Since I publicly criticize religion and tout science, I’m subject to all manner of rebukes from believers. I don’t often post these, but they’re often of the “science is just like faith” ilk. Here’s one that just arrived (I’ve left the person’s name out, but feel free to respond as if you were addressing him/her):
Dear Dr. Coyne,
I happened to incidentally come across reference to your book “Faith vs Fact: why science and religion are incompatible”. I have seen this kind of argument go around for a number of decades. While many may feel this way, I for one do not. I have my religious faith and I do not have any incompatibility with my science (I have made fairly substantial contributions to the science of evolution over the years for example). I was interested to see the assertion on the website (http://jerrycoyne.uchicago.edu/Faith-vs-Fact.html) that “religion — including faith, dogma, and revelation — leads to incorrect, untestable, or conflicting conclusions.” Hmm, interesting. I could have said exactly the same about some endeavors on the behalf of current evolutionary theory too. I have found over the decades that the practice of science often has the same shortcomings that are attributed to religion, including bigotry and suppression. In the science of evolution I have seen how the practice of science can often fall short of “reason and empirical study”. None of this will make any difference to you I am sure, as we are both well on the way in our respective paths of exploration and it is good that there is diversity of opinion on these matters.Sincerely,[Name redacted]
Now in Faith versus Fact, I debunk the notion that science itself produces bigotry and suppression. Insofar as those practices occur among scientists, I argue, it comes from the people themselves—not the discipline—acting badly. So why can’t we likewise claim that when religion produces bigotry and suppression, it’s also the result of bad people practicing a value-neutral faith?
The response is that inherent in some religions—but not in science—are three features that can enhance bad behavior: the connection of faith with a moral code, the notion that you (but not adherents to other faiths) have absolute truths—and not the provisional truths of science—and the ideas of eternal reward and punishment. Those three features can promote divisiveness, bigotry, and missionizing: the desire to impose your beliefs on others for their own good (viz., Republican theocracy in America). Missionizing may be done with good intentions, but of course it’s annoying and ultimately dysfunctional, not to mention the fact that it warps, lies to, and brainwashes children, inhibiting them from asking questions.
But that aside, what bothers me was the claim by this person—and he/she is a scientist—that science falls down at least as much as religion in ascertaining what is true, or so I inferred from this bit:
“religion — including faith, dogma, and revelation — leads to incorrect, untestable, or conflicting conclusions.” Hmm, interesting. I could have said exactly the same about some endeavors on the behalf of current evolutionary theory too. I have found over the decades that the practice of science often has the same shortcomings that are attributed to religion.
- Life on earth began somewhere between 3.8 and 3.5 billion years ago.
- Mammals evolved gradually from reptiles
- The closest living species to humans are the two species of chimpanzees
- The legs of tetrapods evolved from bony fins of fishes
- Whales evolved from land mammals (artiodactyls) beginning about 50 million years ago, and the rear limbs gradually disappeared.
- All living species have a single common ancestor, so that there was only one origin of “life” that produced the species living now
I could go on and on—my book WEIT is full of such things. And if you expand the realm into “truths” uncovered by science, the realm of such things is unlimited. A benzene molecule has six carbon atoms, the Universe is about 13.8 billion years old, light travels at a constant speed in a vacuum, and so on.
Yes, of course scientists have been wrong: think of things like static continents, cold fusion, and the notion that the hereditary molecule was a protein (or, as Linus Pauling thought, a DNA triple helix). But, unlike religion, science gets a lot of things right. If it didn’t, we’d still be living in the Middle Ages, disease-ridden creatures without technology. So I challenged the person who wrote me a letter to send me a list of ten things about the cosmos that religious intuition got right. How many gods are there? Was Jesus the divine son of God? How does God want us to treat unbelievers and apostates? Is it immoral to get blood transfusions? Does god want women to be priests? Religions disagree on fundamental questions like this, and they’ll never resolve them. Religion makes no progress in understanding the universe, despite the fact that an important function of religion is to discern truth. What good would Christian belief be if Jesus wasn’t the son of God who was crucified and resurrected.
Although liberal religionists claim that “my religion isn’t about truth,” that’s generally a lie. For if you don’t accept the epistemic claims of your faith: that there is a god, Jesus was divine, Muhammad was a prophet to whom the Qur’an was dictated, and so on, what reason have you to practice the rituals and ethics of your faith?
I could go on, but this misguided person doesn’t deserve more of my time. Respond below if you wish. I just have one more statement, regarding this person’s claim:
it is good that there is diversity of opinion on these matters.
My answer is “no there isn’t.” There’s no more value in diversity of opinion about this than there is in claims about the shape of the earth or the presence of alien abductions. Show me evidence for a god and then we’ll talk.
Note replicated paragraph. )”As happens so often…”)
Nothing new to add really. Science does get hit with fashions and fads like anything else, and goes off in wrong directions, ask a physicist about the aether, for example. However it will eventually self correct. The real difference from my position is that an ugly fact beats a beautiful hypothesis on any given day. And ultimately we build our ideas from observations, rather than cherry picking “facts” to fit the conclusion. My real problem with religion (at least one of my real problems) is that it not only provides no answers, it doesn’t even ask decent questions. That surely should separate the two world views.
One only needs to go back a couple of years to the apparent finding that neutrinos traveled faster then photons. This created quite a brouhaha at the time with the researchers pleading with the physics community to find out what they were doing wrong as they really didn’t believe the result. In due time, the researcher themselves discovered the problem which involved the electronics of the detection system. A textbook example of the self-correcting nature of science.
Tim Minchin’s Storm says it perfectly:
And to me that’s really the point. Yes, science gets it wrong sometimes, but when the error is discovered, science is adjusted.
We just saw that again yesterday with Matthew’s post about Neanderthal DNA.
Even when religion admits it got it wrong, like with slavery, they either make some excuse about “different times” (surely it was still the same God?) or deny slavery ever existed in their religion (Qur’an).
If a researcher introduces bias or predetermined conclusions in their work, then it’s not science. That seems pretty simple to me.
On the subject of missionizing, a lovely day in Centennial Park in Nashville yesterday was spoiled by a preacher with a loudspeaker, loud enough to be heard across the entire park. All I could think about was what arrogance it took for someone to do that.
One of the upsides of leaving Nashville for Chicagoland is the absence of preachers (and not being regularly told that I’m headed for hell). One of the downsides is the lack of beautiful days in Jan (or Feb, March, or April come to that – even May was iffy last year)
I’d take bad weather over missionizing any day.
Here in the Northwest, religion is less conspicuous than many areas of the US, and for that I am grateful.
One of the advantages to living in Canada is that we have 6 or 7 months where outdoor oration isn’t practical, or at least time limited. ;<)
I propose we atheists believe in the god ENFORCER. The ENFORCER makes sure all mutations are random and the good and bad happens to people following physical laws. Even when some pray to the ENFORCER to break the laws,the ENFORCER knows best.
When people say that all of existence, particularly something gorgeous like a beautiful sunset, is evidence for God’s existence, I usually respond with this: flesh-eating bacteria.
Awareness and admiration of beauty in the universe must serve some evolutionary purpose.
It certainly floods my corporeal being with happiness-making substances.
As to flesh-eating bacteria and other such life forms, perhaps they have their own flesh-eating bacteria god that makes them eat our flesh. Conflicting gods with conflicting purposes. Man, the story-teller, has always been able to come up with explanations for disparate perceptions in attempting to make sense of their surroundings. There are almost as many stories about gods as there are people, with even more variability of beliefs within separate belief systems by the believers.
What do religious believers think about life forms that require symbiotic relationships to survive, like humans and bacteria, for example? We need them. They need us. Sometimes we don’t get along well together and create havoc, illness and death.
« Sometimes we don’t get along well together and create havoc, illness and death. »
What, us and religious believers?! 😜
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Never!
Beautiful sunsets in parts of New York state were due to pollution spewed outin Buffalo.
Sub
I suppose the problem for your correspondent is that, like most of us, he’s been brought up with a tacit understanding that religion and science are compatible. Until recently, the dawning of the age of the ‘new atheists’ if you like, there wasn’t really a consolidated and comprehensive challenge to religion. Now even the best apologists are struggling to deal with the relentless attacks from reason that had previously been fairly isolated, and largely deferential to religion.
Now the game’s moved on. Not only is reason exposing the silliness of much religious belief, it’s also challenging the cherished notion that religion and science are comfortable bedfellows. To people who are only just coming to terms with the realisation that their religious views are open to challenge, it’s perhaps a bridge too far to be told that actually there is no overlap between religion and science. They conflict in almost every way, but they can’t concede it without effectively reneging on everything they’ve been brought up to believe.
Actually there have been older challenges. Paul Kurtz’s founding of Prometheus Books, PSICOP and CODESH (direct ancestor of CFI) was beating the drum for years before some WEIT regulars were even born. Robert Ingersoll’s oratory was hugely popular in the mid-19th century, for example. There have been eras when the US was far more open to the concept of freethought.
He wrote:
I happened to incidentally come across reference to your book “Faith vs Fact: why science and religion are incompatible”.
It sounds to me like he didn’t actually read the book. If so, he’s giving you reasons for his position on the question while completely ignoring yours.
Good point. If he’d actually read the book he probably would have said so.
Sounds like he only read the subtitle.
Science is a unifying process. Faith is a divisive process. Once science establishes a “fact,” all scientists accept it and they use it as the basis for growing further knowledge of the universe. The grossest weakness of religion is its utter nebulousness. The so-called religious scriptures are so ambiguous as to leave everything up to the biases and agendas of the interpreters, leading not to a cohesive view (as does science), but to an ever splintering of views. Thus, the Church of England can be established so a monarch can get a divorce. And thus someone can convince themselves that science is no better than faith.
A point worth making more than once.
(Although once is good, too. 🙂 )
Also known as the infamous “I know you are but what am I?” defense.
Yes, it is a particularly sophisticated argument.
(For clarity’s sake, my comment was a gentle joke about the fact that the quoted paragraph appeared twice in the original version of this post.)
I have a challenge for this writer: Name one uncontested fact, or even fact claim, upon which all religions agree and was discovered via methods inaccessible to science. Pointing out the conflict in science, which is what drives its progress, while ignoring the mountains of uncontested, well-verified information is simply missing the point that religion has nouncontested, well-verified claims. That even includes the existence of god(s).
That should be “no uncontested” obviously.
Uncontested universal fact claim: “God is important.”
I’d also add in “God exists,” but there are some rather odd theists on the fringe who seem to think there’s either a logical contradiction with that, or it’s incoherent. But, God is still important.
I think those go out the window as well as soon as you bring Eastern religions in; e.g. Buddhism, which is nontheistic.
No, I think even Eastern religions place their particular version of God in a very important place, one worthy of a lifetime of study/practice/experience/contemplation. Since most of the people I know are involved in some Eastern-derivative of “spirituality” this variation of theism is actually the first one I usually think of.
But then I also argue that “religions” which are completely devoid of a High Supernaturalism (regardless of whether or not they actually call it “God”) are more appropriately classified as “life philosophies.” Otherwise, secular humanism is a religion.
My brother teaches a non-theistic form of Zen and iirc he agrees it’s not a religion (unless someone wants to call it one, in which case whatever, it’s not important.)
I suppose if you want to call nontheistic religions philosophy instead (although I think the terms are often used interchangeably), then we’re including the importance of gods by definition. But, I think there are nontheistic religions out there that have enough woo involved to put them in the same category as religion.
However, for the sake of discussion, set those aside for the moment. What about polytheistic religions? What does the phrase “God is important” mean to them? Surely, the gods are important and some will have more importance than others. But, I think we’re stretching the statement to the point of breaking if we say there is agreement on the statement “God is important” between a Hindu and a conservative evangelical. The disagreement would start with defining “God” and only go downhill from there.
Above I used the term “High Supernaturalism” to include ideas about reality which are infused with “woo” — special causations and manners of responding (like karma) which are more mindlike than indifferent (like gravity.) Whether chronic woo-infusion is then called “God” or not seems to be a matter of taste and custom. If we’re dealing objectively with the underlying concepts — which we atheists are, or trying to — then its easy to make a case that they go together.
The definition of what counts as “God” is pretty broad … but God or the gods are invariably important in some way or they wouldn’t be called gods by their believers or anyone else. I do think that’s a small but critical thing, a starting base of what’s shared in common.
Too easy.
* Science prioritizes evidence over assumptions.
* Religion prioritizes assumptions over evidence.
QED: They are incompatible.
Yep. My version of the same thought is less succinct.
Science: assured facts support provisionally selected conclusions; begins in confusion, ends in consensus.
Religion: assured conclusions supported by provisionally selected facts; begins with certainty, ends in schism.
Or, as the classic meme has it, “Science is questions that may never be answered; religion is answers that may never be questioned.”
Ooh. I like that.
Or your very own (I’m paraphrasing here), “religion is about pretending; science is about trying your hardest not to pretend.”
(Please correct me with your better wording.)
I think that’s it verbatim.
Oh, super, then, I’ve got it down! 🙂
E x a c t l y what I have wondered for just decades: “For if you don’t accept the epistemic claims of your faith[, then] what reason have you to practice the rituals and ethics of your faith?”
Exactly. Cuz are you, if not so – practicing these, then, are you not a hypocrite ?
And since you so are, then why do you like being that: a hypocrite ?
When not being one — when not being a hypocrite — is so, so easy: just take the evidence of stuffs Over All The World and Over All of Time and be done with hypocrisy / be good with that evidence: ie, with science ? !
Blue
Hello [Name redacted],
Step over the side of a pool deck into the pool as if you are going to continue walking. Faith is something that makes you believe you can walk on water. Science is knowing you will fall into the water.
Faith has nothing to do with any force carriers the universe has to offer…electromagnetic or gravitational. This is a fact. If it were not then prayers would guide electrons to their destinies just as the laws of physics do.
I don’t think the difference is that scientists know stuff and religious people believe stuff.
Scientists believe stuff provisionally on the grounds that their theories provide the best current explanation of the available evidence but they seek to test those beliefs through experiment. If experimental or other evidence shows a particular theory to be incorrect that is not a disaster for science but actually another step forward as we have eliminated an error.
Religious belief is quite different, being based not on physical evidence but on handed down doctrine which believers do not seek to test or disprove. If evidence comes to light that is inconsistent with religious beliefs it is indeed a disaster for the religious. As a result the evidence is either denied altogether or explained away by un-testable “get out of jail free” arguments: “God put fossils into the world at the time of creation to test our faith”, “God created stars more than 4,000 light years away from the Earth with the light beam already stretching all the way from the star to Earth” etc, etc. The belief itself is unaltered by the evidence.
Speaking of Faith VS Fact…
Edward Feser is on the attack again again.
His current blog posts concern his recent published (on-line) review of Faith VS Fact and another blog post with some additional criticisms.
Not surprisingly, I’ve found his criticism to contain some uncharitable readings, straw-men/mischaracterisation, and avoidance of relevant points made in Jerry’s book. I entered his most recent comments section to point out places where he has done so in his critique. I haven’t seen his response yet as I’m damned busy and don’t want to get sucked into more commenting if I can resist.
There are millions of people who work and publish in various areas of science, while also holding on to one faith or another. But to claim that they hold these views in harmony only works if they keep them in their respective domains and don’t think or explore too much. One or both practices must be constrained.
Sure, you could do research on the operations of the light reactions of photosynthesis while being a faithful attendant of the local Catholic church, but… What’s that? of The Z-scheme light reactions seen in cyanobacteria and in the chloroplasts of plants is replete with evidence for evolution. The chloroplasts are modified bacteria related to the cyanobacteria. Different lines of chloroplasts in algae and plants are fitted into a tree of ‘plastid’ evolution b/c they have their own bacteria-like DNA.
Also, the Z-scheme light reactions are evidently derived from two different light reaction systems, cobbled together by horizontal gene transfer into the ancestors of chloroplasts and the cyanobacteria.
Oops. [fingers in ears] Hamenahamenahamenahamena….
‘Bigotry’ and ‘suppression’ were code words used here to express for resentment that intelligent design ‘research’ is largely shut out from main-stream science journals. I have seen their publications in their own journals and I can say that their rejection was not wrong. If the facts do not support the claims, the paper is going to be sent back. Also if the experiments are done exceptionally badly (and I have seen doozies), then the paper will be sent back. If the math is wrong, the paper gets sent back.
It is easy to make it sound to the faithful that scientists are acting like a good ‘ol boy network, oppressing research that bucks the paradigms and questions the status of elite scientists. But the truth is that the the ID ‘science’ is really really really bad.
with a claim like this “I have my religious faith and I do not have any incompatibility with my science (I have made fairly substantial contributions to the science of evolution over the years for example).”
I think the name of the writer should be revealed, to see if he is a liar or not.
This type of theist seems to realize his religion is garbage, but needs to claim that other things are in order not to feel so stupid in following the religion e.g. “you aren’t any better than me”.
I need oxygen! no I don’t I’ve got religion. I need oxygen! no I don’t I’ve got religion. on and on and on and on….
Wait a minute!
I’m still alive! isn’t religion wonderful.
The letter writer makes assertions without any evidence, therefore it can be dismissed just as easily. It’s a shame that someone who is supposed to be a scientist acts this way.
“…someone who is supposed to be a scientist acts this way.”
Or perhaps pretends to be a scientist…
“I have my religious faith and I do not have any incompatibility with my science (I have made fairly substantial contributions to the science of evolution over the years for example).”
While it could happen it seems it would take a miracle for a religionist to not infuse science with his magic. The openly religious biologists I know of are Miller and Collins, and both have confessed to believe biology isn’t entirely a natural process but creationistically affected by magic actions now and then.
Most often we see clumsy attempts to have their cake and eating it too. They may fool themselves but they won’t fool other observers.
Dear (name redacted),
The conflict invariably comes in when you examine religious beliefs USING your scientific mindset. Approach the existence of God as a hypothesis.
This is a real problem. Either you end up making a bad argument which won’t meet critical standards (“the Big Bang/miracles/NDE’s/etc. proves God”) … or you will be forced to shift to the defensive by focusing on why religious fact claims are not like any other fact claims. They’re like values or virtues. Or poetry, beauty, emotions. They’re like loving puppies or being strong. Or perhaps it’s God which is so different, so unique that we treat it like we’re talking about public and self-evident truths or private and personal experiences.
Anything but honestly and humbly considering the possibility that your hypothesis might be mistaken… and following through on that. That’s the conflict.
“I have my religious faith and I do not have any incompatibility with my science (I have made fairly substantial contributions to the science of evolution over the years for example).”
This isn’t hard. It’s called compartmentalization. It’s what religious people with unsubstantiated and dopey ideas must do to make it through the day and maintain a job and career. No wonder here.
Compartimentalization makes people act dopey. It’s like active subversion of reality.
Unusually for his/her ilk this one can spell!
And he was, in fact, entirely civil and polite.
More so than some of the comments here, I have to say.
cr
💉
I thought you’d been warned about that 7% solution, Ant.
I only indulge when I’m in one of my homes; specifically, my croft.
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😀 😀
Science sometimes creates controversies which are settled by evidence. Religions sometimes create heresies which are settled by schisms–QED
Or war; consider the current religious war between Shiites and Sunnis in the Middle East.
“Religions sometimes create heresies which are settled by schisms”
or killing the heretic…
I wish you hadn’t redacted his name, but since you know it, has he actually made contributions to the science of evolution?
I suspect the writer has been mentioned on this blog recently.
Science comes from the Latin “scientia” meaning knowledge which is by definition quite different from faith.
Even Blaise Pascal with his horrid wager knew faith dealt in uncertainties, as did William James with his more humane version of same. They both knew religious faith acts at a lower level of persuasion than scientific inquiry.
Re: “including bigotry and suppression”- the only case I can think of science promoting bigotry is the pseudo-scientific racialist theories popular in the 19th and early 20th century. Their demise has been well-discussed by Stephen Jay Gould in his terrific book “The Mismeasure of Man”
I don’t think it is true to describe this as a case of science promoting bigotry. Rather it was the other way about – bigotry infected scientific process and led people to reach incorrect conclusions that were consistent with their own biases and beliefs. The key point, surely, is that the scientific method ultimately revealed the flawed reasoning and false conclusions that had been reached and corrected them.
Science is practiced by human beings so inevitably its practitioners are potentially vulnerable to a variety of things that can cloud their judgement and affect their reasoning including ambition, jealousy, deference to authority, prejudice, political (even religious, sometimes!) views, and so on. As a result work is sometimes carried out and published that is wrong. However, the scientific method is robust and sooner or later such flawed results are exposed. That is not the case with theological reasoning.
As to whether the mis-measurement of the IQ of peoples from different racial backgrounds is the only case of bigotry infecting science, I rather doubt that is true. One rather different example that springs to mind is the work of Lysenko. His work was, for political reasons, championed in Soviet Russia despite being utterly wrong. Academic opponents of his theories were denounced as unpatriotic and anti-marxist and imprisoned or worse. Soviet science and agriculture were set-back for decades as a result.
> There’s no more value in diversity of
> opinion about this than there is in claims
> about the shape of the earth or the
> presence of alien abductions.
That’s a dangerous position Jerry.
As John Stuart Mill argued: “However unwillingly a person who has a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration that however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.”
In other words, the very fact that you hold “science is superior to religion” to be true is why you should value diverse opinion. In a very practical way, scientific “truth” Just Is the extent to which we have tried (how often, how rigorously, by how many different people, etc) and failed to *falsify* a position.
Note: I’m not at all saying that any particular person need spend any amount of time on going back over previously offered diverse viewpoints. But as a general principle, it is harmful to science itself to take your “no value in diversity” position. We do not want to relegate scientific truths to being dead dogma.
Scientific truth becomes dead dogma when it is overtaken by new learning validated by observation, experiment, or calculation, then published and subjected to peer review.
I have the same question as tychabrahe. Hard to believe s/he has made significant contributions in evolutionary biology, judging from subsequent denigration of modern evolutionary theory.
“I have found over the decades that the practice of science often has the same shortcomings that are attributed to religion, including bigotry and suppression.”
[name redacted] is mostly correct in this, in that both scientific discovery and religion have a peer review process. Scientific discovery is often suppressed by political ideology, religious chauvinism, or the status quo of the scientific community. In general, however, good science wins through in the end. Religion too, has a peer review system, in which the scientist is subjected to ridicule, torture, or burning at the stake. Once in a while, however, a peer review succeeds. This often results in a completely new religion being born, which subscribes to a completely new system of un-provable myths.
Accommodationists try to mix oil and water, but in most cases, limit themselves to areas of knowledge where science can honestly say: “We don’t know yet.”
Science provides a coherent explanation of how the universe operates. Religion provides an incoherent collection of excuses for how they want the universe to operate (there are more than 45,000 differing Christian sects alone!) and actually explains nothing.
Rational people recognize that “to explain” is to render unknowns in terms of knowns. Supernatural “Explanations” get this exactly backwards by trying to “explain” unknowns, and even knowns, in terms of greater unknowns. This is why Supernatural “Explanation” is easily recognized as an oxymoron.
The “faith in science” is just like “faith in religion” ploy is commonly used by religious obscurantists. One does not need faith to accept the results of physics, chemistry, astronomy, or any other branch of science. Science is testable and as a result falsifiable. Religious claims, to the degree that they are testable, have always failed, and most often they are specifically phrased to make them unfalsifiable.
To the religionist unfalsifiableness means that it must be true, while rational people recognize that the several hundreds of thousands of conflicting religions with orders of magnitude more unfalsifiable claims are quite worthless for understanding how the universe operates. (As a trivial example, the Catholic church still believes in Adam and Eve and demonic possession.)
Redacted claimed: “I have made fairly substantial contributions to the science of evolution over the years for example”
Questionable claims made without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. The utter lack of critical thinking in “redacted”s email makes “redacted”s claims quite questionable.
Notes:
Hebrews 11:1:
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” KJV. Note the misuse of the word “evidence”.
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” NAS.
Etc. for other versions.
In stark contrast, science is based on the observable.
As an ordinary person, I have to say that cutting edge science these days does require a certain amount of faith that the scientists are getting it right. Hypotheses about the origin of the universe, multiverses, leave us in nothing but wonder about how scientists arrived at those conclusions. Quantum particle physics, string theory, and modern genetics are beyond the ken of almost everyone except those working in the field. All we can do is hope that the processes are self correcting, and for the most part, they are.
It’s easy to see how skepticism can form, because it’s not human nature to trust things we don’t know, so yes, we ordinary folk have to have faith in the process, and in the knowledge uncovered. From there, it becomes a coin toss whether to have faith in science, or faith in God.
I think you confuse “confidence” with “faith”. We “ordinary folk” can have confidence in (for example) quantum physics because we see the consequences of that discipline every time we use a GPS device. If we take the time we, too, can study the details and become more technically aware. More important, the fact that scientific knowledge tends to converge over time demonstrates that it is, in fact, self correcting. Religion is the opposite since it has nothing but faith for support. As a result, it continually diverges with tens of thousands of Christian sects left to bicker about which one has god’s rule set correct. To say nothing of non-Christians.
Well, snap!
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Faith: [feyth]
noun
1. confidence or trust in a person or thing:
faith in another’s ability.
2. belief that is not based on proof:
He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.
3. belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion:
the firm faith of the Pilgrims.
Faith = confidence. When we turn on our mobile device that contains millions of quantum based transistors, it’s not an act of faith. We just don’t think about it. It’s when we get into the realm of things we can’t see, feel, or hear that we need to have faith in our scientists to get it right. There is no disconnect between a scientist telling me here be bosons, and the village priest telling me there is a God that loves me and has my best interests at heart.
Logic tells me that I believe the scientists, even if I have no understanding of how they got there. My long experience with life, however, has taught me that the vast majority of souls on this Earth are anything but logical.
I have a dictionary, too.
You’re using two different versions of the word “faith” and consequently muddying the water.
The third definition (and second to a lesser extent) are what apply to religion.
Arguing that “ordinary people” need faith in science just like they have faith in religion is just wrong. It is a form of moving the goalposts because you aren’t using the same definition.
If we say “faith = confidence”, fine. Then I have “faith” in science and no faith at all in religion. And nobody should, for obvious reasons.
I think that confidence comes from an aspect of science, contrasting with (religious) faith, that PCC(E) mentioned in his book, that multiple independent scientists converge on the same answers, even if we dont quite understand /how/.
Clearly, cutting edge science still has unresolved questions (string theory vs. its competitors), but we know that those questions are going to be resolved by testing them against reality, rather than through revelation, and even the most ardent string theorists, for example, will admit that future experiments might prove them wrong.
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Speaking of which, why isn’t String Theory “String Hypothesis?”
They snuck that one in before the judges noticed.
Because physicists.
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Sorta takes the punch out of our argument about the difference between a [James Earl Jones voice] “Scientific Theory” v. your common old garden-variety types.
Thank you, physicists!