Quote Originally Posted by Sasaki Kojiro View Post
I never really understood that as a criteria either. But it is easy to just say "must be falsifiable" I guess.
It's the purported demarcation principle (along with the related testability) which many scientists and lovers of science, and a few philosophers of science uphold. I never liked it but it seems to persuade judges for now.

I don't understand what you mean. Using, say, moral intuitions as the foundation for a system of ethics and then arguing from there philosophically compared to saying that the people who did the same thing in ancient times got it right?
Right, the latter (in specific cases) is a lot better than the former.

We were talking about actual postulates, i.e. things that have been postulated (he said something like, "science is never right, it just postulates..." and the point is it has been right about a great many things).
Well, there have been a ton of 'postulates' in that case, though not a potential infinite. Also, science is probably not right in most (all?) of its postulates. For example, Geocentrism is probably wrong, so is heliocentrism. GR is probably wrong as well.

All of them are good (in the sense that they fit the evidence or rather the evidence fits them) models though, though you might favor one or another for whatever reason.

Can you tell me something? I'm under the impression that it used to be a debate between "faith and reason", did this morph at some point into "science vs religion"? Why?

Or maybe it was "reason vs revelation".
Science and religion seem to be synonyms for or at least very closely tied to reason and faith for a lot of people. Science (and reason) have had some good PR of late I guess.