(January 18, 2017 at 4:16 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: The post from which his objection is this one: http://atheistforums.org/thread-47143-po...pid1489317
The question I addressed was whether the models and descriptions of science strongly suggest that the apparent order of the physical universe reflects real fundamental order. If no such underlying order exists, then scientific inquiry isn't oriented towards any external object to informs or proscribes such an order. In that case, science does not produce actual knowledge.
This takes us deeply into semantics and meanings of words, unfortunately, as, by one way of looking at it, science actually does not produce "knowledge".
The definition of knowledge has been well established since Plato and is "justified true belief." Personally, I consider the qualifier "true" redundant. With respect to the findings of natural science, or any other belief, the question is whether a belief is justified, meaning we have sufficient reason to suppose that the belief is true. Some people argue that some specific beliefs are properly basic, as i did earlier for uniformatarianism. A properly basic belief does require justification by a positive reason; the lack of a defeater suffices.
(January 18, 2017 at 4:46 pm)Asmodee Wrote: Also, I would need to to explain what you mean by "order"...Can you give any examples of order which are not easily explained by physical laws or which, if held true, would necessitate something other than ordinary natural causes?
Order is the opposite of chaos. In orderly world causes have regular effects by necessity. In a chaotic world, causes may have regular effects but could be otherwise for no reason. Since we are talking about the universal orderliness of the world (which encompasses all natural causes) and not various local examples of order your request cannot be met. Nor need it be.