[brutusborn]

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.

[Beltalowda]

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.

[brutusborn]

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)

[NateEag]

In my limited experience, proponents of scientific morality don't seem to know about or grant David Hume's is/ought duality.

I'm still not entirely sure what I think of it, but it's certainly something anyone with an interest in moral philosophy ought to deal with.

[brutusborn]

I must admit I don’t know the philosophy very well, thanks for referencing actual theory.

I would love to have a rational, consistent, data driven moral system but I will need an existence proof before I become a true believer.