science is about trying to control the Universe. Yes they want to understand nature, but ultimately the reason is to control it, and that's where you have to be careful about the science being good or bad
All learning is about trying to control outcomes. We try to facilitate the things we desire coming to pass, such as good health and leisure, and to minimize undesirable outcomes. We learn to recognize and exploit opportunity to make our world as close to what we desire it to be as we can, while learning to recognize and avoid pitfalls that would degrade our experience of life. This is also a partial definition of intelligence, and the survival benefit conferred by the ability to reason.
Learning is the accumulation of rational biases about what will be a better choice in given situation, biases based in experience - what kind of person is right for us (maybe that very attractive but vain person isn't such a good choice), which behaviors facilitate social harmony, which purchases are good values, which habits are conducive to health, and more, including mundane decisions such as which restaurant is likeliest to provide the dining experience one has in mind based on prior experience with local restaurants - information that if correct, will make happy outcomes more likely and unhappy ones less likely. That's really what life is, right? - managing experience, hopefully effectively.
I excluded the non-mature person because, in general, a kid has no choice but having faith in some elders (parents, relatives, teachers... etc.) concerning scientific matters and else.
Yes, before one is old enough to think critically, he can only learn by faith in trusted sources such as parents and teachers, and maybe clergy. Some, but not all people, learn to think critically, by which I mean learn how to evaluate evidence (and arguments if provided) dispassionately with the ability to properly interpret evidence and to recognize a valid argument, as well as the willingness to be convinced by it if the conclusion derived is sound.
Perhaps you can see the conflict between critical thought and belief by faith. There is no place for any faith-based belief in critical thinking, which is based in rational skepticism and empiricism. As soon as you introduce faith to an argument, whether in its premises or in the subsequent reasoning, you've committed a logical fallacy that will generate a non sequitur - a conclusion not supported by what preceded it.
And, of course, this is why many fundamentalists faiths disesteem higher education and advise parents against teaching their children science or sending them off to university. Their Sunday school teaching included creationism, which was inculcated with repetition, the teacher angry if too many questions were asked or belief wasn't strong. Then Johnny goes off to university and takes a class in evolution, where the evidence that Darwin and others since him had to consider, and the arguments that led to the conclusion that genetic variation subjected to natural selection could transform an ancient ancestral population into the present tree of life and all of the extinct forms found in the earth. His professor never asks him if he believes it, just if he learned it and can repeat it on an exam. Johnny is learning critical thinking - how to come to his own conclusions - and why nothing should be believed without a sound reason.
Have you ever wondered why the churches want access to all children before the age of seven, and what an imposition the secular state is to their mission to recruit new believers when it won't allow creationism or other religious beliefs to be taught in the public schools, many of the students not being taken to churches, either? Once they develop critical thinking skills, it becomes much more difficult to sell a religious worldview to young people.
First, you don't need having faith that your computer will deliver your message, because you know, based on your own observations (not of others), that this is likely to happen. But believing in moon landing for example (as it was presented on our TV monitors) has to be based on faith only
No. It is based in evidence. People that aren't accustomed to evaluating evidence also aren't very good at recognizing it in the first place. It's common for faith-based thinkers to assume that there is no other way to think, and the evidence they can't see doesn't exist. You see no evidence of a manned moon landing, so there is none, and the believers of the official account are believing by faith.
@Polymath257 already mentioned the lack of foreign governments claiming fraud, which they surely would have done had they not tracked a launched rocket to the moon and back. We have lunar orbiters that regularly photograph the remains of the the lunar landers and rovers still on the moon. We have a community of space scientists whose values we know and trust in consensus that this occurred, and we even have mirrors left behind on the moon to reflect earth-based lasers onto to measure exact distances.
So, no faith is needed to believe that man has been to the moon and back, unless you are unaware of all of that or reject it out of hand, in which case both belief and unbelief are only possible by faith. It's the alternative to sound reasoning.
a member of any scientific community in the world cannot act as a free independent person; he is much like a journalist working for an international news agency
Funny how we only hear about this human foible - groupthink - when discussing the community of scientists, every one of which would love to be the one to turn their area of science on its head with a groundbreaking discovery. That's hardly the kind of lockstep conformity you imply exists in the scientific community. Iconoclasts will be challenged and maybe even ridiculed, but if they are right, they know it, and eventually, so will everybody else.
In my case, all ideas, scientific or else, in my actual set of knowledge are based solely on reason. I wish I have a blind faith about something, but I can't
I know you believe that, but I don't. One simply cannot come to a god belief using reason alone. There must be a leap of faith, at which point, it is no longer valid reasoning. It's my opinion that nobody can't get past that barrier even if he thinks he has.
I recently saw a quote to the effect that hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue, which I think is an awkward way of pointing out that there are people that claim to have certain values or to engage in such processes that they really don't value or engage in, but know that others do. If you're speaking only to like-minded, faith-based believers, you don't need to mention reason or evidence. It's enough to say that scripture tells us this or God spoke told me that as a source of a belief and expect that to be sufficient.
But when dealing with skeptics that value reason over faith, one will argue in that language as you are doing here.
I just read this morning that, "A sociopath knows right from wrong, but just doesn't care." I don't agree. The sociopath knows what others consider right and wrong, and tries to play the game that he cares about such things, too, but he has no innate sense of anything being immoral for him. A sense of right and wrong is synonymous with a conscience, and if you have no conscience, you have no moral compass telling you that this or that is morally wrong.
He's also playing this game of pretending to have values that others have and esteem in order to be accepted by them, when, if he were honest about who he is, people would steer clear of him. In the language of the paraphrased saying above, he is a hypocrite whose vice is indifference to others, while giving homage (lip service) to the virtuous values others actually hold.
I don't know that it's fair to call what I believe you are doing here hypocrisy. You are probably sincere even though I don't believe your claim of reliance on reason alone to come to your set of core values and beliefs, because I don't believe that that is possible if one of your core beliefs is in a god.
If two friends love each other (not chemically
) what does it mean, speaking practically? If they are honest, it means they have accepted to trust each other to almost no limit (I added 'almost'... due to possible weaknesses in human's nature).
That's not my definition of love. Love doesn't need to be mutual to be love. And though trust is generally present, one can love a child, for example, that is known to be untrustworthy.
Love is the psychological state of seeing the other as part of the self, and wanting to devote resources to the betterment of the other as one would oneself. It manifests in behavior that can be seen to be intended to benefit the object of love. Notice that this isn't an emotion.