Hello Bridgebuilder,
I agree. It is a matter of faith. Faith in science or faith in religion. I happen to believe that God is the ultimate scientist and both sides have validity. Both side have falsehoods. I am aware that this view will not make allies either side.
Well it all depends on what you class as the meaning of 'faith'.
If I use an elevator to go up 30 floors I am in a way using 'faith' that the lift engineers have got their maths right, their use of technology etc etc and I won't plummet 30 floors due to engineering incompetence. But that 'faith' is more 'trust' in the competence of the engineers and the science behind elevator technology.
In principle if I wished I could see the specification of the elevator, it's materials, load strength, a host of other technical specifications to make the elevator work. If I'm bright enough I cold even offer improvements to the design!
Contrast this with 'faith' needed for religion. No real world evidence that a God ever existed save for the utterings from bronze-age shepherds. Faith is something you need when you have NO evidence. Faith is sold to the religious as some sort of divine gift "You just gotta have faith man!". But in reality faith isn't a laudable trait - it's gullibility.
Why on earth would you want to have 'faith' in something without evidence to back it up?
The real difference between science and religion is one requires faith in the absence of evidence whilst the other ONLY uses real world evidence to formulate its theories.
Science can make a 180 degree turn if evidence points to the contrary - this has happened before. Suggestion of meteoritic explosions causing biological catastrophe had been suggested almost a hundred years ago but it wasn’t' until the late 1970s when it was taken seriously when evidence (such as the KT boundary layer) started coming to light.
Science is not dogmatic - it follows the evidence - the only 'dogma' it uses is "The evidence leads the way". Surely any other approach is stupidity! I challenge you to show otherwise.
Religion on the other hand is very much dogma. "We have these ancient tribal words telling us the score and any evidence to the contrary must be wrong....cos those ancients couldn't possibly have got it wrong - could they?" Bollox !!
You surely aren’t that dim..are you??
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