Calling Top Challengers: Disprove a Single Atheist Argument

Challenge accepted, Thank you for allowing me the chance to disprove a single atheist argument. After reviewing all the atheist rebuttals I have chosen to debate the atheistic rebuttal to argument #15. This was the atheist rebuttal that suggested that science can prove or disprove religion. This could not be more false. Absolute proofs only exist in pure mathematics and logic, neither of these subjects are able to prove nor disprove religion as proofs in these subjects cover a completely different field that does not cover religion. Secondly, Just as science is unable to prove religion, it is also unable to disprove religion. The misconception that science can completely disprove anything was based off the idea of falsification that was created by a philosopher named Karl Popper. Karl Popper believed that science could only reject, or falsify hypotheses that could not find evidence that supports one idea over others. While falsification was a popular philosophical doctrine that was popular with everyone including scientists, it was soon found that falsification was not a complete or even accurate way to build scientific knowledge. This was due to one of the key elements of falsification, that once something was considered to be false, it would forever be false. Problems arose as ideas were falsified due to inaccurate/lack of information. Even before Karl Popper made his popular idea of falsification some scientists were already using a few of its basic principles. One of these scientists was Sir Kelvin. Kelvin is well known for being a physicist,creating the Kelvin temperature scale and also formulating the second law of thermodynamics. What Kelvin was not well known for was falsifying the theory of evolution. His logic for falsifying evolution can be explained from the following excerpt from an article in the online biologos blog. The author of the article I am referencing is a chemist named Steve Benner, who has a doctorate in chemistry from Harvard university. "Starting in 1862 and for forty years thereafter, Kelvin used his understanding of thermodynamics to argue that the Earth could not possibly be as old as evolutionists required. Why? Because the Sun could not possibly be so old. 'Even if the Sun were made of the best coal possible', said Kelvin, it could produce heat at its current rate for only about a thousand years. Kelvin thus held that the laws of physics disproved the model of common descent by gradual evolution, key to Darwinian evolution as a theory." His logic and mathematical calculations were most likely correct. Kelvin did have a gift for mathematics, Anyone who wanted to go into physics would need to understand advanced mathematical concepts in order to solve even basic physics questions after all. The only glaring problem with his logic is... wait for it... The sun did not burn coal to produce energy. Scientists at the time Kelvin lived in were unaware of this glaring fact. So were the evolutionists. No one at this point in time knew that the sun generates its energy through nuclear fusion and radioactive decay. Thus, without being aware that the sun did not burn coal to produce energy, Kelvin and the physics department declared the theory of evolution "falsified." Despite physics declaring that the theory of evolution was disproven, supporters of evolution continued to believe that the theory of evolution was true despite physics supposedly "Falsifying" it. If the evolutionists did not continue to believe that the theory of evolution was true despite the current evidence at the time suggesting the opposite, we would have never known that evolution was indeed a valid plausible theory. By ignoring the conclusions of science and operating only on the belief that evolution was real, the evolutionists made revolutionary contributions to science and also provided a wonderful example of how falsification can be wrong. This is one of many reasons, why science is based on the principle that "Science accepts or rejects ideas, it does not disprove them." (berkeley.edu) Additional evidence "Popular media often talks about "scientific proof". However, accumulated evidence can never provide absolute proof " it can only ever provide support. A single negative finding, if confirmed, is enough to overturn a scientific hypothesis or theory. Rather than being proven "once and for all", a hallmark of science is that it is subject to revision when new information is presented or when existing information is viewed in a new light."(sciencelearn.org) Misconceptions about the nature of uncertainty and change in scientific knowledge. (This article was paraphrased and edited/formatted to highlight the relevant information for our debate. you can find the original unedited article, at http://serc.carleton.edu.... As far as I can tell nothing in the unedited longer version of this article contradicts any of the misconception statements here. I copied the following statements word for word, so you could not argue I altered or changed these statements to fit my argument. one note though, I added the words "Misconceptions" and "about" to the original title, as the original title alone did not make it clear these were Misconceptions. A statement that only exists in the original version confirms all of these are contradictions. Again, you have the source to see this is true for yourself. I also included it in my source page just for extra security. P.S please try to forgive me for misusing parentheses, grammar was never my strong suit.:/) Long list of misconceptions "Science is a large collection of absolute facts that is fairly static in nature. "Science is EXACT! (How can you make approximations and be right?) Science is without uncertainty (or at least should be). "The meaning and the importance of error bars and uncertainties. "There is always a right answer. "Students struggle with the idea of the tentativeness of scientific knowledge; "Scientific ideas are either 'proven' or 'not proven' - there is no sense of the quantitative nature of uncertainty. "The theory-laden nature of scientific observations "Scientists are always changing their minds. "Or, conversely, scientific knowledge is fixed and unchanging. "On the other end of the spectrum with regard to uncertainty, the process of science is fundamentally uncertain (there is a potentially infinite number of alternative hypotheses to account for any particular observation; confirmation is possible but proof isn't; even experimental disproof is uncertain; Karl Popper notwithstanding). "If you have 'data' then it has one correct meaning; and is not open to interpretation. (serc.carleton) With all this evidence, I have clearly shown that science cannot prove nor disprove religion, as science itself can only accept or reject ideas. Science has clearly stated that it does not have the ability to absolutely prove nor disprove anything. Sources: http://undsci.berkeley.edu... http://newyorkscienceteacher.com... https://www.psychologytoday.com... http://sciencelearn.org.nz... http://www.talkorigins.org... http://biologos.org... http://www.csicop.org... http://www.livescience.com... http://serc.carleton.edu... P.S if I forgot a source for any of my statements let me know. As far as I can tell, I have covered everything, however I know there is always the chance I could overlook something. I look forward to your response to this. OAK.