Mlodinow & Hawking on Model-Dependent Realism

I have no issue with those who choose to have faith per se. My arguments are with those who assert that their faith based beliefs are evidenced or as valid as scientific conclusions in some way. You continue to be bamboozled by your own terminology. You seem to think that if you define faith as belief based on no evidence and science as evidenced based investigation that the latter can say nothing about the former as if this logically follows from the definitions alone. It doesn’t. And it turns out that science has a great deal to say about both faith based conclusions and the nature of faith itself. You have yet to cite a matter of faith that science must stay silent upon. We can show through science that a frog god is very unlikely to be the cause of rain. We can fill that gap in human knowledge. Whether those confronted with the facts choose to relinquish their faith based beliefs in the face of evidence is, as you say, up to them.But if, as is so often the case, those who take the faith based option insist that their belief is evidenced or that the evidence based conclusion is no more or less valid than their own — I will argue with them. My panties are wad free I am glad to say. But as above — I have no issue with those who choose to have faith per se. My arguments are with those who assert that their faith based beliefs are evidenced or as valid as scientific conclusions in some way. How do we decide what is harmful? Is teaching creationism in schools harmful? Guilty as charged. I have lots of them. That is the idea. Aside from my own entertainment that is.

And yet you cannot name one of these "matters of faith" on which science is silent.

Argument? No. This is a discussion/debate board and you made a claim that you no longer wish to discuss. Given the nature of this board, your statement raised substantial, warranted ire. The first thing that I thought when I read it was "that's funny, because people of faith sure seem to want to muck about with science" but you want science to leave your faith alone. Surely you can see why it was brought to light......

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"What can be asserted without proof, can be dismissed without proof."-Hitch.

Precisely, and in such case science would have nothing to say about it. Hmmm where did I hear that before??

Not at all. Science would say that they are almost certainly wrong in their conclusions and that the faith based foundation of their beliefs is demonstrably unreliable.Are you familiar with the topics discussed here at EvC at all..........

And yet here I am. Muck about with science? There are many people of religious faith who are scientist. But there no scientific fields of study that deal with faith in god. Why is that?

I think the social sciences would have a lot to say about faith and religion. These phenomena are widespread throughout many cultures and persist even in modern, scientifically advanced societies. Did a predisposition for religious belief evolve in early humans? How and why are religious beliefs transmitted from generation to generation and from culture to culture? What factors account for the rises and declines in religious activitiy that have occurred from time to time? These all seem like valid scientific questions to me.

Can you show me some reliable scientific evidence that people who believe in a god, or gods are wrong for doing so? That their conclusions based on nothing more than faith are scientifically disproved? yes.

ok you got me on that one.
But I feel it is more of a matter that the research of a social scientist could show from whence these practices came etc.. but not whether or not the individual who believes such things is delusional. It can be shown through a PET scan what regions of the brain light up that produce the feeling of euphoria in religious prayer. But the scan does not show the prayer, nor does it show from whence it is propagated.

There's this phenomena called "creationism". Perhaps you are familiar with it? Sometimes it is referred to as Intelligent Design.

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"What can be asserted without proof, can be dismissed without proof."-Hitch.

aka psuedo sciences. Why? because real science deals with things that can be verified. You can not verify faith. You can call it bullshit, but that is not science is it.

Psychology, neurology, anthropology and psychiatry.

And these scientific fields of study have what to say about faith?
How is faith in something like the prophet Mohammad accending into heaven have anything to do with these sciences?
Granted I do not know. I know a psycologist and will ask him if his field of study deals with faith in god. I would assume it also deals with faith in monsters under the bed too.

I'm not aware of any scientific field that deals exclusively with faith in god, but several scientific fields deal with it in a broader context. Anthropology deals with faith in god as part of its investigation of human cultures. Some sociologists study comparative religions.

Those fields will study any aspect of human behaviour and beliefs. It's not what they say at the moment that's important, but you were saying, for some reason, that science shouldn't study religious faith.Religion is a real phenomenon, and there is nothing real that science won't or can't study.Studies related to the human mind, like that mind itself, are very complex, and it will be a long time, I predict, until we have a clear understanding of what religions are, why people believe in them, and what role they play in society.Don't make the mistake that this is to do with "disproving" your particular faith or anyone else's. A good scientist would certainly not claim to be able to do that at this point in time, and very little of such scientific research has to do with conclusive "proofs" of anything anyway.Proofs are for mathematics.