Sure, every supernatural claim from a religious text is “outside the purview of science” in the same way as that same exact claim appended with “and then a clown riding a unicorn flew overhead” is outside the purview of science.
> science can’t comment on the “divine inspiration” claim
It certainly can. It can point out that there is no evidence that any human writing is divinely inspired, and so claims of divine inspiration are almost certainly false.
See, there's the problem. You called it almost certainly false, but what are the criteria of truth?
Science uses induction as a measure, meaning it presupposes that we have faith in the proposition that something will happen again because it has happened in the past. That would be akin to claiming to be immortal, because every time someone died, it wasn't you. With a little additional information, such as the recognition that you are an animal and that most animals seem to have not been immortal in the past, a good hypothesis would be that you will die, but how can you be sure that you're not the first immortal one? It might seem silly, but how can we be certain that the entirety of physics in the universe is not milliseconds from unraveling, that we're not a metaphorical barrel at the crest of a waterfall without knowing?
In epistemology, only logical truths are certain, anything else is an attempt to put a confidence rating on a proposition, be it through science or religion. Neither can reach 100%, but both can certainly be 0%. There aren't even objective measures for such confidence ratings, statistical modelling is the best we have.
The scientific method explicitly excludes unfalsifiable claims from its purview. If you have ever argued with a religious person, you will realize how easily deflected the argument is, that there is no evidence for divine inspiration. You could mention billions of recorded scientific findings that point toward a material world without supernatural events and still be rebuked by "So what? That doesn't mean it's untrue. You can't disprove that it happened that one time."
I'm not saying that science is a pointless endeavor, just that it can never be an objective measure of truth.
No, it doesn't. This is a common misconception, but it is 100% wrong. Science is the business of finding the best explanations that account for all observations.
One of the consequences of this methodology is that it turns out that all known observable phenomena can be described by fairly simple mathematical laws that appear to remain constant over time. But science does not assume this.
>Science is the business of finding the best explanations that account for all observations.
This is exactly what induction means. Even your wording is almost identical to that of the Wikipedia page on "Inductive reasoning".
> One of the consequences of this methodology is that it turns out that all known observable phenomena can be described by fairly simple mathematical laws. But science does not assume this.
I'm not sure you fully comprehend, it's much simpler. Science does presuppose that observations mean anything related to more general rules, otherwise what would be the point of observations, right? Otherwise all data would be equivalent to TV static and to build a house we would just hope it builds itself. The way you hedge your bets with phrases like "can be described by" and "appear to" makes me think you intuitively understand the limitations of science when it comes to capturing absolute truths, such as analytical a priori truths (e.g. all bachelors are unmarried), which are correct by definition.
No it isn't. You got it right the first time. Induction "presupposes that we have faith in the proposition that something will happen again because it has happened in the past". But that is wrong. Science does not presuppose this.
> Science does presuppose that observations mean anything related to more general rules
No, it does not. It observes that the world behaves according to general rules. It does not presuppose that it does.
Science has no means to get at moral truths, just physical observations. It can’t even prove per definition whether moral truths exist, or why anything exists at all.
It never ceases to amaze me how people can appear so confident while pontificating from a position of profound and self-professed ignorance. You admit you haven't read the book, and yet somehow you know that its content is unrelated to whether or not behavior is "right" or "good". You are wrong. Evolved behavior has everything to do with it. There is no behavior other than "evolved behavior". Without that, you can't even say what it means for a behavior to be "right or good in an abstract sense" without appeal to authority.
And for the others to seriously consider the proof. What good is asking for proof if you then remain either oblivious to it or consistently refuse to engage with it?
You certain can ignore their claim. It's an unfalsifable claim, so it should be ignored in a context of formal logic. But you can't assert it's negative. That's just as unfalsifable, and that claim should also be ignored in a context of formal logic.
Of course, we don't always work in a system of formal logic, and it doesn't much matter to me if you choose to assume/believe works are inspired or not.
> it's an unfalsifable claim, so it should be ignored in a context of formal logic
The claim might be unfalsifiable, but the question is still valid. Basically you are required to answer the question. If you answer "I can't know" your answer is also unfalsifiable, and no better than theirs.
i.e. your position on this matter is not superior to theirs.
I used to believe this after reading Dawkins as a teenager. After reading lots of philosophy I’ve come to believe that the question as posed is unfalsifiable and thus not possible to test scientifically. Asking “is the bible divinely inspired” is similar to asking “what is the meaning of life”, it cannot be tackled scientifically, thus it falls into philosophy and theology.
The same thought process led me to abandon the Sam Harris notion that science can provide us with morals. A simple way to see my point is to ask yourself “what scientific experiment could I design to test whether science is a good basis for morality?” You will find this statement contains a categorical error: a “good” basis can only be defined prior to the experiment, thus the question can only be tackled philosophically.
You can't "scientifically prove" that I didn't write this comment under divine inspiration either. Making unfalsifiable claims is not hard.
I guess what you're saying is technically true, but adhering to an extremely strict interpretation of "science" doesn't strike me as terribly useful here. Science can't offer a definitive conclusive question for a lot of things in life, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have anything useful to say and can certainly inform on theological and moral matters.
For example, we can conduct scientific experiments to determine whether animals have emotions, what kind of emotions they have, if they can feel pain, and things like that. This doesn't directly answer any moral questions about how animals should be treated, but such science is invaluable if you want to try and answer these moral questions.
Philosophy without science is just a bunch of people talking shit.
Philosophy has existed long before science and produced things like democracy, so it’s unfair to claim it’s just “people talking shit.” I agree that science is very useful, but thinking that science can be applied to every problem is delusional. I think of it as a subset of philosophy (specifically epistemology). Thinking that science can be applied to morality results in dystopian situations, like nazi eugenics “improving” the population because Darwinism is scientific.
How can science inform morality? You are right that it can help us determine if animals are suffering; but what we do with that information comes down to our morals, which are generated through philosophy or theology. All the proponents of scientific morality are very passionate about promoting it, but you will notice that they don’t follow through and actually develop a moral system, they just discuss it theoretically (e.g. Sam Harris)
Burden of proof is a whole different discussion.