Impossibility of falsifying myths

PSI Blog 20211025 Impossibility of falsifying myths

 

Abhishek Chakravartty asks:

 

“You wrote that creation is not subject to falsification because it is a myth that belongs to a religious belief system. Can you explain why creation cannot be falsified although it is a myth?”

 

[GB: Abhi: Please reread the Galston link. In summary, myths are present in the heads of people. We have no way of testing them. Falsification is possible only for evaluating things and motions that exist or occur outside people’s heads. Anyone can claim the universe was created by gods, dogs, turtles, dark energy, or what have you. On the other hand, specific claims about actually existing things (i.e., xyz portions of the universe) can be tested. For instance, there are claims that the universe was created 6,000 years ago. If we found anything older than that, the claim would be falsified (i.e., shown to be false). I have done that myself hundreds of times through isotope dating and pedochronology. While that claim has been put to bed, there could be an endless number of creation claims. We could never test all of them in the same way we could never prove “there are causes for all effects.” In essence, infinity prevents us from falsifying fundamental assumptions, whether they be scientific or religious.

 

The Big Bang Theory is just another creation theory, which like more overtly religious versions of the creation myth, cannot be falsified. Only specific claims for it can be falsified. For instance, the discovery of elderly galaxies at the limits of observation falsifies the hypothesized 13.8-billion-year age of the universe. Unbelievers have discovered much more evidence for falsification. George Coyne alone lists 66 flaws in the theory.[1] Will any one of these bring down the Big Bang Theory? That is doubtful as long as the religious assumption of creation (Matter and motion can be created out of nothing) holds sway over its opposite, the scientific assumption of conservation (Matter and the motion of matter can be neither created nor destroyed).[2]]

 

      

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[1] Coyne, George, 2021, Notfinity Process: Matter in Motion (2nd ed.), JCNPS, 408 p.

 [2] Borchardt, Glenn, 2020, Religious Roots of Relativity: Berkeley, California, Progressive Science Institute, 160 p. [https://go.glennborchardt.com/RRR-ebk].