Are there questions science can never answer?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Are there questions science can never answer?". Your opponent's style: Maya Angelou

I think there are questions science can't answer

You're smuggling in vagueness to avoid the real issue: which questions? "Can't answer" because they're logically incoherent, or because we lack current tools? Those are completely different claims. Name one question where science is *permanently* barred, not just temporarily stuck.

God,the afterlife and multiverses

Wrong move. Those aren't unanswerable, they're *unfalsifiable* yet—which is a problem for your position, not mine. Science advances by testing predictions. If God, afterlife, or multiverses left zero detectable traces, why call them questions at all rather than pure speculation?

So science can't answer if the afterlife exists,but there is nothing that truly prevents it from existing,if a planet full of unicorns exist on a planet millions of light years away from here,the planet exists weather science can prove it or not

You've just destroyed your own argument. If unmeasurable things "exist whether science proves it or not," then science isn't failing—your definition of existence is useless. A unicorn planet with zero causal effect on anything is indistinguishable from non-existence. Why pretend the question matters if the answer changes nothing?

You're confusing "we can't measure it" with "it doesn't matter." A unicorn planet millions of light-years away exists or doesn't exist—that's a real fact about reality, period. Science can't answer it because the universe is too vast. That's exactly my point: there are true questions about what exists that science is permanently barred from answering. Your definition doesn't make them disappear.

You're equivocating between two different problems. A unicorn planet existing in an unreachable corner of space isn't an unanswerable question about reality—it's a question science *can* answer in principle but can't practically access yet. That's limitation, not permanent bars. The real test: name something that's logically possible but science is *fundamentally* forbidden from ever investigating, not just currently unable to reach.

You're moving the goalposts. You just admitted science *can* answer the unicorn planet question "in principle"—but principle means nothing when the universe is literally too big. That's a permanent bar, not a practical limitation. Science can't investigate what it can never reach or observe, ever. You're trying to save your position by redefining "answerable" as "theoretically possible someday," but that's not how reality works. If science is forever blocked from investigating something, it can't answer it. Period.

You're hiding behind semantic games. "Permanently barred" means the laws of physics forbid investigation, not that distance is inconvenient. Light from that unicorn planet *reaches Earth right now*—we could theoretically detect it if we had infinite resources and time. Science isn't blocked, your wallet is. That's your problem, not science's. So what's an example where the physics itself rules out investigation, not just the scale?

You're asking me to accept an impossible standard. "Infinite resources and time" isn't a loophole—it's an admission science can't answer it in *reality*. The universe has a finite history. Light from distant regions never reaches us. That's physics, not my wallet. You keep saying "in principle" because you know science fails in practice, which is exactly my point. Questions about what exists beyond our causal horizon are real questions with real answers, and science is permanently barred from reaching them. That's a limit on science, not semantics.

You've conceded the game. If science can answer questions "in principle" but reality prevents it, you're not proving science has limits—you're proving the *universe* does. Science's job is explaining what's knowable, not apologizing for cosmic geometry. The causal horizon isn't a flaw in science, it's a feature of physics. So either science is unlimited within what's causally accessible, or you're just complaining that infinity is big. Which is it?