The Deuce – I assume you are not a mathematician or scientist, I’ll bet you are a [poor] philosopher.
a) The scientific method explicitly relies on experimental fact to DISPROVE FALSE statements. In science you never have “truth”. Certainly it is not arrived at by “reason”. Look at the history of quantum mechanics.
b) Mathematical “truth” IS contingent. It depends on the axioms you choose. The most famous example being the existence of parallel lines. Depending on the axioms you choose there can be one “parallel” line a certain distance away from a straight line, an infinite number or none. Depends on your axioms, which you choose. If you were a mathematician you’d know another axiom which is sometimes assumed and sometimes not – the axiom of choice.
c) We can measure “truth claims” against experiments. Some survive, some don’t. Classical mechanics, non-relativistic quantum mechanics and many others were EXPERIMENTALLY excluded. No “pure” reason was involved. We can measure the consequences of our theories and these CAN be verified or falsified. For instance, claims on this page about the irreducible complexity of the eye have been disproved over and over and over. As has every single example of “irreducible complexity” that ID has EVER come up with and every single probabilistic argument against evolution. We may not ever be able to know the “truth” but we can recognise lies and falsehoods when we see them.
d) And here we have the full demonstration of your ignorance of logic. I doubt Mr Derbyshire accepts any theory as “true” in the absolute sense you use. Even Dawkins repeatedly states IF a experiment was done that contradicted Evolution then he would accept it is false but literally millions of experiments have been done to check evolutionary theory both in the large and in the details and it has passed every single one. Contrast this with every single example and “argument” given of ID each of which has failed – remember the flagellum “wheel”? However, not being to say something is TRUE is not the same as saying that you cannot say something is FALSE nor that in that case everything is somehow “equally true”. Even philosophers have known this since Hume.
If I was as ignorant as you, I wouldn’t be smugly be making snide comments about other people’s intellect.
