>>>No scientific theory has ever been proven deductively. All use induction.<<< Inferential processes are irreducibly and integrally triadic. Unless and until a given dyadic cycling of abductive hypothesizing and deductive clarifying gets interrupted by inductive testing, all we can go on is logical consistency and evidential plausibility, which is very weak. The dyadic cycling, nevertheless, plays an indispensable role in discovery, although it can vary in degrees of epistemic virtue and normative impetus. No, rather, I was recognizing that we draw distinctions between generating and testing hypotheses, also between descriptive models (e.g. Standard Model) and interpretive heuristics (e.g. various Quantum Interpretations). So, on the leading edge of inquiry, in any field of study, our interpretations often remain hypothetically unfalsifiable, empirically unmeasurable, in other words, scientifically indemonstrable, and we cannot a priori say whether that's due to temporary methodological constraintsor some, in principle, ontological occulting, although, for the sake of inquiry, we assume the former. >>>What I was identifying is what I saw to bea virtually meaningless standard of proof in “metaphysically suggestive". It would be meaningless if one applied this standard by which to accept something as being true.<<< It's a normative justification, an equiprobability principle, which prescribes a living as if thus and such is the case when we are otherwise confronted with competing interpretations and no other way to adjudicate them. What's at stake is moreso what one intends to do, performatively, less so whether one has acquired explanatory adequacy, informatively. Identical jurors could find one innocent, criminally, but liable, civilly, without being irrational or incoherent, precisely due to different standards of proof. You have not demonstrated that my criteria for metaphysically suggestive are meaningless, but onlycontinue to assert same, I contend that, if you reject my criteria, you will do away with, just for a few examples among many, philosophy of mind, quantum interpretations and speculative cosmogony, not just philosophical theology. >>>But to accept something as true, I think we should at least have a standard of "a balance of probabilities". I am not sure theologians do this. Certainly natural theology seems to me to apply a lower standard.<<< Sometimes we act when evidentially challenged. St. Alphonsus Ligouri developed a moral doctrine called equiprobabilism, but it's principles certainly can be extrapolated to other normative justifications, for all practical purposes. Now, when it comes to primal and/or ultimate realities, with only logical consistency and evidential plausibility available, presently at least, interpretations thus compete. And because plausibility and abductive inference are so weak probabilistically, even the best interpretations willbe merely equiprobable. People can thus be within their epistemic rights to live as if (existential disjunction) a given interpretation is true, provisionally, even though the evidence isn't clear and convincing, even though the evidence hasn't been established beyond a reasonable doubt, even if other competent jurors disagree regarding the preponderance of the evidence, for, as the philosophical consensus maintains, a Scottish verdict has thus far been returned —- neither proved nor disproved, but --- not proved. natural theology, philosophical theology, religious epistemology, equiprobability principle, equiprobabilism, standards of proof, rules of evidence, burden of proof, existential disjunction, ignosticism, radical empiricism, logical positivism,