A Person Believes in Science by Faith if...

[KerimF]

False. Period.

You are conflating trustworthiness based upon proven track records, with religious faith. These are not the same things. Faith in the Divine, is based upon an intuition, despite a lack of immediate evidence to support it. That is stated as such in scripture. "The substance of things not seen, the evidence of things hoped for."

Not so with science. One does not approach science in this way, or at least should not. Rather with science you look at the data, the tests, you have others verify the tests, and then this increases the trustworthiness of it, it's reliability. "I trust that Joe knows what he is doing, because he always gets my car fixed and he has proven knowledge." That is not based upon trusting hope. That is based upon hard evidence.

Faith in God is based upon the heart, not reason. These are not comparable. And those who see God in the same way they see science, are mistaken about both.

Thank you for giving an example to confirm my point.
"I trust that Joe knows what he is doing, because he always gets my car fixed and he has proven knowledge."

Yes, Joe has proven knowledge to you because he used fixing your car. In other words, if Joe failed always in fixing John's car, our dear John cannot see that Joe has proven knowledge as you do.

By the way, I personally don't add an idea in my set of knowledge if it can't pass first my logical reasoning which is applied in all situations.
For example, this is how I discovered that Jesus has indeed the knowledge of the Will which is behind my existence and of the real world. It happens that, even before 2000 years, Jesus (real or a myth) knew already all what I discovered in the reality of the world (and of my deep nature, of course). This explains why I didn't present myself as Christian because a typical Christian is supposed to have faith in Jesus while I know Jesus based on reason not faith (as Joe has proven knowledge to you ).

 

[RestlessSoul]

It's called sarcasm, I'm sure you've heard if it

Lowest form of wit, by all accounts.


I still laughed though

 

[KerimF]

".. he cannot trust his own observations/experiences and logical reasoning more than of anyone else, .." Science uses many more precise instruments and these findings are then analyzed in great detail. It will be illogical not to use the findings of science. Does our observation show that our fingers are made up of atoms and molecules? Human observation is very limited.

Please note, I didn't say (and I will never say) that it is wrong or bad being a believer of science by trusting blindly some others.
This also applies on a believer of a religion that usually suits best his nature and his priorities in life (as having the right to have many wives at the same time or having the right to divorce and re-married as many times as he is capable of ).

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Please note, I didn't say (and I will never say) that it is wrong or bad being a believer of science by trusting blindly some others.
This also applies on a believer of a religion that usually suits best his nature and his priorities in life (as having the right to have many wives at the same time or having the right to divorce and re-married as many times as he is capable of ).

I would say that it is wrong to follow science blindly. Findings change with new discoveries and existing explanations may need to be reformulated in light of those discoveries. There are explanations that are so strong, the discoveries would need to be robust to foment such change, but even among those it is always a possibility. Blindly following science would lead to bad science and make that tool practically useless in making decisions or new discoveries.

I do not completely follow my own faith blindly or at least how it is practiced.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Thank you for giving an example to confirm my point.
"I trust that Joe knows what he is doing, because he always gets my car fixed and he has proven knowledge."

Yes, Joe has proven knowledge to you because he used fixing your car. In other words, if Joe failed always in fixing John's car, our dear John cannot see that Joe has proven knowledge as you do.

By the way, I personally don't add an idea in my set of knowledge if it can't pass first my logical reasoning which is applied in all situations.
For example, this is how I discovered that Jesus has indeed the knowledge of the Will which is behind my existence and of the real world. It happens that, even before 2000 years, Jesus (real or a myth) knew already all what I discovered in the reality of the world (and of my deep nature, of course). This explains why I didn't present myself as Christian because a typical Christian is supposed to have faith in Jesus while I know Jesus based on reason not faith (as Joe has proven knowledge to you ).

I do not fully understand the latter part of your post here, but every once in a while I find what I think of as a gem of a thread and this looks like the start of one.

 

[ChristineM]

Lowest form of wit, by all accounts.


I still laughed though

I am good at it, which says a lot.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Faith in God and faith in science are not the only shows in town are they?

Howabout faith in the essential decency of one’s fellow man or woman? Faith that everything will work out okay in the end? Faith that the universe is not, when all is said and done, a hostile place?

Sometimes quite a lot of faith is required, just to live.

 

[KerimF]

There is *confidence* in the experts, yes. That is different than faith, though.

The question then becomes whether those experts can know what they claim to know.

In the case of scientists, they can: they have testable theories and repeatable results judged by other educated experts in the field.

In the case of religion, they cannot: they cannot know there is a God, they cannot know what the God wants if such exists, they cannot know that their specific religious text is valid, etc. In other words, they can be experts about what other people have said, but that does not make them experts on religion itself.

So, which field has experts that have access to the knowledge they claim?

Faith says that we should truth those claiming to be experts that have no way of knowing what they claim. Confidence says we should trust the experts that *do* have a way of knowing what they claim.

The difference, to me, is clear.

I am afraid you missed the crucial point
You said:
"In the case of scientists, they can: they have testable theories and repeatable results judged by other educated experts in the field."

I wonder how a mature human can be sure/certain that someone, presented as being a scientist or an educated expert, is indeed a real scientist/expert... and, most of all, how he can be sure that what this scientist says is true and not just serving a sort of propaganda.

Please note, there is nothing wrong if someone has no choice but to believe blindly, for some reasons, any news said scientific.

For instance, although I discovered, since about 40 years, a novel topology (reliable, simple and economical) in voice/data communications and applied it in my private short-range RF links, even the today's engineers of IEEE believe that it cannot exist (like God cannot exist for an atheist).
After all, who, in the world, is ready to listen to an independent professional engineer who never served any powerful rich group/company?
And, should I ignore/reject what I know and experiment just because the today's privileged Scientists have no interest (or they are not allowed, due to world's regulations) to hear it and test it?

 

[KerimF]

A thread like this belongs in a debate area as it makes claims that obviously a lot of people will disagree with. We take this seriously as it complicates moderation. Debates aren't like conversations where everybody tosses in a coin.

I respect your remark. After all, I am just a guest here. So I understand fully that the owner of this forum or whoever got the prestige to represent him is always right.
This is how the world is created/made,

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I am afraid you missed the crucial point
You said:
"In the case of scientists, they can: they have testable theories and repeatable results judged by other educated experts in the field."

I wonder how a mature human can be sure/certain that someone, presented as being a scientist or an educated expert, is indeed a real scientist/expert... and, most of all, how he can be sure that what this scientist says is true and not just serving a sort of propaganda.

Please note, there is nothing wrong if someone has no choice but to believe blindly, for some reasons, any news said scientific.

For instance, although I discovered, since about 40 years, a novel topology (reliable, simple and economical) in voice/data communications and applied it in my private short-range RF links, even the today's engineers of IEEE believe that it cannot exist (like God cannot exist for an atheist).
After all, who, in the world, is ready to listen to an independent professional engineer who never served any powerful rich group/company?
And, should I ignore/reject what I know and experiment just because the today's privileged Scientists have no interest (or they are not allowed, due to world's regulations) to hear it and test it?

It seems like you are saying that, for you personally, you do not accept science on faith.

 

[KerimF]

And it's not "interfaith" as most understand that word.

It happens that it is... to me in the least
But I also understand fully that, in general, the last word in most forums is of the Believers of Science.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

A mature person believes in science by faith, much like a believer in a god’s law does, anytime he cannot trust his own observations/experiences and logical reasoning more than of anyone else, period

You're committing the classic equivocation fallacy of religious apologetics here. It occurs whenever one uses two homonyms interchangeably as if they were the same word. Faith means many things besides those two - religious faith and faith based in experience. Other meanings include a religion (the Jewish faith), an attitude or manner of behaving (in good faith), and a girl's name (Faith Hill).

Religious faith is insufficiently supported or evidenced belief. Justified belief is radically different - the difference between creationism and evolution science, astrology and astronomy, and alchemy and chemistry. To say that faith in astronomers is much like faith in astrologers is incorrect. Period.

Why does anyone need to repeat the experiments or learn the mathematics necessary to really understand that science behind say a moon landing is correct? Did the Apollo missions make it to the moon and back? If yes, then the math and science underlying the engineering is correct. Period. You need no more evidence than that to believe that the NASA team's understanding of rocketry, navigation, communications, etc. is correct if it worked as predicted. No faith is needed to trust the science. It's stunning success it the evidence that its basic assumptions and methods are a valid (and the only valid) means of discovering what is true about the world.

Incidentally, I've taken to calling any activity that tests and confirms hypotheses by collecting empirical data science, including looking both ways before crossing the street. This is informal science, to contrast it with laboratory or observatory formal science. Which restaurant will give me the better experience? We try both a couple of times and conclude that the Chinese restaurant is preferable to the Italian one. We had a hypothesis, tested it by going to them and eating there (collected evidence about ambiance, service, parking, proximity, price, selection, etc..), assembled to results in memory, and came to a conclusion about which we preferred that ought to be reproducible until one of the restaurants changes for the better or worse. It's really the same process done for the same purpose.

Lowest form of wit, by all accounts.

Disagree. Good sarcasm is as good as humor gets. It's best when the target doesn't even realize what has happened:

"Don't underestimate me."
"Of course not. That would be impossible."

Beautiful. The person hearing that probably smiled.

Puns are also underappreciated and frequently bemoaned:

Frog horror movie: A Farewell To Legs
Horse horror movie: Schindler's Limp

Knock-knock jokes might be the lowest form of humor, although most jokes that begin "Why did the" are also usually pretty horrible.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

It happens that it is... to me in the least
But I also understand fully that, in general, the last word in most forums is of the Believers of Science.

As a practitioner of an applied science, am I to understand that you accept scientific findings and explanations on faith alone?

 

[KerimF]

As others have stated


As others have stated, you're equivocating between different usages of "faith." In fact, science and faith are opposite and contradictory epistemologies.

Science uses "faith" in so much as it provides a tentative confidence level based on objective, reliable, repeatable observations and the successful predictive power of conceptual models for reality.

Faith, for most people, is the willingness to believe a claim despite the lack of objective, reliable, repeatable observations, or even despite direct observations that contradict the claim in question. By those standards, literally any claim could be believed on the basis of faith.

Lastly, the scientific method recognizes that we humans do have biases, flaws in reasoning, cognitive blind spots, etc, and it does everything it can to prevent these issues from impacting scientific data. Double blind experiments, peer review, and a culture encouraging the falsification of others' studies are some examples of this. By contrast, religious "scholarship" contrast has no such guard rails. In fact, most religious universities require their professors to sign a "statement of faith," which allows the school to fire them if they publish any findings that are contrary to a pre-determined set of conclusions.

Thank you for writing the following statement:
"Lastly, the scientific method recognizes that we humans do have biases, flaws in reasoning, cognitive blind spots, etc, and it does everything it can to prevent these issues from impacting scientific data."

It happened that this is exactly what I used hearing from the religious elders I knew when I was young. Of course they were referring to religious matters not scientific.

For instance, I recall someone who said something like: I think therefore I exist.
I say instead: Anytime I can't trust myself more than anyone else I, Kerim, don't exist at that time

 

[robocop (actually)]

A mature person believes in science by faith, much like a believer in a god’s law does, anytime he cannot trust his own observations/experiences and logical reasoning more than of anyone else, period

Trying to be like God is the key to all science. If you don't believe in God, use the definition of God. Of course just like there are good ways and bad ways to try to be like God, there are good and bad ways to do science.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Thank you for writing the following statement:
"Lastly, the scientific method recognizes that we humans do have biases, flaws in reasoning, cognitive blind spots, etc, and it does everything it can to prevent these issues from impacting scientific data."

It happened that this is exactly what I used hearing from the religious elders I knew when I was young. Of course they were referring to religious matters not scientific.

For instance, I recall someone who said something like: I think therefore I exist.
I say instead: Anytime I can't trust myself more than anyone else I, Kerim, don't exist at that time

Does trusting that you have found a novel topology that is denied by science mean you do not exist?

 

[KerimF]

I have to leave now... See you later.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Trying to be like God is the key to all science. If you don't believe in God, use the definition of God. Of course just like there are good ways and bad ways to try to be like God, there are good and bad ways to do science.

So you do not believe in seeking knowledge for its own sake?

 

[AlexanderG]

Thank you for writing the following statement:
"Lastly, the scientific method recognizes that we humans do have biases, flaws in reasoning, cognitive blind spots, etc, and it does everything it can to prevent these issues from impacting scientific data."

It happened that this is exactly what I used hearing from the religious elders I knew when I was young. Of course they were referring to religious matters not scientific.

For instance, I recall someone who said something like: I think therefore I exist.
I say instead: Anytime I can't trust myself more than anyone else I, Kerim, don't exist at that time

I'm trying to understand your reply, but honestly I don't. If you find yourself contemplating your levels of trust in yourself compared to other people, then it is logically impossible for you not to exist. In order to contemplate something then you must necessarily exist, and to say otherwise is incoherent.

Thank you for quoting my statement. Among other things, religious faith is what most atheists and scientists consider to be one of the "biases, flaws in reasoning, and cognitive blind spots" that afflict the human experience. I would say your elders were right to recognize the problem, if that's the kind of religious matters they were referring to. For example, there is no way to tell whose faith-based interpretation of a scripture is more correct, because there are no objective tools to measure this and so it all appears to be based on personal bias alone.

 

[robocop (actually)]

So you do not believe in seeking knowledge for its own sake?

All I'm saying is seeking knowledge is congruent to trying to be like God.
If you are seeking knowledge for it's own sake, that's fine with me.