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Is faith the backbone of Science?

leibowde84

Veteran Member
Is faith the backbone of Science?
Please

Regards
No. Science uses the scientific method of repeated experimentation and observation to battle any use of faith. When a "scientific theory" is presented, scientists scramble to do their best to disprove it.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
Of course, faith (as differentiated from inductive reasoning) is not the backbone of science.
But scientists employ it at times (often to their detriment).
 

Jumi

Well-Known Member
No. Repeatable results, correct predictions based on observations are the backbone.
 

Politesse

Amor Vincit Omnia
The backbone of science is inference from empirical observations, within the context of justified uniformitarian assumptions. Faith is required at a certain level, as science is only valid if and when the above logical conclusion is also valid, and it cannot test itself very easily in this sense. But it is not the backbone of science, as faith could take one in any direction, and science describes a very particular set of ideas that seem to cohere with the observed universe very consistently. It imposes rules on its own conclusions, rather than on the minds of its adherents, and for this I will always love it.

Any working scientist will observe that science does not tell you what is "true", because a declaration of truth is always a declaration of faith; to say that something is certainly true is to say that it will continue to be true even if contradictory evidence later surfaces to prove otherwise. But science can certainly tell you when something is false, or when your assumptions have led you into a corner where empirical evidence could not have led you. And this is an irreplaceable boon in the always-shifting and uncertain sands of human ideas.
 
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Politesse

Amor Vincit Omnia
Not sure I agree with that, Columbus. Like faith, skepticism is a weapon that can be wielded with or without any scientific validity whatsoever. I think the method itself must be considered science's backbone (an objective matter), not any particular attitude toward the world (a subjective matter).
 

icehorse

......unaffiliated...... anti-dogmatist
Premium Member
At a philosophical level I might agree that faith is the backbone of science...

For example, scientists value: logic and reason and evidence and discovery. The moral relativist would say that there is no reason why we should value those things. For scientists it just "feels right" to value those things. But ultimately, those values are subjective. (They're my values too, fwiw, I simply acknowledge that it's a bit arbitrary for me to have them.)
 

Evangelicalhumanist

"Truth" isn't a thing...
Premium Member
Is faith the backbone of Science?
Please

Regards
A question that could only be asked by someone who has little idea of what science is, and how it works.

I've often been truly shocked, since I started visiting religious (and other "philosophical") web sites, at how very little science seems to have been taught to people in the world's schools systems. Nearly everything important in our world today is the result of science, and amazingly few people have any real understanding.

Hard to understand why we're failing so badly, really///
 

SomeRandom

Still learning to be wise
Staff member
Premium Member
A question that could only be asked by someone who has little idea of what science is, and how it works.

I've often been truly shocked, since I started visiting religious (and other "philosophical") web sites, at how very little science seems to have been taught to people in the world's schools systems. Nearly everything important in our world today is the result of science, and amazingly few people have any real understanding.

Hard to understand why we're failing so badly, really///
Hmm. I think some of that might have to do with the rise of the internet. Of course there are always going to be religious people against learning science (and even non religious people.) But there does seem to be this idea that because one can Google something, an expertise opinion is not more valid than that one Google search. I see it often with my peers, even though they're not dumb. They just tend to be more skeptical of expertise, which is fine to an extent. But when they just assume that because the information is so readily available they can become just as much an expert, well, yeah it becomes kind of a concern.

With regards to the OP, uhh, no. You fail science. Try again.
 

paarsurrey

Veteran Member
No. Science uses the scientific method of repeated experimentation and observation to battle any use of faith. When a "scientific theory" is presented, scientists scramble to do their best to disprove it.
"repeated experimentation and observation to battle any use of faith."

  1. Does repeated "experimentation and observation" make it immune from the errors or blunders?
  2. After how many experimentation the result understood/interpreted will be considered 100% correct?
  3. Has it ever happened that the result understood to be correct was later found to be erroneous?
  4. The word "repeated" shows that doubt was there in the very first place, and it was only out of faith that the exercise was continued. Science is, therefore, the fruit of faith.
  5. It is not a "battle" with faith, rather it is battle with doubt. Human conscience reject doubt, faith generates peace and progress .
So, it is faith and faith alone in the "experimentation and observation" that science, the scientists and the people dealing in science that science "works" and continues its endeavors. Please
Right? Please

Regards
 
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Jumi

Well-Known Member
Doubt is strength. How else are you going to verify if something works as predicted if you have no doubt? That's the only way to improve knowledge and that's how we have all this improvement in quality of life and technology. At no time have there been more people alive and as well fed with options to their lives as now.
 
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