The burden of proof rests on those who make fantastical claims, not on everyone else to disprove their claims.

The point is that science can’t comment on the “divine inspiration” claim, except to note that it’s outside its purview.

Burden of proof is a whole different discussion.

> science can’t comment on the “divine inspiration” claim

It certainly can. It can point out that there is no evidence that any human writing is divinely inspired, and so claims of divine inspiration are almost certainly false.

See, there's the problem. You called it almost certainly false, but what are the criteria of truth?

Science uses induction as a measure, meaning it presupposes that we have faith in the proposition that something will happen again because it has happened in the past. That would be akin to claiming to be immortal, because every time someone died, it wasn't you. With a little additional information, such as the recognition that you are an animal and that most animals seem to have not been immortal in the past, a good hypothesis would be that you will die, but how can you be sure that you're not the first immortal one? It might seem silly, but how can we be certain that the entirety of physics in the universe is not milliseconds from unraveling, that we're not a metaphorical barrel at the crest of a waterfall without knowing?

In epistemology, only logical truths are certain, anything else is an attempt to put a confidence rating on a proposition, be it through science or religion. Neither can reach 100%, but both can certainly be 0%. There aren't even objective measures for such confidence ratings, statistical modelling is the best we have.

The scientific method explicitly excludes unfalsifiable claims from its purview. If you have ever argued with a religious person, you will realize how easily deflected the argument is, that there is no evidence for divine inspiration. You could mention billions of recorded scientific findings that point toward a material world without supernatural events and still be rebuked by "So what? That doesn't mean it's untrue. You can't disprove that it happened that one time."

I'm not saying that science is a pointless endeavor, just that it can never be an objective measure of truth.

> Science uses induction as a measure

No, it doesn't. This is a common misconception, but it is 100% wrong. Science is the business of finding the best explanations that account for all observations.

One of the consequences of this methodology is that it turns out that all known observable phenomena can be described by fairly simple mathematical laws that appear to remain constant over time. But science does not assume this.

>Science is the business of finding the best explanations that account for all observations.

This is exactly what induction means. Even your wording is almost identical to that of the Wikipedia page on "Inductive reasoning".

> One of the consequences of this methodology is that it turns out that all known observable phenomena can be described by fairly simple mathematical laws. But science does not assume this.

I'm not sure you fully comprehend, it's much simpler. Science does presuppose that observations mean anything related to more general rules, otherwise what would be the point of observations, right? Otherwise all data would be equivalent to TV static and to build a house we would just hope it builds itself. The way you hedge your bets with phrases like "can be described by" and "appear to" makes me think you intuitively understand the limitations of science when it comes to capturing absolute truths, such as analytical a priori truths (e.g. all bachelors are unmarried), which are correct by definition.

> This is exactly what induction means.

No it isn't. You got it right the first time. Induction "presupposes that we have faith in the proposition that something will happen again because it has happened in the past". But that is wrong. Science does not presuppose this.

> Science does presuppose that observations mean anything related to more general rules

No, it does not. It observes that the world behaves according to general rules. It does not presuppose that it does.

> You got it right the first time. No, I gave an example of inductive reasoning common in science. Induction means concluding from the particular to the general. So in this case we might have observed something happening in the past, induced it happens in all of time, deduced that future time is part of all time by definition, and finally concluded that it will happen in the future. Induction is not restricted to time, it can equally be a generalization over time or any circumstance really.

We don't check each and every room in the country to see if general relativity holds there, and then fall in despair once we realize it might have randomly stopped holding in one of them yesterday.

> No, it does not. It observes that the world behaves according to general rules. It does not presuppose that it does.

I'd like to see you explain how you can you observe a rule. Are you God? Can you see all of space and time and all possible dimensions? Science observes particulars and tries to formulate general rules based on these observations. If science would not use induction, any observation would be meaningless, because the exact circumstances the observation was carried out in would cease to exist the moment the observation was concluded.

Therefore, science is susceptible to the induction problem.

> I'd like to see you explain how you can you observe a rule.

You need to read what I say more closely. I did not say that science observes rules. I said that science seeks good explanations for observations, and it just so happens that the best explanations for how nature behaves turn out to look like rules.

Science has no means to get at moral truths, just physical observations. It can’t even prove per definition whether moral truths exist, or why anything exists at all.

That's not true. See for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation

I haven't read it, but I believe that book addresses how certain behaviors may have evolved.

That is unrelated to whether those behaviors are in an abstract sense "right" or "good".

It never ceases to amaze me how people can appear so confident while pontificating from a position of profound and self-professed ignorance. You admit you haven't read the book, and yet somehow you know that its content is unrelated to whether or not behavior is "right" or "good". You are wrong. Evolved behavior has everything to do with it. There is no behavior other than "evolved behavior". Without that, you can't even say what it means for a behavior to be "right or good in an abstract sense" without appeal to authority.

Evolutionary arguments allow for any moral behavior that improves your survival chance, which is why it isn’t taken very seriously.

No, that's not true. You need to read "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins. Evolution produces behavior that improves the reproductive fitness of your genes, not you. And that turns out to be a very significant constraint.

That’s just the ‘there are no morals, just genes’ type of argument. Which assumes no free will (which is itself a supernatural concept under most definitions).

In the end this kind of comes down to a belief or not in free will, which is a faith based discussion since we can never ethically prove whether we have free will or not being our own observer.

I'm not suggesting you read TSG because of its position on morality but because of its explication of what evolution optimizes for. TSG does address the question of morality, specifically how altruism can evolve, but Axelrod gives a much more complete and up-to-date account.

> In the end this kind of comes down to a belief or not in free will, which is a faith based discussion

No, it doesn't, and no it isn't. The illusion of free will is enough, i.e. it suffices that we lack a complete understanding of our own brains.

You should read this:

https://blog.rongarret.info/2018/01/a-multilogue-on-free-wil...

Statements like "you are wrong" indicate more confidence to me than statements like "I believe."

I may well be wrong about the book's nature. My assessment was based on the Wiki article you linked and my study of moral philosophy, epistemology, and science as a methodology for the past several years.

Are you familiar with the is-ought problem? If so, what do you make of it? How does that fit with your understanding of evolution as creating moral good?

> Statements like "you are wrong" indicate more confidence to me than statements like "I believe."

Well, yeah, but my confidence is grounded in knowledge because I've actually read the book.

> Are you familiar with the is-ought problem?

Yes.

> If so, what do you make of it? How does that fit with your understanding of evolution as creating moral good?

You are moving the goal posts. The statement that you made which I was criticizing was:

> I believe that book addresses how certain behaviors may have evolved. That is UNRELATED to whether those behaviors are in an abstract sense "right" or "good". [Emphasis added]

So I did not say that evolution "created moral good". What I said was that the claim that "evolution is unrelated to whether behaviors are in an abstract sense 'right' or 'good'" is wrong, i.e. evolution is related to whether behaviors are in an abstract sense 'right' or 'good'. But I did not say how it is related. If you want to know that you will need to read the book.

Sure, every supernatural claim from a religious text is “outside the purview of science” in the same way as that same exact claim appended with “and then a clown riding a unicorn flew overhead” is outside the purview of science.

Good analogy, obviously if unicorns could fly humans would never have killed them all off.

Nonsense. Of course it can comment on divine inspiration, you just won't like the comments that it will make, so you try this line of bullshit.

I used to believe this after reading Dawkins as a teenager. After reading lots of philosophy I’ve come to believe that the question as posed is unfalsifiable and thus not possible to test scientifically. Asking “is the bible divinely inspired” is similar to asking “what is the meaning of life”, it cannot be tackled scientifically, thus it falls into philosophy and theology.

The same thought process led me to abandon the Sam Harris notion that science can provide us with morals. A simple way to see my point is to ask yourself “what scientific experiment could I design to test whether science is a good basis for morality?” You will find this statement contains a categorical error: a “good” basis can only be defined prior to the experiment, thus the question can only be tackled philosophically.

You can't "scientifically prove" that I didn't write this comment under divine inspiration either. Making unfalsifiable claims is not hard.

I guess what you're saying is technically true, but adhering to an extremely strict interpretation of "science" doesn't strike me as terribly useful here. Science can't offer a definitive conclusive question for a lot of things in life, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have anything useful to say and can certainly inform on theological and moral matters.

For example, we can conduct scientific experiments to determine whether animals have emotions, what kind of emotions they have, if they can feel pain, and things like that. This doesn't directly answer any moral questions about how animals should be treated, but such science is invaluable if you want to try and answer these moral questions.

Philosophy without science is just a bunch of people talking shit.

Philosophy has existed long before science and produced things like democracy, so it’s unfair to claim it’s just “people talking shit.” I agree that science is very useful, but thinking that science can be applied to every problem is delusional. I think of it as a subset of philosophy (specifically epistemology). Thinking that science can be applied to morality results in dystopian situations, like nazi eugenics “improving” the population because Darwinism is scientific.

How can science inform morality? You are right that it can help us determine if animals are suffering; but what we do with that information comes down to our morals, which are generated through philosophy or theology. All the proponents of scientific morality are very passionate about promoting it, but you will notice that they don’t follow through and actually develop a moral system, they just discuss it theoretically (e.g. Sam Harris)

In my limited experience, proponents of scientific morality don't seem to know about or grant David Hume's is/ought duality.

I'm still not entirely sure what I think of it, but it's certainly something anyone with an interest in moral philosophy ought to deal with.

I must admit I don’t know the philosophy very well, thanks for referencing actual theory.

I would love to have a rational, consistent, data driven moral system but I will need an existence proof before I become a true believer.

You can not just ignore their claims unless you have an alternative answer to why (or how) does the universe exist.

Science does not contain tools to refute or confirm any answer to that question.

So it's less "fantastical claim", and more a topic that you do not have any tools to approach.

You certain can ignore their claim. It's an unfalsifable claim, so it should be ignored in a context of formal logic. But you can't assert it's negative. That's just as unfalsifable, and that claim should also be ignored in a context of formal logic.

Of course, we don't always work in a system of formal logic, and it doesn't much matter to me if you choose to assume/believe works are inspired or not.

> it's an unfalsifable claim, so it should be ignored in a context of formal logic

The claim might be unfalsifiable, but the question is still valid. Basically you are required to answer the question. If you answer "I can't know" your answer is also unfalsifiable, and no better than theirs.

i.e. your position on this matter is not superior to theirs.

Admittance of ignorance is undoubtedly better than a lie, in general.

It’s impossible to say whether it is a lie, because of incompleteness.

Let's try the more charitable "unjustified certitude" instead of "lie".

I wrote "I can't know", not "I don't know".

This is a question about the limits on knowledge, not about someone's personal knowledge.

And for the others to seriously consider the proof. What good is asking for proof if you then remain either oblivious to it or consistently refuse to engage with it?

> Naturalism insists that anything which is supernatural cannot be scientifically investigated, by definition.

No, that is not what naturalism is. That would be circular. Naturalism is the philosophical stance that things that cannot be observed do not exist.

Alleged supernatural phenomena cannot ever be definitively ruled out (because new observations may confirm their existence) but to date there has never been an alleged supernatural phenomenon that did not have an adequate naturalistic explanation.

Under naturalism there can never be a supernatural phenomena that would prove supernatural things exist. Because once the phenomena reaches a state where it can be measured it ceases to be supernatural and becomes a thing of scientific investigation. And while its not in a state that could be measured there is nothing to investigate. Or put it another way - naturalism is a world view that would kill any supernatural interpretation even if/when its real. And as such it cannot be used to prove nor disprove supernaturalism.

Not quite, naturalism exposes the idea that the physical world is governed by natural laws not the whims of higher powers. Or as Wikipedia puts it “a philosophical worldview which holds that there is nothing but natural elements, principles, and relations of the kind studied by the natural sciences”

It’s a worldview that reproducibility goes out the window once you introduce supernatural forces. If the weather where actually responsive to a god who regularly changed things because they got mad, then it would be inconsistent over short time periods.

It does classify things that are reproducible and testable as part of the natural world even if we don’t understand them such as gravity. Finally things that don’t have a detectable influence don’t exist.

This is subtly different from materialism or physicalism which both define how reality operates.

Naturalism could demonstrate the existence of things that today are called supernatural. Ghosts. Demons. Deities. All of these things could be demonstrated naturalistically if they were observable. In that case they would no longer be "supernatural" but they would still be qualitatively different from what is today understood to be "natural phenomena".

> things that cannot be observed do not exist.

I cannot observe propositions or truth claims or numbers or...

Besides, what is "natural" and what is "supernatural" according to naturalists? [0]

[0] https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/search?q=naturalism

> I cannot observe propositions or truth claims or numbers or...

Of course you can.

> what is "natural" and what is "supernatural" according to naturalists?

It changes over time. At the moment, "natural" is anything that can be accounted for by quantum mechanics and general relativity, and "supernatural" is anything that can't: Ghosts. Demons. Deities. Telekenesis. Stuff like that.

And it can't even tell you if science is perhaps the unified tool from god to us.

What if our world was designed on purpose including drugs like LSD to enlightenment and all earth religions are wrong because they stopped listening?

But hey true we don't know :-)

This is just intellectually lazy, reheated New Age blather. Serious people engage intellectually (which means humbly) with the subject matter, beginning with rigorous training in philosophy. This isn't just something about which a nerd who has watched some schlock on PBS or a read a NYT bestseller can have something legitimate or valuable to say.

There is space for divine inspiration as a hypothesis in science. It fulfills the same role as a flat earth hypothesis. It's up to the weirdos to prove their insane leaps, not on us to disprove.

> It can't ever rigorously conclude whether anything was ever divinely inspired, though.

https://www.catholic.com/tract/proving-inspiration