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8/13/05

Orlando Sentinel: Must science also make a leap of faith?

OrlandoSentinel.com: Opinion

Science, if it's to remain true science, must be about objective, verifiable facts. Testable. Observable. Repeatable. Consistent. For example, after testing, testing and retesting, scientists established that water at sea level boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit. It does it for everyone. There's nothing to debate. Things get a little trickier when it comes to origins -- because, in the final analysis, how things got to be what they are is a historical question. And none of us is old enough to have been around when it happened. Not even our Supreme Court justices. So we have to engage in a kind of forensic pathology. We can see what exists today. And we can see traces of things that existed in the past. But how it all relates involves a fair bit of speculation. And not all scientists postulate the same scenarios. Further, the nature of the quest doesn't lend itself to experimental verification. Even demonstrations that a particular mechanism can deliver a certain result doesn't prove that it's the only mechanism that might have done so. I find it fascinating that a sub-discipline of science (exobiology) searches for intelligent life forms elsewhere in the universe. Yet the possibility that some Intelligent Life Form may have played a role in our origins is automatically declared unscientific.

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