John VanSickle wrote:
> 3) That the world of our experience is the only one.

Well, if there's more than one, and we can't experience it, I'd say it 
doesn't particularly matter. What most people mean by that, tho, is that we 
*rarely* experience it.

If there's really another world in which God lives, is it actually a 
different world if God actively intervenes in ours?

> 4) That the world of our experience has always operated precisely as we 
> observe it to operate today.

I don't think science assumes that at all.

> Many things claimed by the non-religious worldview (such as the age of 
> the earth) demand that things like the speed of light and the decay rate 
> of radioactive isotopes have always had the values we measure them to 
> have today.  

No they don't. They're measured in different ways and they agree.

> They also demand that no major changes have been forced 
> upon the world of our experience by some agency, existing outside of 
> that world, at times where we have been unable to make observations.

True. I think there's a general assumption that there isn't a conspiracy to 
fool scientific measurements. (What amuses me is when the faithful will 
assert that it's their caring and loving god doing to lying.)

> These are no small assumptions.  We measure carbon-14 as having a 
> half-life of ~5000 years, but our claim that it had the same half-life 
> in King Tut's day is not based on observation, but on the assumption 
> that some things about nature never change.

This isn't true. You measure things like radioactive decay, and you compare 
it against rings in trees, and layers of arctic ice, and the numbers of 
generations of animal bones found in tar pits, and they all match up. This 
is one set of assumptions scientists don't really make without support. Of 
course, it helps that we actually have written records of when the mummies 
were mummified and such, as well as things like Oklo.

Certainly it's likely more common in astronomical fields, methinks, simply 
because the time frames and distances are far too large to be able to do 
more than estimate. All you can do is look at a large amount of pretty much 
static data and deduce things from that. For example, some of the hubble 
measurements are based on seeing stars in our galaxy behave a particular 
way, and stars in the neighboring galaxies behave a particular way, and 
assuming that stars too far away for paralax measurements behave the same 
way.  I'd put that under #2, myself.

> How do we *know* it does 
> not change?  Not in the same way that we know many other things about 
> nature (through observation).

By measuring things a bunch of different ways, then finding the consistencies.

> In a like manner, how do we *know* that our world has operated without 
> any interference from any other?  To be honest, we don't.

Tautologically. If they interfered, they're part of our world. :-)

> and its effect spill over to where we can see them.

I think that would make it open to scientific investigation. Certainly 
that's part of the whole "what caused the big bang" investigation.

> if we cannot assume certain things about the operation of nature 
> to be constant (assumptions 3 and 4), 

I don't think we assume those things. We check them.

> It is not easy to admit that we, in conducting science, have made 
> assumptions that we have no hope of proving;

I think we can certainly disprove that (for example) humans are at the 
middle of the universe or that evil spirits interfere in our measurements. 
(For example, all we need is Satan to appear and admit it.)

I'm thinking that most of the BS that religious people try to argue 
scientifically (like transitional fossils, or carbon dating, or etc) are 
easy to "prove" in a scientific way without assuming the universe has always 
operated under the same approximate set of laws.  But I do think there are a 
number of unprovable assumptions (like that that set of laws is in theory 
discoverable) that don't discredit science but rather power it.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Yes, we're traveling together,
   but to different destinations.

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