: : 1. There appears to be a 'real world'. This is inductive.
: : 2. Distillation of what appear to be common 'rules' leads to a system of 'logic'
: : 3. A scientific theory is a self-consistent one that agrees with all evidence provided by points 1 and 2.: : (I'll reply more on the Popper post when I've the time; I'm at work.)
: You state that "the best scientific model is the one that most simply explains all scientific observations."
: Are you implying that this test also makes those models the RIGHT models?
No. As I've repeatedly said; there is ultimately no way to find out if they are the 'right' models or not.
There is ultimately no way to find out if any model is 'the right one'; whether religious or scientific.
All religions have an equal truth value; and while the Quine-Duhem thesis is a challenge to Popper's falsificationism, it's the only thing really keeping religion going.
(The thesis basically says that there are always auxiliary assumptions that will rescue a theory from refutation; and thus that no theory can ever really be refuted.)
However, this doesn't have to lead to Russell's lunatic; a partial theory which fits as part of a logical framework and is borne out by experiment is of more practical use than one which can't.
So they're all models, Gotch, and you ultimately have no demonstrable way of knowing that Christianity is any more 'true' than Islam of Buddhism.
Gideon.
