Lemma 3: science does not know everything

This is less of a lemma and more of a clarification. An exercise in filtering the mud out of the water.

There is a common argument when one attempts to apply science to certain subjects. It runs something like this: "Science does not know everything. Science does not address X. Therefore X is somehow 'outside' science."

One step at a time then ...

Science does not know everything.

This is true enough. But not necessarily in the way that it is typically intended.

It is true in the sense that the universe contains a lot of stuff and it is highly unlikely that the human race will ever have the resources or technology to observe and catalogue and model every single bit of it.

It is true in the sense that existing scientific models explicitly exclude the possibility of knowing 'everything'. On the macro scale, general relativity tells us that there are parts of the universe that are unobservable. We can never 'see' them. They can never have any effect on us. (That's a slightly heavyweight wiki article ... if anybody wants to volunteer to paraphrase it in layman's terms they are more than welcome). At the other extreme of scale, Heisenberg suggests that we can only know a limited amount about the position and momentum of a particle.

And we've already mentioned incompleteness theory.

(Of course, it is more than possible that the current models of relativity and quantum mechanics are wrong and that we can know more than they suggest. As I've already said, science is always wrong. That's why it works.)

But this statement is true in a more abstract and arguably much more important sense. It is true almost by definition. Science does not strictly know anything at all. It does not even claim to. It claims to provide us with useful models that help us advance in the Real World. A claim I defy anybody to refute (unless they're living naked under a bush and communing with The Internet via herbal telepathy).

A better statement would be "Science can model anything."

If there is something that we can observe and attempt to understand then the scientific method can address it. If something can be defined, then we can attempt to model it. If it can be observed, then we can compare our models with the observation. Essentially, if something exists, then it can be approached with the scientific method.

Have we accidentally addressed the third part of the argument here? Apologies for jumping the gun. Back to the second part.

Science does not address X.
This can be interpreted in two ways. The first and simplest is "there is no current scientific model relating to X". This may well be true. This does not mean, however, that a scientific model of X cannot be formed.

The second interpretation is broader and more nebulous and, I think, is what is most typically intended: "X contains some peculiar quality that differentiates it from the usual subjects of science".

This is the meaning used by people who make claims of supernatural abilities such as telepathy. It assumes that 'science' is a finite set of things: theories and test tubes and computers and boffins in laboratories. But, if you'll excuse me hammering the nail in with yet another nail, science is not a finite and complete explanation of everything. Science is a method.

If X contains some quality, however peculiar, then that quality can be expressed and modelled and compared with observation. That quality can be added to the list of things that the scientific method has addressed.

So ... nothing is a priori 'outside' of science. You can, if you wish, apply the scientific method to absolutely anything at all. The response to the original assertion is:

"Science can be applied to anything. If X exists, then science can be applied to it. Therefore nothing that exists is 'outside' science."

Or, expressed in an even more controversial direction:

"If the scientific model is somehow inapplicable to X, then X does not usefully exist."

Question 3: what isn't the question?

There are always more questions than answers. This is a lazy aphorism but it is broadly true. The world is a complicated place and answering every single little question is neither possible nor useful. You need to decide which questions are important, and, perhaps more importantly, decide which questions are unimportant so you can avoid wasting time on them.

Here are some things that I'm not going to waste my time on:

Can God create an object too massive for God to move?

God can move anything. But God can create anything. Oh no! A paradox! It's easy to invent questions like this that appear to poke a logical hole in the idea of omnipotence. Try it for yourself. Literally minutes of fun. The fact that it is so very easy to formulate this sort of paradox ought to be a pretty good indication that it isn't a very useful paradox. It is, at best, an illustration of how you can invent a set of rules and (correctly or not) demonstrate them to be inconsistent. A simplistic version of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem if you like. (If you don't know about Gödel's theorem, it is well worth reading about. Good stuff to keep you awake at night.)

Bad things happen to good people.

God is omniscient and omnipotent but allows man to do bad things. This is a much (much) more interesting question than the first. But I'm side-stepping it altogether. Observant readers may have noticed that in the two previous posts I did not mention 'goodness' as one of God's attributes.

Two reasons for this:

1. there does not appear to be an unequivocal statement in the Old Testament that God is good. This may seem slightly odd, and the New Testament appears to be more committal on the subject, but I've had a good browse and a good Google and I've turned up nothing.
2. it does not provide any proof for the existence or non existence of God

The first reason may be a mistake on my part. (To repeat what I said earlier, I'm more than happy to be corrected on any biblical interpretation). The second reason is far more important.

If we assume that 'good' and 'bad' are subjective qualities, then the question "why do bad things happen?" can be reduced to a debate on whether or not the "bad things" are actually bad. This is moral philosophy. It should be taught as a compulsory subject to all children, but it isn't useful in the current context.

If instead we assume that there is an objective 'good' beyond the opinion of man, and that God is omniscient, then God knows with absolute certainty what is good and bad. But we do not. So we cannot derive any proof about the existence of God from the fact that we observe things that we consider to be 'bad'.

"Ah but!" I hear you myself say, "the Old Testament contains examples of God proclaiming that particular things are good or bad, and yet appearing to act in a contrary fashion."

Possibly true. But this would only be a conclusive contradiction if you were to accept that the words of God reported in the Old Testament form a comprehensive and infallible definition of what constitutes good and bad. There are, no doubt, some people who do accept this. Those people are unlikely to enter into an attempted rational debate on the very existence of God. This is probably the one and only circumstance where I will give any weight to the "God moves in mysterious ways" argument.