Science is based on faith?

[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.

 

[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?

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.

No it isn't and if you think you need faith so you won't fly off planet earth tomorrow I don't know what to say to you, but obviously your argument has degraded into the ridiculous so there is no point in continuing.

 

[Aaron Sylvester]

If I say "I have faith in science" will my brain explode?

 

[gwilym101]

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.

We know gravity exists (i'm not going to talk about evolution although that's equally valid as gravity). You can see there is a force keeping us on this planet, keeping this planet orbiting the sun. There is no room for doubt in this. We might discover some new aspect of it, but that still won't change the fact that there is a force pulling us towards the centre of the planet.

The theory of gravity, is an explanation for how this force works. This can be wrong (hugely unlikely), but if the theory is proven wrong that won't mean that gravity doesn't exist, it'll just mean that we don't know how it works.

 

[James Joseph Emerald]

I have been arguing this point since long before the Extra Credits episode. In fact, I was quite amazed when it came out, because they covered almost all of my favourite points.

I've stopped getting into these arguments however, because it seems to be a black-or-white issue with people's understanding. I find it boils down to whether or not you correctly understand the term used, "faith", which in this philosophical context has a very specific meaning: accepting unprovable axiomatic statements as true. This is the fundamental basis of all positivism.

Some people who like science (and I say this in place of 'scientists', because most actual scientists have studied Philosophy of Science in college and already know this) object to the term faith, because they associate it with religion. However, they don't really understand the implications of saying "I have no faith in any axioms." This is essentially the definition of ontological nihilism: nothing is true or logical.

These same people follow this up with "I don't need faith, I rely on evidence to prove my axioms," but this simply demonstrates a major lack of understanding of how science and logic actually works. Every mathematical or scientific proof begins with an axiom, i.e. the results of another proof. There is no such thing as an original proof: if your axiom is "true because it is true", then it is known as a tautology and is considered logically unsound. No matter what you offer to prove another statement, another scientist can keep saying "now prove that." Eventually, you both have to agree on something that is taken for granted as true, rather than enter into an infinite loop of trying to prove each successive axiom. This is technically an act of faith.

It may be a much slighter act of faith than say, believing in the bible. But that's just a matter of scale. I don't think anyone is arguing that the scientific method requires as much faith as religion. Only that fundamentally, the two systems of belief are configured much the same, just with different axioms.

This is my understanding of things, as a current MSc student who has studied philosophy of science in university.
Take from this what you will. I just wrote this post in the hopes that it will help some genuinely science-minded people to overcome their inherent defensiveness (I was the same way when the topic was first broached in uni) and consider this logically.

 

[Vegosiux]

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.

Asking for specific information is not closed-minded. To a scientist, things like "Some people say..." or "This one guy once had this happen..." is worthless. Utterly, completely, worthless.

What, when, why, how, that's what a scientist is after. Specific, hard data. So if you say "Too many scientists act like this or that", sorry, that's nothing. Inquiring as to who is acting how exactly is not closed-minded.

As for why people embrace faith, there are several explanations for it out there, from fear of death to empowerment and so on.

And by the way, just because a scientist will analyze and calculate the refractions of different wavelengths of visible light through water droplets, doesn't mean that the same scientist can't see the simple beauty of the rainbow. A common misconception, I might add. Understanding how things work and being able to write them in equations and formulas takes no beauty out of those workings. To me, I'd say it adds another level of it. Science is beautiful - and whoever believes that an analytical approach "reduces everything to boring symbols and numbers" could not be more wrong.

 

[Smeatza]

Is science based on faith? No, it's based on evidence.
The only way you can imply science if based on faith is if you used the word "faith" in the sense meaning "confidence."

You can faff about with circular thought exercises if you want, but René Descartes was wasting his time with that philosophical mess 400 years ago.

 

[Saxnot]

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

No. I have no idea what relevance this has to the question of the place proof has in religion. This is an interesting question as well, but really deserves a seperate discussion.

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.

Disproving factual assertions in holy books does not really invalidate them. Or usually cause believers to question their faith. There are actually very few people who interpret the bible literally, and really think that yes, the world is 6000 years old. More importantly, those assertions aren't really essential to the religion. People don't believe in the idea that male fluid comes from beetween a man's backbone and ribs, they believe that there is no god but Allah and Muhammed is his prophet. Religions don't base their claim to your faith on their ability to explain how everything works, but on why it works and who made it. To a religious person, the value in the story of the great flood is not in explaining the state of the world, but in reaffirming the importance of faith.

To make a scientific analogy: say someone came up with a small snag in gravity theory. A planet is not where it should be according to our current models. This would not in itself be enough to invalidate the entire theory. You might ignore it, or trust that the answer would be found later and the model slightly modified, but relatively small elements of the entire theory being in doubt is not usually enough to discredit it.

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.

I would take his religion as seriously as i do all religions. I would listen to his ideas, and if he doesn't convince me, i would always keep in mind that he might just be right. I cannot disprove him, so i must remain uncertain about the (non)existence of Zeus. I might be more inclined to listen to him than a priest in fact, the greek gods certainly seem more lively an relatable than Jahwe.

If you don't take me seriously that's a shame. I'm being very serious, and i'm certainly taking you seriously. i wouldn't be writing all this if i wasn't.

 

[disgruntledgamer]

Is science based on faith? No, it's based on evidence.
The only way you can imply science if based on faith is if you used the word "faith" in the sense meaning "confidence."

Ding Ding and we have a Winner! Someone finally looked up the definition of faith and found the hidden definition. I explained this like 3 times.

 

[Something Amyss]

Disproving factual assertions in holy books does not really invalidate them. Or usually cause believers to question their faith.

Actually, disproving factual assertions does invalidate them. The latter part is true, however.

The thing is, if something or someone asserts facts that can be rebutted, rebutting them does challenge the validity. And it does challenge the tenets of the faith; it undercuts the majority of Abrahamic tenets (for example, especially since they're the ones who tend to most fervently assert their faith).

You're right that it usually doesn't change minds, but that's a horse of a different colour.

 

[EvilRoy]

I have been arguing this point since long before the Extra Credits episode. In fact, I was quite amazed when it came out, because they covered almost all of my favourite points.

I've stopped getting into these arguments however, because it seems to be a black-or-white issue with people's understanding. I find it boils down to whether or not you correctly understand the term used, "faith", which in this philosophical context has a very specific meaning: accepting unprovable axiomatic statements as true. This is the fundamental basis of all positivism.

Some people who like science (and I say this in place of 'scientists', because most actual scientists have studied Philosophy of Science in college and already know this) object to the term faith, because they associate it with religion. However, they don't really understand the implications of saying "I have no faith in any axioms." This is essentially the definition of ontological nihilism: nothing is true or logical.

These same people follow this up with "I don't need faith, I rely on evidence to prove my axioms," but this simply demonstrates a major lack of understanding of how science and logic actually works. Every mathematical or scientific proof begins with an axiom, i.e. the results of another proof. There is no such thing as an original proof: if your axiom is "true because it is true", then it is known as a tautology and is considered logically unsound. No matter what you offer to prove another statement, another scientist can keep saying "now prove that." Eventually, you both have to agree on something that is taken for granted as true, rather than enter into an infinite loop of trying to prove each successive axiom. This is technically an act of faith.

It may be a much slighter act of faith than say, believing in the bible. But that's just a matter of scale. I don't think anyone is arguing that the scientific method requires as much faith as religion. Only that fundamentally, the two systems of belief are configured much the same, just with different axioms.

This is my understanding of things, as a current MSc student who has studied philosophy of science in university.
Take from this what you will. I just wrote this post in the hopes that it will help some genuinely science-minded people to overcome their inherent defensiveness (I was the same way when the topic was first broached in uni) and consider this logically.

I guess I'll state my background since you stated yours so we can move forward without assumptions about each other. I'm an engineering alumni with a masters of engineering in my chosen field, although I have never studied philosophy of science opting instead for symbolic philosophy and a bit of nihilism (waste of time).

The thought I've always had about the axioms we depend on in science is that we don't so much assume that they are true, we just accept that they exist. That is, we aren't assuming that it is correct that a+b=b+a and so forth, but we are defining a set of rules that all the work we do is based on. The idea being that in order for one mathematical equation to have any relevance to any other, they both need to have been based on the same set of rules.

So to my mind the question has always been "does it matter what rules we use, so long as everyone follows the same rules?" Of course the very first problem that comes to mind is "x=x". If "x~=x" it's pretty tough to even communicate a formula in general, but thinking about this I always come to rest on the proof a friend of mine produced for either his BSc or MSc in mathematics (I've forgotten which), "1+1=2". In this proof he exhaustively defined "1" and "2" and depended on "x=x" to prove that "1=1", but couldn't he have simply duplicated his pages of work for the definition of "1" to define, say, "y" and then defined the system as "1+y=2" where "y" has been defined separately from but the same as "1"?

This kinda stuff has always been pretty interesting for me, I wish I had taken the philosophy of science courses just for my own curiosity but I was more focused on passing and leaving at the time. I'm interested in your thoughts on this. Can axioms, like general rules, simply be swapped out for other axioms without changing the "truth" communicated by an equation, so long as those equations both fully follow their respective rules?

 

[Saxnot]

Disproving factual assertions in holy books does not really invalidate them. Or usually cause believers to question their faith.

Actually, disproving factual assertions does invalidate them. The latter part is true, however.

The thing is, if something or someone asserts facts that can be rebutted, rebutting them does challenge the validity. And it does challenge the tenets of the faith; it undercuts the majority of Abrahamic tenets (for example, especially since they're the ones who tend to most fervently assert their faith).

You're right that it usually doesn't change minds, but that's a horse of a different colour.

My point is those things are not essential. The question is whether you can debate the existence or nonexistence of god in terms of (factual) proof. But the place of a religion is to give spiritual meaning and context to the world. To challenge their factual asserions of the type 'this spins around that' is to debate the most minor and unimportant element of the religion. Trying to invalidate a religion this way completely misses the essential point of religion. if you already believe, disproving these things is unlikely to change your mind. That is why factual errors don't invalidate holy books. Because factual asserions about the functioning of the human body or the arrangements of planets are not the point of holy books.

The tenets of christianity are not based on the question of whether there was a great flood. They are (for example) based on the ten commandments. If you believe those are valid and correct assertions, thats a reason to obey and believe in them, not whether or not Sodom and Gamorrah existed.

 

[disgruntledgamer]

Disproving factual assertions in holy books does not really invalidate them.

Yes it does.

Or usually cause believers to question their faith. There are actually very few people who interpret the bible literally, and really think that yes, the world is 6000 years old.

Oh really

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2012/06/01/gallup-poll-46-of-americans-are-creationists/

More importantly, those assertions aren't really essential to the religion.

Yes they are.

People don't believe in the idea that male fluid comes from beetween a man's backbone and ribs, they believe that there is no god but Allah and Muhammed is his prophet.

Um no there is more to the Qur'an than just Allah and Muhammed as his prophet, and fluid comes from between a man's backbone and ribs is in the Qur?an 86:6-7. I gave you the verse look it up.

Religions don't base their claim to your faith on their ability to explain how everything works, but on why it works and who made it. To a religious person, the value in the story of the great flood is not in explaining the state of the world, but in reaffirming the importance of faith.

Yes they do, religions don't explain how anything works. Faith is not only unimportant, but by definition foolish. Faith in the religious context is to believe in something not only without evidence, but despite the evidence.

To make a scientific analogy:

Please don't even try......

say someone came up with a small snag in gravity theory. A planet is not where it should be according to our current models. This would not in itself be enough to invalidate the entire theory. You might ignore it, or trust that the answer would be found later and the model slightly modified, but relatively small elements of the entire theory being in doubt is not usually enough to discredit it.

Science is always updating, changing /modifying it's models when new information/evidence comes in. This isn't a hypothetical it's happening now to most scientific models, and there are more than a few small snags in the theory of gravity, and there are objects in space that shouldn't be where they are, once again not a hypothetical in fact evolution is a stronger theory than gravity.

I have no idea what point you were trying to make with this as it is so far attached from the topic it's astounding.

I would take his religion as seriously as i do all religions. I would listen to his ideas, and if he doesn't convince me, i would always keep in mind that he might just be right. I cannot disprove him, so i must remain uncertain about the (non)existence of Zeus. I might be more inclined to listen to him than a priest in fact, the greek gods certainly seem more lively an relatable than Jahwe.

No you wouldn't you don't even lie good.

If you don't take me seriously that's a shame. I'm being very serious, and i'm certainly taking you seriously. i wouldn't be writing all this if i wasn't.

No I don't, for the same reason I wouldn't take someone seriously who believed the moon was made out of cheese. That might sound mean, but I never said I was nice.