Do you think Science is a faith?

[Furrowed Brow]

science is a methaphysical assumption

mateiralism is a metaphysical assumption

your rejection of superanturalism is a metaphsyical assumption

Science is currently the dominant religion,

I see a connection between the two quotes. If I went and dug hard enough I'm sure I could find similar opinions in this forum. These are just the most recent ones I've come across. If I may generalize - they are the kind of statements made by theists. They seem to reflect a belief/attitude (either explicit or implicit) that the theist's claim to truth or knowledge are just as strong as science, or that science's claim is just as rickety as theism's. This belief might best be summed up as: the rejection of supernaturalism (the immaterial) is just an assumption made by materialism and science, and to presume its truth requires a faith not dissimilar to a religion.

Ok lets define supernaturalism as the belief in non physical/non material beings, entities or existences.

So how do we know science/materialism does not rejecting supernaturalism on faith? To be clear about the question. I am not asking whether supernaturalism is true or false. The question is about the strength of the methodology and logic of material science. To put the question another way: How much faith does the rejection of the supernatural require? None, some or heaps.

To kick off I say none. (And I'll try to back that up if/as the topic advances).

[Noachian]

Most deffinatly not....its a way of studying nature...some see it as an easy way to study the works of God's evident existance and others see it as merely a way of finding new thing out...

[Cryopyre]

Science and Religion do not use the same basis of faith. Let's take this as an example-

The ancient Norse believed that an Aurora was the cause of heavenly warriors riding on horseback, their plate shining in the light.

Modern science says that an Aurora is the cause of tons of electrons smashing into the atmoshpere of the earth, thankfully deflected by the magnetosphere.

Now which one is correct? I would say without a doubt, the second one. The scientific one. Now how much faith is required for that assumption, nearly zero. I say nearly because such theories are constantly updated, but that is just another thing about science.

Science is dynamic and changing as facts see fit

How often is a religion updated, never, at least never officially. Have you ever heard of the bible being reviewed and edited to check and see if the information is correct, because I haven't.

So with the same pattern that I can disregard theories of women on horseback causing auroras, I can disregard the origin or the flood within the bible, and have no qualms of faith.

[Furrowed Brow]

Hi MagusYanam

Thank you, Furrowed Brow, for the stipulation, but I have a couple of questions. I know dowsing, ghosts, astrology et cetera can be tested for and disproven by observation, but out of curiosity, how would you design a study to observe or test for things like divine agency or souls or dualism? I think there's a pretty big distinction between what David Hume would call 'miracle claims' (dowsing, ghosts, faith healing etc.) and metaphysical arguments for substance dualism, and that distinction has to do with whether the scientific method can be brought to bear on the question.

Here's two ways of looking at the problem.

1/ If God, souls the immaterial etc have no earthly affect then they cannot be tested for, and can easily be dismissed as having no bearing on us or the world in general. But this is where much of religion and the metaphysics of religion gets into a mess. Immaterial souls are supposed to be part of our personal identities. But which part? The part that has no earthly affect? In which case they have no effect over our earthly identities. So if you are good or bad or indifferent your soul has no bearing over this.

2/ Stuff like souls do have an earthly affect. Though the affects cannot be tested they can still be noticed. E.g. One might say Harry has a melancholy soul. So melancholia is a noticeable affect in Harry, but can we test for the soul? Well no.

I have problems with 2/. For one person Harry's melancholic soul is no more than a metaphorical way of speaking. To a more religious and literal minded person Harry's melancholia will be down to having a melancholic soul. However I'm one of those guys who would said that is just a way of speaking and it is silly to be too literal about that.

The problem for me, and why I find it all to easy to reject the supernatural is that either the proponents of the supernatural are involved in pseudo science e.g. astrology, dowsing and don't seem to have the faculty to recognize the emptiness, self deceit and lack or rigour in thir subject; or it stems from thinking too literally, and falling into category mistakes Thus before we even put science to the test it is the kind of thinking prone to category mistakes, that cooks up notions like the immaterial, souls, dualism, etc that can be rejected. No faith required.

More subtle theist thinkers have turned to discussing the nature of religious language. But of course that is a whole different debate and more literal thinkers tend to be in perpetual flight from hermeneutics.

Would you say ethical questions are more closely related to scientific inquiries or do they need a separate category of their own?

I think pro social behavior is a matter of science. And Utilitarianism which is basically an empirically philosophy and a method for evaluating pro social behavior, based on how prosocial it is.

Moral systems that based on notion of universal rules or precepts are junk as far as I'm concerned. I reject Kant. The rules of logic and the laws of the universal are universal, not the rules of what we should do. Same too for religion. If the 10 commandments or the teachings of Jesus work, then fine use them. But use them because they work for you, not because they are written down in the Bible, or someone claims their truth is universal or supernatural.

[palmera]

I agree with Juliod and others that science, by definition is not faith, nor is faith a necessary aspect of science. While MagnusYanam points out that on a fundamental level scientists must have faith that their senses are correct, this is not so.

The very fact that, as he also stated, tests must be repeatable time and again before gaining acceptance attests to the absence of faith in scientific inquiry, not to the fundamental necessity of faith in scientific observation.

Because scientists know that our senses present us with an elegant, but inexact impression of the world, that observations can be inexact, and that the accumulation of knowledge, data and observation can dramatically undermine long valued theories of reality, the field relies on inquiry, new information and theories rather than having faith in the current explanations offered for our existence.

Tossing "faith" around as a prerequisite for life as some have done thus far is an attractive proposition, but a game of semantics nonetheless.. Life is most certainly possible without faith, indeed in many ways better off since faith, by definition, stunts the search for knowledge and new meaning. It kills inquiry because it provides an answer which is to be believed without proof. One does not need faith to get through life. Certainly it can provide a comfortable crutch to those who do not wish to inquire further into a certain matter, and can even invigorate those fighting against all odds- but it's not necessary for human existence or happiness.

Also, while science may not make value judgements about the world per se, it can talk about where "values" and "morality" come from. Often people assume that morality and religion are mutually inclusive. This assertion has been unfortunately spoon fed to children for ages and it simply isn't true. Morality can be much better explained as a set of naturally selected behaviors. Appealing to the religion as the source of morality or its beneficiary will not hold up to critical analysis of humans (or other organisms for that matter) who show similar views of morality across cultures and religions. [long post, will come back to handle some specifics tomorrow]

[Anti-guy]

Science is not a religion, it is a tool, the problem is that it is in the hands of faulty humans so it is abused, misued, and redefined many times... If it was a religion it would be a pretty unstable one... Our scientific advancement for the sake of destruction moves much faster than our advancement for the sake of restoration. We would destroy ourselves by it before we could truly benefit from it...

[MagusYanam]

The very fact that, as he also stated, tests must be repeatable time and again before gaining acceptance attests to the absence of faith in scientific inquiry, not to the fundamental necessity of faith in scientific observation.

Actually... I apologise in advance; I'm going to put on my asshole-sceptic hat for a moment and dispute this point. Just because an experiment or an observational study can be repeated doesn't mean it is absolutely 'faith-less' (there is always some level of uncertainty in the veracity of the outcome). The observer places faith in her own senses when she conducts the experiment the first time. When her colleague reports the results of his own findings and they concur with her own, she is somewhat justified in that belief, but never completely. In her mind she is only reducing the probability that her senses are mistaken.

Science relies on empirical data. But empiricality, like everything else requiring sense experience, has a degree of certain uncertainty (how's that for an oxymoron?). You can say that empirical data that is tested again and again ad nauseam by different observers under different circumstances is epistemologically justified, but you can never say it is certain (that is to say, without 'faith' of a kind).

This is the reason (one of them) that science is intrinsically modest. The end result is not 'the world is x', it is more along the lines of 'given the sum of the data currently available, the world appears to best fit the model x'.

Also, while science may not make value judgements about the world per se, it can talk about where "values" and "morality" come from. Often people assume that morality and religion are mutually inclusive. This assertion has been unfortunately spoon fed to children for ages and it simply isn't true. Morality can be much better explained as a set of naturally selected behaviors. Appealing to the religion as the source of morality or its beneficiary will not hold up to critical analysis of humans (or other organisms for that matter) who show similar views of morality across cultures and religions.

I agree with the stance that religion cannot be considered the source of moral precepts and theories, that they have to have some kind of external moral system. However, religions can help create a moral order among people of the same culture, combining them with ritual and custom so that such moral precepts can be more easily understood and followed. Of course, most religions make similar or often identical normative moral standards, for example the rule of reciprocity (the Chinese call it 恕 shu, the West calls it the Golden Rule).

But what you have just described is what morality does - it functions as a survival technique (or rather a set there-of) among a gregarious, sentient species. What morality is is something different. You can say that 'moral precept y has success rate z at ensuring mutual survival among human beings', but you can't say, using scientific methodology, that 'moral precept y is right'.

[MagusYanam]

1/ If God, souls the immaterial etc have no earthly affect then they cannot be tested for, and can easily be dismissed as having no bearing on us or the world in general. But this is where much of religion and the metaphysics of religion gets into a mess. Immaterial souls are supposed to be part of our personal identities. But which part? The part that has no earthly affect? In which case they have no effect over our earthly identities. So if you are good or bad or indifferent your soul has no bearing over this.

2/ Stuff like souls do have an earthly affect. Though the affects cannot be tested they can still be noticed. E.g. One might say Harry has a melancholy soul. So melancholia is a noticeable affect in Harry, but can we test for the soul? Well no.

The thing is, science is tethered to the axis of materialism and deals only with data, and there are certain questions that science cannot answer, because they stray too far from that axis. Science tests not for God or for souls, but for, as you say, the earthly effects of God and souls - because that is all it can do.

Does this mean that they are not part of the cosmological construct we call the universe, and therefore they have no bearing on us? I don't see where that judgment can be made.

It is possible, for example, to see the brain and its chemistry as the seat of everything inherent to a person's personality, identity and thought process. But common sense would seem to dictate that a person has a more intimate access to his own personality, his own identity, his own thoughts, than he does to anything outside, in the realm of his senses. People can think even when they don't sense. The brain can produce its own images and sensations even when there is nothing to prompt them. And most individual human beings can control those thoughts, images and sensations. Something regulates the firing of the neurons in this particular pattern, something that science, with the data currently available, is not able to describe except in terms of uncertainty.

The argument can go either way - perhaps the very act of controlling one's thoughts and patterns of sense boils down to brain chemistry in the end. But the mind-body problem still does attract its share of philosophers, so it can't be an entirely useless debate.

More subtle theist thinkers have turned to discussing the nature of religious language. But of course that is a whole different debate and more literal thinkers tend to be in perpetual flight from hermeneutics.

Sad, but unfortunately true. A lot of people in my faith are afraid of empirical data and that it will destroy their faith. These more subtle theist thinkers you refer to have learned that faith and science are not mutually exclusive, and that religion has nothing to fear from the honest inquiries of the scientific community.

I think pro social behavior is a matter of science. And Utilitarianism which is basically an empirically philosophy and a method for evaluating pro social behavior, based on how prosocial it is.

Moral systems that based on notion of universal rules or precepts are junk as far as I'm concerned. I reject Kant. The rules of logic and the laws of the universal are universal, not the rules of what we should do. Same too for religion. If the 10 commandments or the teachings of Jesus work, then fine use them. But use them because they work for you, not because they are written down in the Bible, or someone claims their truth is universal or supernatural.

Umm... okay, where to begin?

Firstly, are you trying to support utilitarianism as a moral philosophy or ethical subjectivism? If you are a utilitarian, you should not say 'if it works for you, then it is right', you should say 'if it yields the greatest possible utility, then it is right'. Utilitarianism is every bit as 'universal', as you put it, as Kantian deontology. Under utilitarian ethics there is an objective standard which applies to every person in the universe, and that is that whatever action causes the greatest happiness (among the largest number of people for the longest amount of time, for example - I'm not going to do the entire Jeremy Bentham spiel) is ethically right.

Secondly, regardless of whether or not ethics uses empirical data (as in utilitarianism), it still retains one major distinction from scientific inquiry. Science is not allowed to say 'whatever causes the most happiness for the most people is right', since 'right' is a normative measure and science deals with the empirical, and the empirical only.

Thirdly, how is Kantian (or any other form of) deontology 'junk' simply because it uses basic logical tenets in the same way that Benthamite utilitarianism uses data of pain and pleasure? Given that deontology doesn't use the rules of logic as ethical standards (only to support them), your argument is flawed enough. But assuming utilitarianism to refute deontological ethics is begging the question - if you're going to make an argument against deontology, do it without making utilitarian assumptions.

[Furrowed Brow]

Just because an experiment or an observational study can be repeated doesn't mean it is absolutely 'faith-less' (there is always some level of uncertainty in the veracity of the outcome).

I realise that I never bothered to define faith in my opening post. I take this from my Reader's Digest dictionary

Faith = complete trust or confidence.

Now I am sure there are plenty of scientist who psychologically speaking have complete trust in certain principles and theories. However the conclusions of science can always be falsified. Logically speaking we cannot have complete trust in the last scientific conclusion. No matter how high our confidence, there is always a tacit doubt, albeit small or residual. That's why science is a contingent discipline.

Religion does not work like that. Religious faith is a complete trust in the precepts of one's religion. In fact to have doubt is usually seen as a negative, or an issue to wrestle with. Science on the other hand demands a certain degree of doubt. Doubt is the mother of criticism, and criticism, though not always accepted kindly, is the engine of change and better theories.

I have not heard a theist say something along the line... the bible is the word of God, but I find it healthy to always leave room for an element of doubt about that.

So I see a clear difference between the faith of religion and the confidence of science. Sometimes they seem to be in conflict over the details of say creationism or evolution. But really at a deeper level it is a conflict of methodologies. Science - Doubting Thomas good. Religion - Doubting Thomas needs to get over his doubts.

[MagusYanam]

I realise that I never bothered to define faith in my opening post. I take this from my Reader's Digest dictionary

Faith = complete trust or confidence.

Now I am sure there are plenty of scientist who psychologically speaking have complete trust in certain principles and theories. However the conclusions of science can always be falsified. Logically speaking we cannot have complete trust in the last scientific conclusion. No matter how high our confidence, there is always a tacit doubt, albeit small or residual. That's why science is a contingent discipline.

Religion does not work like that. Religious faith is a complete trust in the precepts of one's religion. In fact to have doubt is usually seen as a negative, or an issue to wrestle with. Science on the other hand demands a certain degree of doubt. Doubt is the mother of criticism, and criticism, though not always accepted kindly, is the engine of change and better theories.

I have not heard a theist say something along the line... the bible is the word of God, but I find it healthy to always leave room for an element of doubt about that.

So I see a clear difference between the faith of religion and the confidence of science. Sometimes they seem to be in conflict over the details of say creationism or evolution. But really at a deeper level it is a conflict of methodologies. Science - Doubting Thomas good. Religion - Doubting Thomas needs to get over his doubts.

You may not have heard a theist say something like that yet, but you'll hear it now, and I know I'm not the first to do so. I often like to, as Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael put it, put the grains of doubt into the oyster of my faith. Doubt can often make the resulting faith all the more clear and all the more valuable.

But in the spirit of reasonable discussion, allow me to make a counter-stipulation. Faith is one of those words that has become so ambivalent and so burdened down with cultural assumptions that it is almost impossible not to equivocate. Even the etymology of the word, from the Latin fidere 'to trust', is the primary component in the synonym you gave, Furrowed Brow: confidence. But in the religious tradition, many words of different etymologies have also been translated under the English cover-all of 'faith', including assensus, fiducia, fidelitas et cetera.

So for now, let's just cover assensus - assent. Belief in the truth of a proposition.

The scientific discipline assents, ultimately, to facts and observations. Things that can be sensed. And what it does with these facts and observations is it tries to explain them, giving the conditional assent you describe to an explanatory model (what is commonly called a 'theory') which fits with all of the available facts and observations. The scientific faith, or assent, is a very modest and an extremely epistemologically sound form of faith.

Religious faith is far broader and often less modest, and covers fiducia (as well as a loose assensus). Religious faith is not faith in fact, not faith in observation, but faith in meaning. Science assents only to answers to the questions of 'how'. Religion concerns itself with the questions of 'why'. Thus, often, religious 'faith' is not assent, belief in the factual truth of a proposition, so much as fiducia - a deep emotional trust in the meaning of one's religion.

[Furrowed Brow]

I realise that I never bothered to define faith in my opening post. I take this from my Reader's Digest dictionary

Faith = complete trust or confidence.

Now I am sure there are plenty of scientist who psychologically speaking have complete trust in certain principles and theories. However the conclusions of science can always be falsified. Logically speaking we cannot have complete trust in the last scientific conclusion. No matter how high our confidence, there is always a tacit doubt, albeit small or residual. That's why science is a contingent discipline.

Religion does not work like that. Religious faith is a complete trust in the precepts of one's religion. In fact to have doubt is usually seen as a negative, or an issue to wrestle with. Science on the other hand demands a certain degree of doubt. Doubt is the mother of criticism, and criticism, though not always accepted kindly, is the engine of change and better theories.

I have not heard a theist say something along the line... the bible is the word of God, but I find it healthy to always leave room for an element of doubt about that.

So I see a clear difference between the faith of religion and the confidence of science. Sometimes they seem to be in conflict over the details of say creationism or evolution. But really at a deeper level it is a conflict of methodologies. Science - Doubting Thomas good. Religion - Doubting Thomas needs to get over his doubts.

You may not have heard a theist say something like that yet, but you'll hear it now, and I know I'm not the first to do so. I often like to, as Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael put it, put the grains of doubt into the oyster of my faith. Doubt can often make the resulting faith all the more clear and all the more valuable.

But in the spirit of reasonable discussion, allow me to make a counter-stipulation. Faith is one of those words that has become so ambivalent and so burdened down with cultural assumptions that it is almost impossible not to equivocate. Even the etymology of the word, from the Latin fidere 'to trust', is the primary component in the synonym you gave, Furrowed Brow: confidence. But in the religious tradition, many words of different etymologies have also been translated under the English cover-all of 'faith', including assensus, fiducia, fidelitas et cetera.

So for now, let's just cover assensus - assent. Belief in the truth of a proposition.

The scientific discipline assents, ultimately, to facts and observations. Things that can be sensed. And what it does with these facts and observations is it tries to explain them, giving the conditional assent you describe to an explanatory model (what is commonly called a 'theory') which fits with all of the available facts and observations. The scientific faith, or assent, is a very modest and an extremely epistemologically sound form of faith.

Religious faith is far broader and often less modest, and covers fiducia (as well as a loose assensus). Religious faith is not faith in fact, not faith in observation, but faith in meaning. Science assents only to answers to the questions of 'how'. Religion concerns itself with the questions of 'why'. Thus, often, religious 'faith' is not assent, belief in the factual truth of a proposition, so much as fiducia - a deep emotional trust in the meaning of one's religion.

I'm impressed by your latin MagusYanam. That was well done.

I'm also impressed by your willingness to accept doubt. Though i think you are in the minority. I suspect for most theist's doubting one's faith is just something to wrestle, rather than embrace.

However, is your doubt psychological or philosophical. I suspect all theists entertain some doubt at some point. But does religion demand you question its precepts so you understand them better, or does it demand you be ready to disregard them? Science is very much open to the latter.

Ok. trusting sense data. Well it is possible to be a sceptic about everything. So one can doubt the veracity of sense data. But then the logic of a scientific proposition becomes - if A then B. If the sense data A do not mislead then B is at best a contingent truth. However, not only can B be open to falsification, there is the double whammy that sense data A might even be false. (We could all be living in the Matrix!). So B is doubly contingent.

The things held to be true by religion are not open for doubt in the same way I think. They are in principle not open for falsification. If you stop believing they are true then religion has lost a believer. If I stop believing that relativity is true (if I was a scientist) then science might not have lost a scientist.