Science is based on faith?

[randomrob]

Philosophically speaking, any claim to knowledge must be based on evidence, in order to rely on evidence we must know the evidence. In order to know the evidence we must have reasons to believe the evidence ad infinitum, this leads to the problem of where original knowledge comes from. Everything we think we know has an element of faith because everything we think we know must contain premises we cannot justify further, but must assume (axioms). For example, the claim that "I am typing this post" relies on several assumptions: that my experience is a reliable record of real events, that my computer exists, that I exist in a corporeal form capable of typing etc, and those assumptions are in turn based on further assumptions until we hit certain axioms like: I can trust my senses, there is an external world and I can discover truth using reason. If we define faith as an unjustified or unjustifiable belief, then all knowledge is based on faith because our axioms require faith. This includes science and arguably mathematics as well as all other areas of Human enquiry.

 

[floppylobster]

But too many scientists just end up arguing with religious people when they should be able to work out, and prove, scientifically, why some people need and believe it.

Vague, blanket statement. Care to show who, where, etc?

Once that's done they should not be arguing or even disagreeing with those people who live by faith and a belief in God. They should be able to perfectly, scientifically, understand why this is and just carry on doing science.

I am truly grateful that science doesn't care about what you think a scientist should or should not do.

Science should embrace faith because it's part of the universe that science is trying to explain.

So are syphilis and cancer. Science generally tries to fight against those two as opposed to embracing them, though. "Part of our universe, thus needs to be embraced" is this "appeal to nature" fallacy. Seriously, don't do it.

To attempt to remove it from the equation is producing an incomplete model.

Again, who, where, etc?

You. You're exactly the sort of person I'm talking about. I still can't believe there's such a thing as close-minded scientists.

And science doesn't try to fight cancer and syphilis. What are you talking about? Science doesn't try to fight anything but ignorance (and even that is just incidental).

It's not an "appeal to nature", it's an appeal to any scientist to not spend time trying to disprove religion, but instead prove why people use it and are drawn to it. Once that is done all of religion can be written off for what it really is (and I'll let you decide what that is, but let's prove it first).

It's hard to talk about these huge subjects in small forums like this. The nature of the universe is not something to be 'back and forthed' over a couple of messages, but try to understand I'm only calling for understanding, I'm not attacking anyone's core belief. And for the record, I don't believe in any religion at all. I only capitalized the G in god out of respect for those who do. But just arguing with people is not the scientific way. Present your evidence and let it be tested. And before you claim I haven't done so myself - I'm not a scientist. I'm just calling for less fighting over religion and science and asking for either side to work out where the other fits in their view of the world and to stop opposing it just because someone else doesn't think the same as you.

 

[Naeo]

Science is based on tireless, repeated testing of hypotheses and observations. Repeated testing is the thing relied on, not faith--scientists gain and understanding of things through experimentation, and use that udnerstanding to develop new theories and test them. The argument that they have to have faith in their data being "the right data" or "the whole picture" is a silly argument. One, no scientist should ever say "well, we have all the experimental data that shows everything relevant to what we're doing" because that's stupid and you can't ever know that. Two, science works by taking data/observations and finding patterns in them. Finding what's happening in the data and then trying to explain it--if done right, the conclusions should always come from the data without regard to what you want to get out of it; data should never exist to fit a hypothesis or preconception.

Also, old theories are CONSTANTLY thrown out or revised when they fail to explain consistent, repeatable experimental results, or if a better theory comes along that explains more thoroughly the relevant phenomena. Science is frankly not based on faith unless you want to make the trivial and philosophical (rather than scientific) argument about whether our ability to observe is in itself something we have to take on faith. Science does assume a (very, incredibly small number of) things that cannot be proven/explained, but which have been consistently and universally observed and are taken as fact; that's about the extent to which science is faith-based in any way. All the rest of our understanding is just that, understanding. It's based on extrapolations from what we already know and the extensive testing of those extrapolations.

 

[Cheesus Crust]

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.

Thanks for elaborating on the differences between a law and a theory I could never really distinguish between the two up until reading your post.

What I do know is that theory is the highest level of explanation, sometimes people want a proof but if memory serves me right that's more of a mathematical term and not science.

 

[karamazovnew]

I'm pretty sure 99% of all cosmologist would disagree with you, if not 100%. We also don't measure the age of the big bang by the distance of the farthest galaxy, we use microwave background radiation measurements, we use models like NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe to show this.

You obviously have no idea what you're talking about, than again you think we should believe in the bible instead which states that symbolically eating the flesh of a dead Jewish zombie will some how save our souls from inbreed evil, which we all inherited from the first women who was made from a rib, and ate from a magical knowledge giving tree that she was convinced to do by a talking snake.

Yep the bible and talkin snakes are much more believable than the evidence put forth for the Big Bang Theory............

I'm not a Bible believer so stop dumbing me down based on that. I've learned enough physics at the university to qualify me as an engineer in two fields. Astronomy is a huge passion for me so I'm well aware of the methods used. I'm not questioning "what we see" but how we interpret it. I have the firm belief that experiments done here in our small patch of space have no relevance in any other corner of our vast universe. Yes, it's a belief, my own gut instinct, but the counter-proposal of science that there are such things as "universal constants" is something that borers on "faith" and dogma. Being a bystander of modern physics has led me to some very interesting discussions with atheists and wikitube-scientists that made my religious acquaintances sound tolerant and open-minded in comparison.

And to answer this...

Science = Based on evidence. Most religious texts = Not based on evidence. How is this hard? Or are you actively discrediting the work of hundreds of thousands of the smartest people on earth because you don't like what they're saying?

Exactly. I don't "like" the Big Bang. I don't like the timeframe of it all. I've seen the conclusions and I simply don't like them. They don't answer much, but what they do simply has to be wrong. And anyone can see that in just how wild the official theories have gotten lately, just to support a continuously falling structure. The smartest people on earth have gave up long ago in this field and now make your smartphones, weapons, robots and aerogels. Under no means do I support any religion, so please stop jumping to conclusions whenever I use the Bible as a comparison.

 

[BrassButtons]

You. You're exactly the sort of person I'm talking about. I still can't believe there's such a thing as close-minded scientists.

Scientists need to be closed-minded. There are simply too many stupid ideas out there for scientists to seriously consider all of them. I mean, should geologists be open-minded about Young Earth Creationism?

And science doesn't try to fight cancer and syphilis. What are you talking about? Science doesn't try to fight anything but ignorance (and even that is just incidental).

Strictly speaking "science" doesn't do anything, as it is just a process. However scientists, using the scientific method, are working to fight diseases. It's called 'medical science' for a reason.

It's not an "appeal to nature", it's an appeal to any scientist to not spend time trying to disprove religion, but instead prove why people use it and are drawn to it. Once that is done all of religion can be written off for what it really is (and I'll let you decide what that is, but let's prove it first).

Are scientists trying to disprove religion? I know some scientific discoveries disprove certain scientific concepts (the earth is not 6000 years old) but I doubt that many of them were the result of a scientist deliberately trying to disprove a religious belief.

 

[Rednog]

You. You're exactly the sort of person I'm talking about. I still can't believe there's such a thing as close-minded scientists.

And science doesn't try to fight cancer and syphilis. What are you talking about? Science doesn't try to fight anything but ignorance (and even that is just incidental).

It's not an "appeal to nature", it's an appeal to any scientist to not spend time trying to disprove religion, but instead prove why people use it and are drawn to it. Once that is done all of religion can be written off for what it really is (and I'll let you decide what that is, but let's prove it first).

It's hard to talk about these huge subjects in small forums like this. The nature of the universe is not something to be 'back and forthed' over a couple of messages, but try to understand I'm only calling for understanding, I'm not attacking anyone's core belief. And for the record, I don't believe in any religion at all. I only capitalized the G in god out of respect for those who do. But just arguing with people is not the scientific way. Present your evidence and let it be tested. And before you claim I haven't done so myself - I'm not a scientist. I'm just calling for less fighting over religion and science and asking for either side to work out where the other fits in their view of the world and to stop opposing it just because someone else doesn't think the same as you.

I'm sorry but no, you misunderstand/don't understand the very basic concepts of science.
Here's the thing you refer to him as a "close-minded scientist" because you throw out a demand and you say prove it, and if he doesn't accept what you have to say he's the ignorant one. Sorry, but science doesn't work that way.
The very basic way science works is "we observe X, let's examine the evidence of X and understand what makes X what it is." The very idea of religion/faith/etc is someone saying "I believe Y", ok great what's your proof? You have none? Than there is nothing else to explore. You can't derive something from nothing.

Also, things like figuring out why people believe or are drawn to it is a matter of psychiatry/social science. Two fields in a wide spectrum of science. And yes people have explored it. Here's the thing you decry science trying to disprove religion...I'd like to know what you think of religious people trying to discredit/disprove science. At the end of the day we can't be like oh no we found out the earth isn't 6,000 years old...well we better keep it a secret because it might offend some people.

 

[disgruntledgamer]

I'm not a Bible believer so stop dumbing me down based on that.

But than again............

Then read a Bible and you'll encounter less bullshit per sentence than what we find in the last 20 years of physics.

Contradiction much?

I've learned enough physics at the university to qualify me as an engineer in two fields. Astronomy is a huge passion for me so I'm well aware of the methods used.

Astronomy is a huge passion of yours, but you didn't know we use microwave background radiation measurements, to measure the age of the universe and not the farthest galaxy? Your entire posts are full of contradictions and hypocrisy so forgive me if I don't believe a word you type.

Yes, it's a belief, my own gut instinct,

Well sorry science doesn't go on gut instinct.

I don't "like" the Big Bang. I don't like the timeframe of it all. I've seen the conclusions and I simply don't like them. They don't answer much, but what they do simply has to be wrong. And anyone can see that in just how wild the official theories have gotten lately, just to support a continuously falling structure.

Has to be wrong? Continuously falling structure? Based on what? Common smart guy you seem to know everything give us a better theory, whats the truth because simply not liking something doesn't prove it wrong, a lot of people didn't like the Theory of Relativity when it was first put out because it disproved the Space Aether. Still didn't make it any less right.

 

[Pieturli]

Yeah I don't quite understand what the controversy here is. Scientists have never claimed to being infallible.

"...science does not discover "facts," but rather it finds statements (theories, formulae, descriptions) as a result of having examined the real world, statements that describe what may be expected to be found under stated conditions."
-James Randi

Science does not make claims like "we know with 100% certainty that this is true". Its just about what the evidence supports. Now, what that evidence appears to support may in fact end up not being true, but so what? Then its not true, and then we just look for a new answer.

If there is one group of people on this planet who say "I don't know" a lot, its scientists.

 

[The_Darkness]

I don't watch EC so I don't know the context in which they said that but science as science can never TRUELY be proven. We can be 99.99999999999 ad nauseum % sure but we can never be 100% sure.

Coincidentally, that is my main issue with the theist/athiest argument. Neither side can ever truly prove their side and eventually, when you dig far enough, both come down to "because that's what I think." But both sides claim evidence/lack of evidence as validation of 100% certainty. It's a nasty can of worms.

1. That's not what science does. It tells us what _isn't_ true, and we know what is true lies within a certain remaining range by logic. There is no faith of any kind required, and anyone that says otherwise needs to consider going back to grammar school because the education system has apparently failed them in a massive, fundamental way.

The 'faith', for want of a different word, is in the implicit assumption that we can trust our own observations. Science can only say stuff about the real world if we make that assumption.

As an example: There's a philosophical argument which is essentially extreme nihilism: that nothing exists. At all. Period. The problem is that to disprove such an argument, you need to make an observation of 'something'. And to make that observation you need... well... you. Bluntly, at a very very basic level, you have assumed your own existence. There is no observation that you can make to prove your own existence, because in making that observation you have assumed your own answer.

Obviously, no-one actually believes extreme nihilism - the only way that we can get useful stuff done is if we assume that there is something rather than nothing. However, there is still a basic assumption buried down there, and at the end of the day, that assumption could be referred to as faith.

...

On a completely separate level, the Scientific Method can be said to use faith. For example: I see that A & B are true. I assume that C is true. I then use the assumption of C to predict that D can be observed. Acting on 'faith' that C is true, I set up an experiment to observe D. If I do observe D, then C stands up to evidence (although it isn't proven - there could be alternative explanations for D). If I don't observe D, C is proven false.
Faith is used as a tool in the above, but both results are useful for the advancement of human knowledge.

 

[DaWaffledude]

Everything is based on faith in one form or another.

 

[disgruntledgamer]

On a completely separate level, the Scientific Method can be said to use faith. For example: I see that A & B are true. I assume that C is true. I then use the assumption of C to predict that D can be observed. Acting on 'faith' that C is true, I set up an experiment to observe D. If I do observe D, then C stands up to evidence (although it isn't proven - there could be alternative explanations for D). If I don't observe D, C is proven false.
Faith is used as a tool in the above, but both results are useful for the advancement of human knowledge.

That's not faith at least not in the context the OP is presenting.

When you get into the "Nothing exists" argument it's childish and a desperate attempt to grab onto something for a losing battle.

 

[Saxnot]

Following basic logic here you can make a statement that a deity does not exist in the sense that there is no evidence for one and things that have no evidence to support their existence can be assumed to not exist because otherwise an infinite amount of things would exist. (okay based on some scientific theories an infinite amount of things DO exist but this would imply that an infinite amount of things exist everywhere).

Can it be assumed? If you're talking about the fundamental structure of the universe and the place of belief in our understanding of it, you can't really use an argument like this. Just because it seems ridiculous and silly to you that an infinite number of things potentially exist everywhere, does not mean it isn't true.

The existence or nonexistence of god is fundamentally unsolvable. To illustrate: can you think of a situation that would definitely, without any doubt, prove or disprove the existence of god?

 

[disgruntledgamer]

The existence or nonexistence of god is fundamentally unsolvable. To illustrate: can you think of a situation that would definitely, without any doubt, prove or disprove the existence of god?

You cannot disprove a negative. I can't disprove god and you can't disprove a giant pink magical monkey living in the center of Uranus. All we can say is there is no evidence to support either of these two untested ideas.

 

[Saxnot]

The existence or nonexistence of god is fundamentally unsolvable. To illustrate: can you think of a situation that would definitely, without any doubt, prove or disprove the existence of god?

You cannot disprove a negative. I can't disprove god and you can't disprove a giant pink magical monkey living in the center of Uranus. All we can say is there is no evidence to support either of these two untested ideas.

And that is why there is no point in debating god in tems of proof of existence. Things that cannot be falsified cannot be proven or disproven, so you must always remain uncertain about them (or believe in their existence or nonexistence)

 

[NotALiberal]

I just think people are frightened at the idea that science might not be entierly infallible

Anybody like this does not know science. Science isn't faith based, but neither is it infallible. If you're researching something in science, be prepared for something you thought you knew to turn out false - its just the way things are. We don't understand things enough to be able to say "This is definitely True", and we never will.

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.

You were going well up until here. This is false. Evolution is like Gravity: It is real. What the Theory of Evolution is, is like the theory of Gravity - it doesn't say "Gravity Might exist" or "Evolution Might exist", it says "Gravity exists, and this is how it might work" or "Evolution exists, and this is how it might work".
Anything based on observation can be assumed to be 100% true, as we're not going to go into the whole philosophy side of things like the brain in the jar as they are utterly irrelevant to how this universe works. We see creatures slowly change over several generations, including, most prominently, humans, as well as bacteria doing the same thing within minutes. We know that Evolution exists. How it works is what we have to question.

OT: Science is not based on faith. It is based on evidence and scrutiny. You don't have faith that your theories are true, you have faith that they aren't, and that you don't know enough to make the perfect theory, and that is why people keep testing theories and try to break them, then allow them to be broken when some completely different test - sometimes from a different field of science - yields a result that defies your theories, but you doubt that result as well and it must be pretty much exactly repeatable if someone else were to do the experiment with the same set up.
There is no faith in this. You don't believe in your results and trust them to work, unless its out of a sense of pride, but you acknowledge always that they have a high chance of being wrong. Science is not based on faith, its based on evidence, most of which is based off observation. Science is as based off faith as the concept that I'm looking at my PC screen is [I AM looking at my PC screen, so from my perspective this is 100% true] - i.e: its not.

Wrong.

You were also going well until you stated evolution as undisputed fact (and gravity for that matter too).

You can never prove a hypotheses, only disprove it. That IS science in a nutshell. Just because the theory of gravity has still held up, doesn't mean tomorrow it will. You may argue this to be "semantics", but this is science 101. In this regard, yes, science can also be "faith" based.

 

[disgruntledgamer]

The existence or nonexistence of god is fundamentally unsolvable. To illustrate: can you think of a situation that would definitely, without any doubt, prove or disprove the existence of god?

You cannot disprove a negative. I can't disprove god and you can't disprove a giant pink magical monkey living in the center of Uranus. All we can say is there is no evidence to support either of these two untested ideas.

And that is why there is no point in debating god in tems of proof of existence. Things that cannot be falsified cannot be proven or disproven, so you must always remain uncertain about them (or believe in their existence or nonexistence)

So you think all the 240+ religions and gods (Including Scientology) are valid and perhaps should taught in schools as probable theories?

The fact is you CAN debate god in tems of proof of existence because unlike the general concept of god which cannot be disproved in general, just like the Giant Spaghetti Monster cannot be disproved, "Religion" of that god can be.

I cannot prove the general concept of god is false, but I can prove the book people claim is the word of god is full of %$#&. I can show through geographical evidence that there was no grate flood, I can show with mountains of evidence that the earth is older than 6,500 years, I can show that male Fluid does not come from between a man's backbone and ribs.(Qur?an BTW) Not to mention the crap the Bible and Qur?an share like the sun rotating around the earth and the earth being stationary.

If someone came up to you and said Zeus was the real true god and you should worship Zeus, but had no evidence or "proof" you probably wouldn't take him or his worship of Zeus seriously and it is for that exact same reason I'm not taking you seriously.

 

[disgruntledgamer]

In this regard, yes, science can also be "faith" based.

But it's not in that regard, the term faith has been completely taking out of context in general for this thread, it's like showing a picture of a ball bat and asking how can bats fly?

 

[NotALiberal]

In this regard, yes, science can also be "faith" based.

But it's not in that regard, the term faith has been completely taking out of context in general for this thread, it's like showing a picture of a ball bat and asking how can bats fly?

No, it's exactly what I said it was.

It takes faith to assume Gravity will hold up tomorrow just because it has held up the day before. It may not take much faith, but it's still faith.

 

[nvzboy]

To me science and religion shouldn't be compared to each other and are dealing with two completely seperate things. Science is what tries to find out how life works in a mechanical sence of the word. Religion tries to give purpose and morality to life. To me science and religion can co-exist if they would just stop getting in each other's way.