indeed we can be pretty sure that the general population won't respond in exactly the same way because trials tend to be quite picky about the patients used). We know we're dealing with uncertainties, but the alternative would only be to approve a drug once it had been tested on everyone who would ever receive it, and that's clearly impossible. Uncertainty and imprecision are both warp and weft through all biological science but we get on with it anyway.
A lot of statisticians would be out of a job if we only worked with what we are certain about. Ooh, a life without statisticians! I'm beginning to see a benefit of your approach ;-) After all, they are generally just people who wanted to do accountancy but couldn't take the excitement.
We'll have to agree to disagree in this case. I'm sure you really understand it because what you've said highlights the fact that the statement is absolute when no such certainty exists. You may say that God exists on the same basis, without proof of that assertion, and I wonder where your faith would be if you had to visit the bookmakers to find out the odds. They'd be pretty long ones, I should think. If you want to introduce statisticians into the argument then I'm all for it: it just reinforces the point.
And leave accountants out of it; without them most enterprises would go bust.
