How can you honestly believe in Science?

This may or may not be in the right forum--it's really up to the opinion of the administrators here. If you define a religion as a "faith-based system of belief" then I would assert that science belongs here (even though the conspiracy aspect is left out).

Another reason I put this thread here is to directly relate it to the "how can you honestly believe in God" thread.

The reason I challenge the premise of that thread is simple: everything is based on faith. Belief in God is based on faith. Belief in science is based on faith. Belief in Elvis living on the dark side of the moon is based on faith. I really don't know what sort of direction I expect this discussion to take. It is merely a challenge to those that view a belief in God as absurd. I would assert that a belief in science is just as absurd, if and only if one thinks faith is absurd.

Let me illustrate. I've woken up thousands of times over my life, and each time, the sun rose (I bet some of you are familiar with this demonstration in skepticism). By using my past experiences, I can "logically" deduce that tomorrow morning, the sun will rise again. This is false, however. Just because I haven't gotten in a car accident following the thousands of times I woke up doesn't mean I won't get in one today. Past experiences are for practical purposes useful, but hardly "truth." Take the instance of the scientific assertion that "all swans are white." Woops, look at that black swan found in Australia by the enlightened Europeans. It turns out that past experiences are no basis for assertions of "truth" or predictions of the future.

The point I'm making is that science is a faith-based system of belief, just as is religion. In religion, we have faith that a higher being (deities, God, etc.) exists. In science, we have faith that our perceptions of the world are reliable.

[edit on 9-8-2007 by Luap]

I should point out that I have "faith" in both systems of belief. I think a higher being exists and I think our perceptions are reliable.

Thank you!!!


It is true, regardless of why someone believes in one thing over another, they are still believing. There ain't no getting around that.

Science is really not much more than highly predictable educated guesses, at best. Look at the history of science, and you see something similar to the history of religion.


The only difference is in Jean-Lyotard's notion of the narrative form.

Originally posted by Quazga
Science is really not much more than highly predictable educated guesses, at best. Look at the history of science, and you see something similar to the history of religion.

It's thanks to science that you can use computers, watch tv programs, have access to knowledge, to what's going on, it's how you can be in good health and live longer, etc. Everything you have and most of what you can do is thanks to open minded philosophers and scientists, not religion.

When the church ruled, europe was in it's dark ages.. if you dismiss science and establish this big church again, you'll return to those dark ages.

[edit on 9-8-2007 by DarkSide]

It's just a measure of doubt. It's wrong to simply believe anything is right or wrong, only more or less likely to be true. For example, I could be on Mars, the government could be lying to us about how we're really on Earth, etc. But it's so unlikely that we can dismiss it entirely; we have no proof. We think that living things are made of cells, because we have a lot of proof that supports it. It's very likely. But if anyone believes in something completely, even reality, that's nothing but ignorance.

Originally posted by Johnmike
We think that living things are made of cells, because we have a lot of proof that supports it. It's very likely. But if anyone believes in something completely, even reality, that's nothing but ignorance.

You think that living things being made of cells being "very likely"? I've seen my own cells with my own eyes which are also made of cells.

Actually Science is not faith based. I am a religious man and I do realize
how much we as humans need science.
Science is all about facts, if they can't do an experiment over again
then it is not science.

Originally posted by Equinox99
Actually Science is not faith based. I am a religious man and I do realize
how much we as humans need science.
Science is all about facts, if they can't do an experiment over again
then it is not science.

For the most part. I was watching "This Elegant Universe" and they continually stated that if a theory can't be tested, it stops being science and becomes philosophy. Yet, there are a couple scientific theories that can't be tested that some claim as true science, often very passionately. I won't name the theories, but they're out there

Read your history man, the Church didn't cause the Dark ages, it helped to hold them back as much as possible.

Its because of a lot of things that I am here today so what I can use computers, we still have no idea what electricity really is, we just know how to use it.

Same goes for Religion, we have *some* idea have how to use spirituality, but we have no idea what it is.

Originally posted by Equinox99
Actually Science is not faith based. I am a religious man and I do realize
how much we as humans need science.
Science is all about facts, if they can't do an experiment over again
then it is not science.

Actually Science *is* faith based. It's based on the faith that what we see is real. How many times though is it proven that what we see is not the whole picture.

Science is not all about facts and repeated experimentation, go study quantum physics and see how your point is thrown on its head.

Also see how scientists try to fool the masses with statistics, with reductionism etc. Science is moot in this country now that it has been railroaded by political parties.

What do you want to prove? We got a science for that!

Personally I dont believe in either, especially religion, but you can sure learn alot from them. Guess that makes both of them a good thing.

Who say's I have to believe in anything. Now that I think about it I dont really believe in anything at all, including everything I see like this computer screen im looking at. Its all a matrix.

Originally posted by earth2
Personally I dont believe in either, especially religion, but you can sure learn alot from them. Guess that makes both of them a good thing.

Who say's I have to believe in anything. Now that I think about it I dont really believe in anything at all, including everything I see like this computer screen im looking at. Its all a matrix.

Amen Brother!

mod please delete.

[edit on 8/9/2007 by agent violet]

Please do not delete...
The point of this thread, although not conspiracy related, is that some people rely on science as Absolute truth, as much as some folks rely on religion as Absolute truth.

Even the science of Hegel makes a distinction between a Workable truth that we can grasp regardless of the flaws in our senses, and an absolute truth which we can never grasp, as we are a part of the equation.

science cannot trump religion and religion cannot trump science, as they are both methods of "seeking truth".


The real question is why do some people seek truth so ardently, and others could care less?

Originally posted by Quazga
Read your history man, the Church didn't cause the Dark ages, it helped to hold them back as much as possible.

I did. The church kept europe in the dark ages for more than a millenia.

we still have no idea what electricity really is, we just know how to use it.

Maybe you have no idea what it is, but I can assure scientists do. For example electrical current is a flow of electrons.

Originally posted by LuapLet me illustrate. I've woken up thousands of times over my life, and each time, the sun rose (I bet some of you are familiar with this demonstration in skepticism). By using my past experiences, I can "logically" deduce that tomorrow morning, the sun will rise again. This is false, however. Just because I haven't gotten in a car accident following the thousands of times I woke up doesn't mean I won't get in one today.[edit on 9-8-2007 by Luap]

That really is a very poor analogy. There is no cause and effect, and science is very big on both. Waking up does not cause car accidents, although falling asleep at the wheel usually does. Do you drive? Have you been in an accident? Well, if you have, you would have been far less likely to have survived it 50 years ago. Do you know why? Because car design has improved. The science has got better. The physics of the collision, and the way the materials react to it, is better understood.

For someone who knows nothing about science at all faith is an issue, as they must take someone else's word on what that science entails. The whole point of science is that something is only considered true (proven) when anybody replicating an experiment will achieve the same results.

The big problem with science is that the world it talks about is only ever an approximation, a simplification, of the real world. The only successful experiments are those in which every variable can be controlled or accounted for. This cannot happen in the real world. However, this being said, it does a very good job of representing the real world.

Where is the deity? The morality? If you think science is a religion then you are confusing religion with philosophy. What we call science could also be decribed as Western empiricism.

It is quite entertaining to think of the various scientific disciplines as cults though.

[edit on 10-8-2007 by Karilla]

Looks like someone done Philosophy 101, heh.

Solipsism - the last refuge of the faith-based. Which is the extreme of this line of thought. And a type of relativistic idea that science is as good as faith is an essential component of 'anything goes' postmodernism nihilistic thinking.

But don't the postmodernists claim only to be 'playing games'? Isn't it the whole point of their philosophy that anything goes, there is no absolute truth, anything written has the same status as anything else, no point of view is privileged? Given their own standards of relative truth, isn't it rather unfair to take them to task for fooling around with word-games, and playing little jokes on readers? Perhaps, but one is then left wondering why their writings are so stupefyingly boring. Shouldn't games at least be entertaining, not po-faced, solemn and pretentious?

Richard Dawkins

Science produces reliable results. That is why it is successful. Many philosophers despise it, because essentially we produce reliable knowledge, much better than sitting around a table engaging in philosophical masturbation determining whether ze table really exists.

Science - the successful bastard child of philosophy.

Science is not about absolute truth. Religion is. Science is about gaining reliable understanding of the universe. It produces tentative models that change with evidence, faith-based approaches do no such thing, as evidence need not apply. Science is about gaining a peek up coy mother nature's petticoat.

If science does not represent a degree of reality, then nothing does. And the evidence of its success suggests it does. Faith? Bleh...

Science requires one epistemological assumption. That axiom is that objective reality exists. If this wrong, then who cares? We might be a computer simulation, or a brain in vat, we might all exist in your mind. In which case, we are testing the 'reality' of the nature of the computer system, other simulated universe, or your imagination. However, we will never be able to prove it so. It is a waste of the brain glucose that doesn't really exist. Even if we are in a simulation, it is then still the reality in which we play, and science is still practical approach to gaining knowledge.

Cogito, ergo sum.

So, whatever this reality is, science is the optimal method of knowing and understanding it. In fact, I would suggest it is the only reliable way of knowing.

[edit on 10-8-2007 by melatonin]

Originally posted by DarkSide

Originally posted by Quazga
Read your history man, the Church didn't cause the Dark ages, it helped to hold them back as much as possible.

I did. The church kept europe in the dark ages for more than a millenia.

we still have no idea what electricity really is, we just know how to use it.

Maybe you have no idea what it is, but I can assure scientists do. For example electrical current is a flow of electrons.

LOL! Dude... when the Roman empire left Western Europe and went o Byzantium, it was the Church that kept the infrastructure going in and around Italy. The Church had nothing to do with the dark ages, other than being another player. It had more to do with Moors, and Vikings, and Lombards, etc. The Church wasn't even a real power player during most of it.

Scientists know how to "use" electricity, they don't know what makes it work though. Electrons are a word we have come up with to describe a discreet point in a wave equation. Don't be so blind as to confuse the map with the territory.

Sorry, but I don't need faith to know that 2 plus 2 always equals 4.

Originally posted by ModernDystopia
Sorry, but I don't need faith to know that 2 plus 2 always equals 4.

No, but you might need some help because you are confusing science with mathematics. Understand that mathematics is the language of science, it is not one and the same as science.