My original quite:
In philosophy, a statement is valid as long as it is logically sound. Its up to the scientists to show if the assumptions are reasonable or not, but the fact is, assumptions are unavoidable.
What you quoted:
In philosophy, a statement is valid as long as it is logically sound.
Incorrect. Validity and soundness are two different things. This is a perfectly valid argument:
P1: All horses are rockets.
P2: All rockets are mammals.
C: All horses are mammals.
It's valid because the conclusion follows naturally from the premises. But it is NOT sound, because both premises have to be true in order for the conclusion to be true. As it turns out, the conclusion IS true, but only by luck.
The Computer Science expression of this concept is Garbage In, Garbage Out. In order to test for soundness, you need to test for the accuracy of your premises. And the ONLY way to do that is through falsification.
Okay, I explained this rather poorly, but I'm not factually incorrect. I should have phrased is thus: "philosophers only concern themselves with the validity of the argument; they leave the determination of soundness of the assumptions up to the scientists." Honestly, this was the point I was getting at.
I'm not sitting through a 2-hour debate just for this. Give me a timecode. And again, as I already said, if he's talking about religion and not scientific theory, it's a bogus example.
Its related to religion, but he seems to be targeting his argument towards philosophy in general. Dawkins speaks at 00:32:19 and 01:03:19. It would, however, not be honest of me to omit that Dawkins is actually referencing a conversation between scientist Peter Atkins and Prince Philip, so I do not know what the full context of that conversation was or what else was said. It would be interesting to find out, though.
Also, I would welcome your opinion on Michio Kaku's contrastingly agnostic point of view. 01:07:34 & 01:34:45 (apologies for the short one's comments) He makes a very similar point that I've been trying to make all along.
The theists in the debate aren't worth seeing as they add very little philosophy and use emotional appeals and the pointless "revelation" defense.
I'd like to get back to your points on atomic theory and mathematical proofs, because they still don't address the issue I'm getting at, plus I there are other things about Dalton's original theory that need to be addressed that I feel support my case about the importance of metaphysics as part of the scientific process.