And there lies the key. Science is merely that which is presently known through the scientific method. It is a process and NOT ( as held in the popular misconception ) any particular piece of knowledge. As a process it is ongoing. Any explanation therefore MUST exist in the present. Your need to refer to future state of knowledge as something which we must consider in the present tells me that you are not interested in the state of scientific knowledge as it IS.

Wrong. My point is, that our present state of scientific knowledge should NOT be considered "absolutely correct," and that we should consider and study reported phenomena that may challenge what we consider scientific truth in the present era. This is because all history has shown that there are areas of the cosmos that we may not be able to detect at any given time until technology advances to the point where we can.

And further it tells me that whatever it may find in the future, when that future becomes, in turn, a present, you will still be refuting the validity of science as a method which allows rejection of any and all claims upon the credulity of the critical mind.

You read me totally wrong. I have never suggested that science is not valid as a method of critically evaluating the reality around us. Quite the contrary, in fact. I have simply argued that dogma of any sort should not be entered into the scientific method, particularly in the form of a priori assumptions based on a particular world view. I simply have no doubt that in the future, scientific methodology and instrumentation will improve to the point that phenomena we cannot yet pinpoint the nature of, but which shows evidence for having some sort of validity, can in fact be proven.

Sorry, I appreciate what it does and has really done too much to flee the present moment for a future in which any dream I might invent in my fantasies will be realized through magic science.

See, you seem to operate from the assumption that science will never, ever discover anything that refutes what is today considered "fact," or which evidence exists of but we cannot yet prove. You consider all such advancements as being "fantasy" or "magic." I'm sure that had we engaged in these arguments 15 years ago, you would have dismissed any possibility of 3-D printers as "fantasy" or "magic" because nothing like them existed outside of a few speculative novels or TV shows.

Its hardly knee-jerk to embrace a system which is built upon the strength that anything I hold dear in its present kewl findings may go the way of the various theories that lie upon the ash-heap of history.

I consider it knee-jerk to make assumptions that something "cannot be possible" based upon only what we know now, in the present. That is not what the system of scientific methodology is all about. We have many products and advances today that would have been considered "fantasy" and "magic" had you described them to a newsman in the late 19th century.

What is knee-jerk? Me keeping an open mind which allows the supportable claims to change? Or close-mindedly treating whatever I once understood to be true as if it must be true for all eternity because the evaluative standards must be deferred until a tomorrow which will never come ( but which will allow me to keep all my precious beliefs until they are "proven" in the "future?" )

Assuming we will never prove the existence of phenomena that we see signs of but cannot fully pinpoint today is just as bad as imagining a future where anything in particular will definitely exist. Scoffing at anything outside a specific world view rather than investigating multiple reports of said phenomena is not scientific, but rather political, to insure that science never looks into certain areas that might risk contradicting a certain type of dogma. The fact remains, all the history of the scientific method makes it clear that it improves as time passes, and that more phenomena can be discovered or pinpointed in one era that was possible in previous eras. For all the amazing things that Newton and Einstein discovered, subsequent scientific studies have built on it and even refuted some of it. The present is a very different place than even 100 years ago was, and it stands to reason that 100 years from now we will know and understand a lot more than we do today.

When you treat the unfalsifiable claim as if it is empirical ( and therefore contingent ) you demonstrate that you have no interest in standards of evidence or proofs that threaten to reveal that science is not some dream-validation scheme.

Claims are only intrinsically false if there can be no evidence for certain reported phenomena. When you scoff at reports that go against a certain world view with no interest in evaluating or researching such claims, then you display no interest in understanding the possibility of phenomena that may go against a specific, strict materialistic world view. The truth is, science does validate many things that were once considered dreams. Not wanting science to invent certain things or work out the specifics of certain phenomena is also based on a dream: One that what is possible never goes beyond what we see in front of us today, because it's more familiar and comfortable to us.

f we have any aspirations beyond the present moment, then we must have dreams of what will come.

Which you seemed to tell me that I shouldn't have.

But the only way to get there from here is to understand precisely where we are now, and how we got to this point.

And my point is, we didn't get to the point we're at now by assuming that everything we knew in the past was all we could ever possibly know, or that things that seemed utterly fantastic at one time (e.g., manned flight; manned space travel; instant global communication; television) could never be anything more than fanciful dreams.

If we allow our aspirations to interfere with our understanding then we will just be pipe-dreaming.

Our understanding should be that we do not have perfect understanding of the way every force in the universe works, guaranteed. This is why the scientific method never stands still, and always works towards new discoveries. If we scoff at reports of certain phenomena without investigating them, then we are clearly setting back the acquisition of what might be pertinent information about the universe.

And if we hope to get to a better future, then we must allow some sort of course-correcting mechanism that can reject the path we plotted when it is revealed to be based on unwarranted belief.

The thing is, belief is only unwarranted if no evidence whatsoever exists to suggest there may be some type of validity to it. Scoffing at multiple reports throughout human history that fail to conform to a specific way of looking at the world, and assuming off the bat that they are definitely not true for that reason, is a political form of "course-correcting," not a scientific form.