[DanielStraight]

I'm not really talking about things outside the reach of science. I'm talking about choosing to believe differently about things for which science does have an answer, or at least a strong suggestion.

There's a subtle distinction I'm trying to make between "true" and "scientifically proven". Equating the two requires a belief that what science discovers is absolute truth, but that meta-claim cannot be analyzed by the underlying tool of science.

One can easily conceive of example theories which are not scientifically testable. Let's assume for the sake of argument that the universe was supernaturally created out of nothing. Not 6000 years ago, but at UNIX timestamp 0. But everyone was created with memories. Objects were created in motion. Everything is exactly as we see it, with cause and effect stretching back for countless million years, but it actually was just all created looking that way. As absurd as this sounds, it isn't scientifically falsifiable. It can't be disproven.

Assuming the above scenario is true, it is still scientifically proven that the universe is unfathomably old. The natural, empirical explanation does not change. It simply becomes false while remaining scientifically valid. The science is still sound. (And assuming the universe was not in fact created at UNIX timestamp 0, the belief that it was is still false even if it isn't disprovable.)

The rationalist believes that the findings of science are absolute truth. That if the universe appears billions of years old, it's because it is billions of years old. But whether observation is proof of absolute truth is not a testable question in science. Science can't assert absolute truth in that way. It can only assert a sound, natural explanation of cause and effect. And just because everything has a sound, natural explanation of cause and effect doesn't mean those are explanations are true. We simply have no way of knowing whether the entire universe was created at UNIX timestamp 0 with everything exactly as it should have been to make it appear billions of years old.