WHAT SCIENCE IS AND IS NOT:

        WHAT SCIENCE IS NOT;

SCIENCE IS NOT BEING CLOSED MINDED TO QUESTIONS, and science is not statements based upon the idea of authority (or even majority consensus for that matter.)   Since when did a majority opinion create or define truth?  The reality is that the great majority of scientists are dependent on their profession for their income and cannot be objective about matters which would or at least could affect that livelihood.  Reliance on a majority opinion of a group of scientists could, therefore, be very misleading.  Reliance on and a high probability of truth should only be placed on repeatable laboratory demonstration data.

Science is not closing off thinking and limited investigation.  It is not statements such as that made in a booklet published by the NSF; "For those who are studying the origin of life, the question is no longer whether life could have originated by chemical processes involving non-biological components. The question instead has become which of many pathways might have been followed to produce the first cells."  (Our highlight.)  Notice the word "might."  The word is needed because there are no set of hard facts to back up the NSF statement.  Even NSF statements are often not statements of science.  In this example, the statement is almost pure biased philosophy.  The truth is that all the "many" supposed pathways are extremely improbable and just speculation.  There is no hard evidence as to how life first came to be.  There is no evidence at all of life ever coming into existence from non life.  

A science statement would list the facts and provide simple logic (often via mathematics) as to why those facts can only be interpreted one logical way.  If it is not objective fact and direct conclusions from hard facts, it is philosophy, like the positions in this site.   It is not credible simply because it comes from the NSF.  Sadly, the NSF is atheistically biased. Science and atheistic bias need to be separated from fact.   Science and Religion - ~The Origins Debate ~

When those involved in science go far beyond the bounds of hard science, the are sometimes criticized and very much should be.  When religion tries to define the "facts" of science; it is and should be criticized.  This does not mean that anyone should be precluded from criticizing the philosophy of scientists who make unfounded claims for science.

The reality of science is that there is no scientific evidence at all that life has ever arisen from non life.   Abiogenic Origin of Life: A Theory in Crisis.   The reality is that even Dr. Dean Kenyon an author of the book "Biochemical Predestination" has now refuted his own theory and book despite being ordered to keep quiet by his university dean and Dr. Kenyon no longer believes that life can arise from chemical processes alone.   Science should be about the preeminence of the truth coming out, regardless of career impacts, as illustrated by the courage of Dr. Kenyon.

The truth is that there is no experimental data nor even any fundamental factual scientific information, but only a naturalistic philosophy to say that life must have arisen from nonlife.  There is no more than the principle that science is not to wave its arms and appeal to God as an explanation, but that is not hard science but only philosophy, and that does not in any way mean that a naturalistic explanation must exist or that any science finding excludes God's action in any way.

These are truth's "about" science, but they are not science itself.  There are in fact many realities about actual science which are not in themselves scientific.  Sadly many "scientific" proclamations and interpretations confuse or intermingle the hard science with science philosophy without making the distinction and mixing clear.

 A SIMPLE LIST OF WHAT IS NOT SCIENCE

WHAT LIMITS SCIENCE (OUR VIEWS AND THOSE OF OTHERS)

SCIENCE THEORY VERSUS PRACTICE

ASSUMPTIONS IN SCIENCE

Science is not adaptive story telling.  Referring to the stories of evolution; "the rejection of one adaptive story usually leads to its replacement by another, rather than to a suspicion that a different kind of explanation might be required."  In other words, not open minded science when it comes to possible explanations of evolution.

A Brief History and Philosophy of Physics

        WHAT SCIENCE IS;

THE BASIC SCIENTIFIC METHOD

Science as Falsification

METHOD FOR FINDING SCIENTIFIC TRUTH

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

THE NATURE OF SCIENCE

Scientific Methods

The Art of Scientific Thinking.

TRUTH AND PROOF IN SCIENCE

Sir Karl Popper; Science: Conjectures and Refutations.

A DEFINITION FROM WEBSTER'S DICTIONARY

A MORE DETAILED DEFINITION

A SURVEY OF BASIC UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT IS SCIENCE

SCIENCE AND ITS LIMITS (BY A NOTED CRITIC OF SCIENCE)  (YES, LOOKING AT THE LIMITS TELL US BOTH WHAT SCIENCE IS NOT AND WHAT IT IS AT THE SAME TIME.)

SCIENTIFIC LAWS and THEORIES   "the nature of science is to question things, nothing is (or should be) sacrosanct." (Quote from link site.)

Science without Laws (Science and Its Conceptual Foundations)

 How Courts Should define Scientific Knowledge.  (We certainly do not agree with all the conclusions but the issues are important and should be understood.  We especially do not agree that the standard the court uses should be the majority opinion of the science community.  The standard should be laboratory tests and if there is no sufficient laboratory test, there is no reliable science, only philosophy.  Noted physicist Richard Feynman once said, "The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific 'truth.".  The courts can understand reliable science.  As Einstein said; "All physical theories... ought to lend themselves to so simple a description that even a child could understand them." )