18 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
Obviously everyone, including hardline materialists, will have certain axiomatic beliefs that are unfalsifiable. It's rare for even the most silly r/atheist poster to outright deny that there are unfalsifiable beliefs necessary to hold for a materialistic worldview.
That doesn't mean they reject the scientific method, unless you are saying that literally everyone ever rejects the scientific method. The scientific method is a useful method to investigate a subset of claims, once one accepts certain base beliefs that are themselves outside the perview of science.
Comment by WorkItMakeItDoIt at 24/02/2025 at 14:11 UTC
-10 upvotes, 2 direct replies
The scientific method is built on and requires falsifiability, which is about as inoffensive an axiom as possible. It more or less boils down to "if you observe it, it exists, but if you fail to observe it, then you only builds a compelling case for it to not exist, you can't prove it."
This is great, and most scientists have all agreed that once you have achieved a certain number of "failures to observe" then it has become a useful model and we can safely rely on it for all practical purposes.
But you can't **prove** a negative, and most physicalists insist that you can. If they simply said "we find compelling the argument that material reality is the ultimate reality because we have so much evidence", then I have no issue with them. If you reject falsifiability then you reject science, no matter if you say you do or not.
I have a feeling that if God suddenly appeared, against all odds, there would be a devout physicalist that would confidently declare that it was clearly a mass hallucination. Replace God with Platypus if you want a real world example.