[lapestenoire]

The burden of proof rests on those who make fantastical claims, not on everyone else to disprove their claims.

[generalizations]

The point is that science can’t comment on the “divine inspiration” claim, except to note that it’s outside its purview.

Burden of proof is a whole different discussion.

[tshaddox]

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.

[lisper]

> 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.

[lo_zamoyski]

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?

[ars]

You can not just ignore their claims unless you have an alternative answer to why (or how) does the universe exist.

Science does not contain tools to refute or confirm any answer to that question.

So it's less "fantastical claim", and more a topic that you do not have any tools to approach.

[toast0]

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.

[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.