Science is based on faith?

[AnarchistFish]

If anything philosophy is more important than science. And until we fully understand the nature of existence and the universe we can't truly know anything about the world..

As someone who loves philosophy, that is silly. It has been well established that the only thing we can prove with absolute certainty is that YOU, the reader, are a thing that is presently thinking and receiving perceptions. Everything else rests on some very small, very reasonable assumptions, but those assumptions cannot be proven 100% by our human minds.

Also, if you are a Empiricist[footnote] believe that experience, not reason, is the ultimate source of knowledge.[/footnote] instead of an Rationalist[footnote] believe that reason, not experience, is the ultimate source of knowledge. A more thorough explanation of the two lies behind this elegant and finely crafted link [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/][/footnote] then we NEED the hard sciences and the rigor of the scientific method to assist us in showing the nature of existence.

EDIT: Also, as has been said before, I shall quote the great XKCD:
[HEADING=3]SCIENCE: It WORKS, bitches.[/HEADING]

That's the point. Science is more useful in our lives maybe, but as far as understanding the whole universe and beyond, philosophy encompasses everything rather than what we can access in practice. It's just we can't really prove any of it so we just work with what we have.

If anything philosophy is more important than science. And until we fully understand the nature of existence and the universe we can't truly know anything about the world..

Science is a philosophy. Science was born from philosophy. To say that either is more important than the other is a bit like saying "cars are more important than motorized transportation" or "motorized transportation is more important than cars."

Yeah that's what I mean. Science is just a branch but philosophy looks at the whole.

If anything philosophy is more important than science. And until we fully understand the nature of existence and the universe we can't truly know anything about the world..

Do we fully understand the nature of existence yet? I don't think so.

But for us to even have the priviledge of conversing in this medium required the combined efforts of centuries of scientific advancements...

It's a really weak argument to say that we don't know ANYTHING without knowing the nature of existence, because that's obviously false.

Maybe I phrased it wrong.
We don't really know what all our knowledge acts in relation to.

 

[Kathinka]

The words 'belief' and 'faith' are really loaded terms in this context, given that certain groups have been making no small effort to use them to draw false parallels between Science and Religion for political reasons, usually with the implication that science somehow is a religion. Even ignoring that though, I have to question the train of thought here. Ultimately, if we use the explanation you describe them as using, it seems to me that we run into the issue of everything being ultimately 'based in belief', to the point that the argument almost seems to suggest solipsism. I believe the world exists, but no matter how likely that seems, I can't prove it. I believe I'm not in a dream, but I can't prove it. I believe that the sun will rise tommorrow, but I cannot prove it until it happens.

For instance, we know gravity works because we interact with it every day. But its still a "theory" as we don't completely understand it, hence the name "Theory of Gravity." Evolution is the same way. We think it happened and is happening and have evidence to support that, however we can never proof 100% that evolution is real. That's what science is. A constant revision of what we think we understand to something more likely.

Before anyone jumps on this, it's worth pointing out that a Theory is the highest level of explanation in science and that no, a 'proven theory' does not become a 'Law'. The two are distinct concepts, the difference between which is perhaps best described thusly: Laws are observations, Theories are explanations for observations, which is why we have both the Law and Theory of Gravity. The former does not replace the latter, nor does the latter invalidate the former. It's also worth noting that contrary to popular usage, the word "Theory" in science is not used to describe uncertainty (on the contrary, a theory must be very well vetted with the available data to be described as such). Point of fact, the colloquial use of the word 'theory' better fits the scientific term 'hypothesis' than it does the scientific use of the word 'theory'.

That said, it is certainly true that everything in science adapts as new data becomes available. That's actually one of its greatest strengths. That's why the 'Plum Pudding' Atomic Model was replaced by the Rutherford Model, and the Rutherford Model replaced by the Bohr Model. While the Plum Pudding Model was an improvement over its predecessors, the Rutherford Model better explained the data than the Plum Pudding Model, and the Bohr Model ultimately improved upon the Rutherford Model. That's a bit that tends to get overlooked when people harp on how 'science changes'. The changes are not whimsical or random, they are made because the new explanation improves upon the prior model, typically in a way that hits much of the same explanations and expands upon them as the data dictates.

i agree with this, and also i read the whole thing in mordins voice. thank you, sir, you unintentionally made my day.

 

[rutger5000]

That kind of depends on who you ask. As for me I think, that true science isn't based on any believe. It's based on assumptions.
According to many scientific philosphers, a true scientists must always assume that his/her assumptions are wrong. But as long as those assumptions proof usefull, a scientist is allowed to use them regardlessly.
However many scientist don't truly follow this philosophy, which I personally fiend rather sad. Regarding those scientist, yes their science is based on faith.

 

[Jonluw]

Thinking that anything except for you exists is an action of faith.
In the same sense, science is based on faith.
That doesn't weaken the case of those who criticize religion as being based on faith though.

 

[hermes]

That's the difference between science and religion. Science questions the things it takes on faith constantly, and keeps questioning and testing over and over again. In religion, questioning your faith is a big no-no.

Actually the process you describe is basically the same that has created most of the present understanding of christianity.
There is a reason why most "scientist" of the enlightenment was theologians. It was the only higher education that existed in Europe at the time and the people who became great theologians at the time was the people who could look at something (nature/scripture) and say if A is.. and B is... then there must be a C.

There is a huge difference between blind faith in something and well thought faith in something and you find that on both sides of the argument.

Most religious people who don't put their heads up their asses and go lalalalalala see science as another form of contact with the divine not something to work against. That is why they get annoyed whenever they are told that they are wrong because science says so. (I am well aware that that is not necessarily what science says but it is often used as such) Especially when the arguments that are used to use science like that is flawed.

Oh.. so that's why the Church publically shamed Galileo and forced him not to publish his work on Heliocentrism... they cared about truth SO MUCH that they couldn't allow him to rely on his blind faith to corrupt the masses... hey wait a second...

That's why everyone demonizes Charles Darwin (who was a Theology major)...

The church only allows science to proceed unscathed if it doesn't attempt to usurp the churches established opinion on something...

You would be surprised by how many times the scientific community shames its members because some opinions are not popular, or politically correct. Darwin was ridiculised and attacked by scientists as much as religious zealots, with Owen (a famous paleontologist at the time) and Thomson (the inventor of Kelvin degrees) among his worst opponents. Newton used his influence as a president of the Royal Society to discredit other people or taking their discoveries as his own. How about the Edison/Tesla debate? Those disputes were often not very gentlemanly.

So, can we please stop demonizing Christianity as it was THE source of ignorance throughout the world? If anything, its because of the church (as an institution) that most things we inherit from the Greeks and Romans survived the fall of the empire.

 

[exp. 99]

I'm certainly not trying to state that all people who are religious are completely deadset against science, so I'm sorry I gave that impression. But really when judging past history it's impossible to base the religious reception of science on anything other than the official positions held by the church leaders, because I can't go back in time to talk with every lay person to see what they thought ( chances are most never even heard about Galileo because the Church tried to silence him.)

But historically anyway, religious groups have always tended to impede science in anything that they feel might put doubts about their religion into the minds of their followers. the individual layman religious person may never even have known it was going on or just didn't mind or didn't care.

Historically speaking, yes, the church (and I'm going to go out on a limb and say we're talking the catholic church of the middle ages and renaissance) has done its fair share of stomping on scientific development. Progress was inconvenient to the people sitting on their high holy thrones; it's hard to rule absolutely when your authority to say you are divinely gifted with knowledge from on high is questioned by someone proving you wrong.

On the flip side, however, it was the church who founded universities and schools that educated people in natural science. They protected the right to education, provided it was pursued by men of good standing with the church. While the advances in things such as biology were primitive compared to modern medicine, at the same time the church is what sponsored advances that in the future would be built upon to make greater breakthroughs.

Ultimately, the church was not a universally repressive thing, especially if an aspiring academic knew well enough to keep dogma and faith separate from logic and observation. The people who got crapped on by the church were the people who started pissing off the religious leaders personally, by and large.

On a second point, Galileo was actually rather well known among academic circles. His arguments in favor of a heliocentric model of the solar system was sufficient that the church accepted it as a possibility, though they did not declare it concrete fact. It wasn't until he personally offended the pope that he got in trouble.

 

[Therarchos]

That's the difference between science and religion. Science questions the things it takes on faith constantly, and keeps questioning and testing over and over again. In religion, questioning your faith is a big no-no.

Actually the process you describe is basically the same that has created most of the present understanding of christianity.
There is a reason why most "scientist" of the enlightenment was theologians. It was the only higher education that existed in Europe at the time and the people who became great theologians at the time was the people who could look at something (nature/scripture) and say if A is.. and B is... then there must be a C.

There is a huge difference between blind faith in something and well thought faith in something and you find that on both sides of the argument.

Most religious people who don't put their heads up their asses and go lalalalalala see science as another form of contact with the divine not something to work against. That is why they get annoyed whenever they are told that they are wrong because science says so. (I am well aware that that is not necessarily what science says but it is often used as such) Especially when the arguments that are used to use science like that is flawed.

Oh.. so that's why the Church publically shamed Galileo and forced him not to publish his work on Heliocentrism... they cared about truth SO MUCH that they couldn't allow him to rely on his blind faith to corrupt the masses... hey wait a second...

That's why everyone demonizes Charles Darwin (who was a Theology major)...

The church only allows science to proceed unscathed if it doesn't attempt to usurp the churches established opinion on something...

The church did make some bad decisions never said otherwise (but would like to point out that they have been accused of plenty that they didn't do like saying to Columbus that he shouldn't go because the earth is flat. They said he shouldn't go because it was too long to India which was correct). You confuse a system based about power (the catholic church, the mormon faith, hinduism etc. with the people practicing it. The basic flaw in any discussion about religion or science (anything that has more than one follower) is that the individual is mistaken for the whole. An example; A pope says lets go on a crusade all of catholisism goes on a crusade 1500 years later every religion is bad (simplified) is the same as saying Hitler was democratically elected ergo democracy hates jews and so does germans. The world is not that simple. One of the most influential people on the christian faith was a former crusader who couldn't reconcile the crusades with his faith (Franz of Assisi) and one of the most democratic countries in the world today is Germany.

I'm certainly not trying to state that all people who are religious are completely deadset against science, so I'm sorry I gave that impression. But really when judging past history it's impossible to base the religious reception of science on anything other than the official positions held by the church leaders, because I can't go back in time to talk with every lay person to see what they thought ( chances are most never even heard about Galileo because the Church tried to silence him.)

But historically anyway, religious groups have always tended to impede science in anything that they feel might put doubts about their religion into the minds of their followers. the individual layman religious person may never even have known it was going on or just didn't mind or didn't care.

That is the hurdle of viewing any group (even science but will come back to that)is that you need an intimate understanding of their beliefs to know when someone is doing something which is not based on the tenants of their faith. If you look at what is attributed to Jesus you can never reconcile that with most of the stupid things that some "christians" have used him for the past 2000 years. And the times that a quote has been used to legitimize violence or oppression it has been grossly taken out of context and misunderstood. An incredible amount of the first Christians wouldn't even lie to save their lives but the christian faith is today often judged by the actions of people who was political players on the stage of Europe hundreds of years later. Or nut jobs (mostly in the states or the middle east) who cannot even manage to understand their own faith.

The thing is so incredibly few people on this planet actually understand the science (or their religion) that anything we are told by those we hold in authority is (almost) automatically true in our view. When atheist then say this science is true so God doesn't exist religious people don't hold them to be true and by association the science is wrong as well. That is the exact same way to judge a group as my earlier example.

And to look at your statement about religious groups trying to impede science I call horseshit (not to offend) we would most likely not have had the understanding of modern science today if theologians philosophers and doctors hadn't had thought their subject of study a study in the divine. Heir basic premises was that someone/thing had created the world with rules otherwise they most likely wouldn't have started looking for them in the first place. That is not trying to argue for religion in modern days I am just trying to acknowledge the importance that it have had on science.

 

[Lalo Lomeli]

Science doesn't need to be 100% accurate because of the nature of it, if some new evidence comes along and this bash at the theories that are standing, the theory is denied or modified so that the theory is along the new evidence.

Extra Creditz have a lot of experience with academia, so I can see where they are coming from, the academical community have some issues dealing with new paradigms even when they are supported, new discoveries are encountered with some kind of resistance.

Lastly, there's a lot of stuff that we don't know of they working in the universe, I went to a quantum physics seminar and the PHD came out and said "This particle do this, don't ask why or how it does it, but we know it does it", because at the end of the day we are still learning.

So yeah, one could say that there some belief, but that belief it's tested against reality.

 

[risenbone]

Faith in Science in relation to the video mentioned by the OP has not much to do with the end results of the scientific method or the hypothosis and theories that result. The faith the EC video was focused on was that to get any system to work you have to take certain things that are the building blocks of that system to be true and that assumtion can be described as taking things on faith.

A couple of examples presented in the video were of Newtonian Physics which had a certain amount of building blocks that had to be true thus those who worked on Newtonian Physics had to have faith that those building blocks were true or Newtonian Physics just didn't work.

The other example was of Einstein who had faith in the idea that nothing in the Universe was random and thus spent a great deal of his life up to his death attempting to disprove Quantum Mechanics.

The video came about because they did a 2 part video on religion in games where they posited that evan science needs faith at the very basic level in order to progress science. The responces in the forum following that episode made them feel they needed to explain the position more thoroughly as quite a few pro science people got hung up on the idea that science might be fallable and not entirely logic and fact based.

As to is science a religion. I would have to say in the places where science happens no it's not. However once it progresses outside the lab to the general population who aren't actual scientists you can get some very religious reactions when science is questioned. For example try telling a die hard enviromentalist that there might be other contributing factors to climate change that don't involve burning fossil fuels and in all probability climate change would happen evan if we all stopped burning any fossil fuels yesterday and the resultant rage and arguements are on par with any religious fundamentilist being told God doesn't exist.

 

[kenu12345]

Why does the word faith send so many people into a frenzy? And why do so many people automatically believe it deals with religion and or means you 100 percent believe in it. I have faith that my house will be still there when i get home. That could or couldnt be true. It could have got bombed for all I know. Does it mean i put an obsessive amount of faith into it? no. Does it mean I'll defend my faith dutifully and stupidly if someone said it was blown up. No. Faith can change and now i feel like i rambled. Blargh

 

[Kanyo]

"You have to take on faith that things which are demonstrably true are true"? Yeah, sure we could all be in the Matrix, or in the head of an autistic mental patient, or any number of other unfalsifiable pseudo-hypotheses. Thing is, with literally zero reason to think that's the case there is, well, no reason to think that's the case.

A lot of people make this epistemological mistake, that science finds out what is "true". For the most part though, the scientific process determines only what is false. Nothing in science is ever proven; by its logical underpinnings, nothing CAN be proven. Ideas can, however, be disproven, suhc as phlogeston or the Lamarckian idea evolution. In order for an idea to be scientific, there must be a potential way for that idea to be falsified. So the question of whether or not we're in the Matrix as a starting assumption is irrelevant to science because there's not any way we could ever determine whether or not we were. The assumption that science works under the conditions where science works is not a faith-based assumption, and that is the only base assumption that you need in order to accept scientific methodology as a whole.

Can we agree that observation is the primary method by which science tests, confirms and disproves hypothesese?

If so, then you should realise that the validity of our observations is dependent on our reality being truely immutable an unchanging. This cannot be proven OR disproven, and so if we intend to continue learning more and more about the universe we have to accept, on faith and without proof, that our reality is ... well as we see it. If we cannot trust our observations, then we cannot trust anything that comes from them even if it seems repeatable.

By accepting our universe as the true reality (again, on faith) science is able to do its thing second-guessing itself and have the tools it needs to do so.

As you said in your first paragraph there's no reason to think we're in the matrix, or some delusion, but there's no reason to think we're in a true reality either. It's just something we need to accept if we intend to do anything meaningful with our lives.

Obviously observation is the cornerstone of science, along with inference as another and a conservative epistemology as the foundation. If you actually hold to the idea that science is based on a faith assumption, then you believe that literally everything is based on an assumption of faith, making the statement so broad as to be meaningless; you're just defining everything into the umbrella of faith. If the heliocentric model and the god hypothesis are both faith claims for example, they're still not faith claims in the same way so using the same word to describe them renders that word meaningless. So no, I still don't buy your premise.

In the absence of evidence either way, the default or simplest supposition wins by virtue of the razor. It's not an assumption on faith, it's an educated assumption based on the idea that a more complex scenario, while it can't be disproved, requires its own more complicated explanation. The assumption that reality is real is an assumption, but to call it a faith-based assumption implies that it is an assumption made without any cogent reasoning (as in the religious context of "faith"), which is just false. There is a perfectly logical reason to assume that we're not in the Matrix: It's not evidently true. Before evolution or geosphericity were demonstrated under mountains of evidence it would be reasonable to assume they were not true; after all, the earth functionally might as well be flat for the purposes of our daily lives.

 

[HannesPascal]

It's necessary to have some faith in the theories that you're using in science but that does by no means equate that science is based on faith by the same train of thought as: "Humans need small amounts of manganese but humans are not based on manganese."

 

[Legion]

Unless you do the studies/experiments yourself, you're taking someone else's word for it on the results.
That's taking it on faith.

That's the way I look at it as well.

It's all well and good saying that something has been proven via science to be correct, but the vast majority of the people believing in it haven't actually witnessed these results for themselves. So they are believing in them based upon faith.

If one had to prove every theory and verify every fact that is normally simply taught during the education process, we would get nowhere on a technological/scientific level. Teaching people things is purely a matter of practicality. The alternative you seem to be implying is simply impractical to the highest degree.

With that said, what, exactly, is the conclusion you two seem to draw from this? Were you getting to the tired old failed parallel of "religious beliefs are accepted blindly and scientific research is accepted blindly, therefore both approaches are equally valid"?

I was never suggesting that we shouldn't have faith in scientists performing this research. I was not suggesting any alternative, nor was I passing any judgement on the fact that people behave this way. I was stating what I see as standard human behaviour.

I do not believe religious beliefs are valid simply because science is also taken on faith, no.

I wasn't really getting at anything at all, but I do get somewhat tired of people claiming science is completely valid because it can be proven, whereas religion isn't because it is "taken on faith". Considering that most people who believe in scientific explanations over religious ones (myself included) are also putting faith in the people who make these claims, seeing as we have not actually done the experiments required to prove these things ourselves.

Simply put: While science can indeed be proven. People need to lose this arrogant attitude of being intelligent, enlightened individuals just because they believe the man in the white coat rather than the man in the black clothes and the clerical collar. It's still putting faith into something you don't understand yourself. Even if it is a far more plausible explanation.

 

[The Selkie]

"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed, faith is the denial of observation so that faith can be preserved" - Tim Minchin.

For example, you see a man sitting on a bench outside. Obviously you can't be 100% sure that it's a man or even a person. Nor can you be sure that the object he's sitting on is a bench. Would you say you had faith that there is a man on a bench outside? Probably not.

While you could argue that believing anything without absolute proof requires a degree of "faith" it's not really the meaning you would associate with the word. Faith implies a lack of evidence.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

That episode and the following response made me rather mad.

I've loved EC for pretty much all of its runtime until now.

The whole thing came off as hippie crowd-pleasing. They refuse to have any kind of stance on anything right down to James being "Agnostic".

Then, they proceed to be as pretentious as humanly possible just so they could disregard arguments.

I also really despised the tone. I know that sounds stupid, but still. The way they presented it was as if the minute amount of faith science has is somehow comparable to utterly faith enamored things like deities and religion. The way they showed heavenly clouds and shit whenever talking about the "Faith" in science.

But enough about them being idiots.

It can be said Science is based on Faith. But only to the extent that taking a step forward is based on the Faith that the ground isn't going to vanish from beneath you.

Like the hypothesis about how any advanced civilization will eventually create a simulation of the universe and that we may be just such a program. Yeah, we have to take it on faith that we aren't, but there is no physically possible way to objectively find out.

Science is about removing as much faith as possible.

 

[dvd_72]

"You have to take on faith that things which are demonstrably true are true"? Yeah, sure we could all be in the Matrix, or in the head of an autistic mental patient, or any number of other unfalsifiable pseudo-hypotheses. Thing is, with literally zero reason to think that's the case there is, well, no reason to think that's the case.

A lot of people make this epistemological mistake, that science finds out what is "true". For the most part though, the scientific process determines only what is false. Nothing in science is ever proven; by its logical underpinnings, nothing CAN be proven. Ideas can, however, be disproven, suhc as phlogeston or the Lamarckian idea evolution. In order for an idea to be scientific, there must be a potential way for that idea to be falsified. So the question of whether or not we're in the Matrix as a starting assumption is irrelevant to science because there's not any way we could ever determine whether or not we were. The assumption that science works under the conditions where science works is not a faith-based assumption, and that is the only base assumption that you need in order to accept scientific methodology as a whole.

Can we agree that observation is the primary method by which science tests, confirms and disproves hypothesese?

If so, then you should realise that the validity of our observations is dependent on our reality being truely immutable an unchanging. This cannot be proven OR disproven, and so if we intend to continue learning more and more about the universe we have to accept, on faith and without proof, that our reality is ... well as we see it. If we cannot trust our observations, then we cannot trust anything that comes from them even if it seems repeatable.

By accepting our universe as the true reality (again, on faith) science is able to do its thing second-guessing itself and have the tools it needs to do so.

As you said in your first paragraph there's no reason to think we're in the matrix, or some delusion, but there's no reason to think we're in a true reality either. It's just something we need to accept if we intend to do anything meaningful with our lives.

Obviously observation is the cornerstone of science, along with inference as another and a conservative epistemology as the foundation. If you actually hold to the idea that science is based on a faith assumption, then you believe that literally everything is based on an assumption of faith, making the statement so broad as to be meaningless; you're just defining everything into the umbrella of faith. If the heliocentric model and the god hypothesis are both faith claims for example, they're still not faith claims in the same way so using the same word to describe them renders that word meaningless. So no, I still don't buy your premise.

In the absence of evidence either way, the default or simplest supposition wins by virtue of the razor. It's not an assumption on faith, it's an educated assumption based on the idea that a more complex scenario, while it can't be disproved, requires its own more complicated explanation. The assumption that reality is real is an assumption, but to call it a faith-based assumption implies that it is an assumption made without any cogent reasoning (as in the religious context of "faith"), which is just false. There is a perfectly logical reason to assume that we're not in the Matrix: It's not evidently true. Before evolution or geosphericity were demonstrated under mountains of evidence it would be reasonable to assume they were not true; after all, the earth functionally might as well be flat for the purposes of our daily lives.

Ah, it looks like we have conflicting definitions of the word "faith". For me, faith is accepting an idea without any supporting evidence. It seems to me that the word "faith" for you is intertwined with religion, something I see no reason to do. An assumption we believe in without evidence is an assumption we have faith in, and religion doesn't ever enter into it.

Occam's razor doesn't state that the simplest explanation is the correct one, but that it is the most likely to be true. Occam's razor can be use to help decide which assumption to go with despite a lack of evidence. It does't act as evidence in itself. It doesn't give a final answer to the question, it only allows us to move on.

As for the logical reasoning for us not living in the matrix, that is such a weak argument it shouldn't have been made at all. What evidence do you have that the world we live in is reality? Because saying you observe it to be so is relying on the fact that what you're observing is reality you enter a circular argument. Us living in "reality" is also not evidently true.