doc30: "I don't think that is the case at all....[That science has after a fashion demonstrated the soul]"
Note the words, "after a fashion".
I deliberately added that part into my excerpt in #152, because I wanted to see which of the two things he stated would be what you would choose to focus on. You focused on what I figured you'd focus on, and ignored what he [Koukl] said was QUITE A BIT MORE IMPORTANT, to wit: "But there's another point that's actually quite a bit more important. ...". Note that Koukl's opinion on science was what I said would be closer to Rush's more balanced approach - as opposed to the "all or nothing" approach you accused Rush of embracing in your previous post.
doc30: "Please provide me with exactly what he [Rush] did say."
If you have listened to Rush for any length of time, you would KNOW that he differentiates between junk science and valid science. As you see in the URL below, he has the transcription of his commentary on that day listed under the catagory of: "JUNK Science update".:
NBC Reports Bunch of Barbra Streisand About Hurricane Katrina vanden Heuvel
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_083005/content/junk_science_update.member.html
August 30, 2005
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here's Mark in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Hello, sir, and welcome.
CALLER: Rush, you called it on global warming. NBC last night. (pause) Rush?
RUSH: We have the sound bite of that, too. Mike, grab audio sound bite #5. I wasn't even going into get this, this was so ridiculous, but since you brought it up and it was a See, I Told You So, here is NBC science correspondent Robert Bazell and his report on the hurricane last night.
BAZELL (Breathlessly): Even with a slight weakening, Katrina was one of the biggest ever, and many scientists say we can expect such storms more often, as global warming increases sea temperatures, around the world!
RUSH: Now, once something like this gets going, folks, there's no stopping it. It's got an inertia of its own, but it isn't true. Hurricane expert Max Mayfield at the National Hurricane Center says it has nothing to do with this. This is part of a normal cycle (story). If you want, I can go get lists for you of the most deadly hurricanes this century, and I can tell you how there are hurricanes long before anybody thought of man made global warming, that had just as much death and destruction as this. (The 1900 Galveston Storm) This is not unprecedented, but most people's historical perspective begins with the day they were born and they judge events within their own lifetime. "Well, it's never been as bad as this. Well, we've never had it as good as this." So to people who have never seen the category four hurricane, "Well, hey, it couldn't have been any worse than this, Rush! Why, it had to be global warming." No. These things have been happening since the beginning of time. There have been worse ones than this when there was nobody talking about global warming, when it hadn't even been created as a political football -- and I have this little story. I knew this is going to come up, so I had this at the top of the stack, right here, folks, and it comes from NewScientist.com. Brace yourselves.
"Most published scientific research papers are wrong, according to a new analysis. Assuming that the new paper is itself correct, problems with experimental and statistical methods mean that there is less than a 50% chance that the results of any randomly chosen scientific paper are true. John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at the University of Ioannina School of Medicine in Greece, says that small sample sizes, poor study design, researcher bias, and selective reporting and other problems combine to make most research findings false. But even large, well-designed studies are not always right, meaning that scientists and the public have to be wary of reported findings. 'We should accept that most research findings will be refuted. Some will be replicated and validated. The replication process is more important than the first discovery,' Ioannidis says. In the paper, Ioannidis does not show that any particular findings are false. Instead, he shows statistically how the many obstacles to getting research findings right combine to make most published research wrong," and this is not an editorial opinion. This is statistically, and it's based on study, and then to follow that, we have this from the Guardian in the UK:
"Some of America's leading scientists have accused Republican politicians of intimidating climate-change experts by placing them under unprecedented scrutiny. A far-reaching inquiry into the careers of three of the US's most senior climate specialists has been launched by Joe Barton, the chairman of the House of Representatives committee on energy and commerce. He has demanded details of all their sources of funding, methods and everything they have ever published." He damn well should! We now know -- even before we knew it; we could assume, accurately so -- that much of this is just opinion. Much of this is bias brought on by the nature of the political leaning of a particular group of scientists or individual scientists, and then you look at where they get their funding and of course it all makes sense to examine what the outcome of their research is. Now, the Guardian says:
"Mr. Barton, a Texan closely associated with the fossil fuel lobby, has spent his 11 years as chairman opposing every piece of legislation designed to combat climate change." You know why? It's not possible! It's a waste of money. It isn't possible. Folks, use logic -- and there's a German government minister, in an Oslo newspaper today (story), who said our failure to sign the Kyoto accords and reduce our pollution is why this hurricane happened and why it's so devastating. That's asinine! It is pure... It's absurd! But just use the logic. You know what this hurricane started out as? Tropical depression ten. Hurricane Katrina vanden Heuvel started at tropical depression ten. By the way, she's not happy. She is not. She's written, she's posted somewhere on a blog (story), she doesn't think this is useful or helpful to name this hurricane after her, and I'll tell you, "Libs, they can dish it out. They cannot take it!" They can dish all day long, but they can't take it. Nevertheless, Hurricane Katrina vanden Heuvel started as tropical depression ten way out there east of the lesser Antilles, and then it dissipated, and the National Hurricane Center said, "Ah, this thing is gone. It was very weak. It's not worth following. We'll keep our eye on it."
It popped up again a week later as tropical depression 12. They said, "It's the same tropical depression, but because there's been some time since it dissipated we're going to name it 12 rather than keep it ten," and so ten then became Katrina, and then it became tropical storm, and then it became Hurricane Katrina, and we watched it all the way out in the Atlantic, approach Florida, go across Florida into the gulf. All this time, we knew that it was a hurricane, and we knew it was headed for parts of America that it could be very destructive. Could we stop it? Is there one thing we could have done? Could we have all driven hybrids last week? Could we have all shut down all oil production and just walked everywhere? Is there anything we could have done? No, folks, there's nothing we could have done to change the direction of that storm, to lessen the intensity. Nothing we could have done. So, on the basis of logic, what have we done to cause it? What did we do to cause it? What is it that made it start where it start, dissipate, and then come back as a roaring hurricane all the way up to category five shortly before landfall?
Well, what they're saying is, "Sea temperatures, Rush! The sea temperatures out there! They are scalding hot, and as you have said yourself, that's like throwing gasoline on a hot fire."
Well, what's making the ocean temperature higher?
"Well, Rush, global warming."
No, I don't think so. Because global warming, if you look at any of these wackos who predict it, global warming, they talk about the polar ice caps melting. That's where they talk about the warming take place, and what would that do? That would send cooler water south, and this is what the hurricane experts are saying. Global warming would actually reduce the incidence of hurricanes, because it would have -- if it actually happened as these wackos say -- there would be a general cooling in the equatorial regions of the planet of water. We're just in a cycle. We are in a cycle where these have happened before. We're in a sunspot cycle (story). The sun's activity may be a little bit more robust than usual. We can't stop that, either. We just have to accept that these things happen, but this incessant desire to blame ourselves on the part of the left, it's always the Blame-America-First Crowd, the blame the capitalists, blame progress, blame technological advancement. "We are the ones to blame for this." Bush is responsible for it because of the war in Iraq, Bush didn't care about Kyoto? It's absurd. It's all patently false, and yet where is the absurdity reported as fact front and center? On NBC. I'm telling you there's no difference between MoveOn.org, George Soros' groups, and the mainstream media in America today.
END TRANSCRIPT
Read the Articles...
(New Scientist: Most scientific papers are probably wrong)
(NY Times: Storms Vary With Cycles, Experts Say)
(Expatica: US pollution partly to blame for Katrina: German minister)
(HP: Messing with Mother Nature - Katrina vanden Heuvel)
(UK Guardian: Republicans accused of witch-hunt against climate change scientists)
(UK Guardian: Climate change sceptics bet $10,000 on cooler world)
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Most published scientific research papers are wrong, according to a new analysis. Assuming that the new paper is itself correct, problems with experimental and statistical methods mean that there is less than a 50% chance that the results of any randomly chosen scientific paper are true
He does not explain that this report is basically about epidimiology and related studies, not highly quantitative papers like those produce in chemistry and physics for example. In my experinces with Rush, he can sometimes spot junk science, other times he just doesn't know what he is talking about and takes something that sounds like junk science and then derides it as such. it amy be entertaining and appeal to basic common sense, but that doesn't make his take on things always right.
Regarding your other points, they are of a highly philosophical nature. And I do agree that there are fundamental limitations on science and I referenced those in my previous post. Science assumes logic applies, science assumes an orderliness (i.e. predicatbility) in the universe and assumes measureability. Those are the basic axioms. This approach, coupled with experimentation, has provided a powerful learning tool for humanity, more powerful than anything else to date. in my own words, if it can interact with the universe it can be measured. If it can be measured, it can be understood.
If you are looking for an absolute Truth, don't look to science, it is only a tool that extracts fact, not truth.