Falsification is a real thing

In #religion

In a response video with Than Christopoulos, Than says at 35:10 :

"I have a video titled "Do Christians make excuses for their faith" [...] why this constant complaint from internet atheists about post hoc rationalizations is really bad and them just not understanding epistemology and philosophy of science."

In that video, Than makes use of the Duhem-Quine thesis, which is

The Duhem–Quine thesis argues that no scientific hypothesis is by itself capable of making predictions.3 Instead, deriving predictions from the hypothesis typically requires background assumptions that several other hypotheses are correct — that an experiment works as predicted, or that previous scientific theory is accurate.

Than then contrasts it with Falsifiability ,

A theory or hypothesis is falsifiable if it can be logically contradicted by an empirical test.

The example given comes from the development of our understanding of blackbody radiation. Classical physics predicts an object radiating at a particular temperature emits an infinite amount of energy -- clearly a bad prediction. Max Plank solves this problem by assuming energy comes in discrete bundles so the sum across all wavelengths is finite.

Than interprets this example as,

the significance of this example lies in the fact that rather than rejecting the entire classical physics framework instead physicist introduced a new auxiliary assumption that led to a paradigm shift in our understanding of the fundamental nature of energy and matter this example demonstrates the flexibility of scientific theories to adapt and incorporate new insights even when faced with conflicting evidence by examining the historical context in the specific scientific advancements related to black body radiation we gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of how the Duhem-Quine thesis challenges the simplistic view of falsificationism rather than outright falsifying classical physics the observed discrepancies prompted the development of new auxiliary assumptions and theoretical Frameworks leading to a more comprehensive understanding of the physical phenomena involved [emphasis mine -- bb]

So essentially, Than seems to think that Karl Popper and the entire idea of falsification must entail that a complex theory with multiple components (for example, classical physics which includes Newton's Laws. Maxwell's Laws, and all of the consequences of those) would be discarded at a single counter example from experiment. This is such a ludicrous strawman that I find it hard to believe this is how Than thinks scientists act at all.

Although the standard "Null Hypothesis Significance Testing" procedure would have you believe otherwise, scientists do not reject entire theories until there is an actual replacement which is superior. So this is not what is meant by falsification, which makes the entire criticism meaningless -- so why make it?

The effect of Than's argument is to take something like his philosophical positions which make no predictions, are often not falsifiable, and imply that they are scientific because the Duhem-Quine thesis says that things are complicated and that is how science works. The argument is trying to support a get-out-of-jail-free card for theories making no testable claims by appealing to complexity. The only positive quality of these explanations that Than states is internal consistency, which is the bare minimum of any explanation and not the standard we have in science.

Yes, when a theory fails to make a correct prediction it can be one of many things that is the culprit. It could be the assumptions, the background information, the experiment itself, the mathematics, etc... This is why theories will often go through phases of change. The first step is often to make a small modification for the new data like the epicycles added to the Ptolemaic solar system model. However, in parallel people will look for wholesale alternatives, like the Copernican model. Internal consistency is the minimum goal, but in all of these cases it is prediction which makes the final decision.

The details of Mercury's orbit were known from the mid 1800s and many different solutions were proposed. Each solution, which may have solved the orbit problem, predicted other observations which were not verified. Notice that internal consistency was the first and minimum step, but that prediction is the driving force for determining whether a theory is actually correct. Than and his theology don't have that.