Equating science with faith

I do want to take argument. Faith is not "a system for finding truth". If Joe has faith in the Sun God, he has not found the truth of the Sun God. If you're implying that Joe would have discovered a "truth" in his own subjective "reality", then I think that your use of the words truth and reality are pointless. I don't see how faith can be a tool for finding truth, but it's certainly a very effective tool for obscuring truth, as we see here on EvC every day!I think that you're maybe obscuring the fairly straightforward subject of the thread by using words in unusual ways. The question is, does science require faith in the same way that Joe's evidenceless belief in the Sun God does.I say that the answer's a simple "no".

Outside of the fact that you have still failed to name a single method of dating which supports your assertions...Percy has clearly shown that your definition of uniformatanism is obviously wrong, your source's information has never been repeated nor even reviewed.CD240: Alternating layers laid down suddenlyEvolution on this planet occurred slowly. Evolution is not dictated as a theory by time. Evolution can occur quickly or slowly based on the climate and environment. We are now seeing super bugs and super pests arise in less then 50 years. How is that vast period of time?I'm still waiting for why catastrophes change the laws of physics.

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I do want to take argument. Faith is not "a system for finding truth". If Joe has faith in the Sun God, he has not found the truth of the Sun God. If you're implying that Joe would have discovered a "truth" in his own subjective "reality", then I think that your use of the words truth and reality are pointless. I don't see how faith can be a tool for finding truth, but it's certainly a very effective tool for obscuring truth, as we see here on EvC every day!

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I think that you're maybe obscuring the fairly straightforward subject of the thread by using words in unusual ways. The question is, does science require faith in the same way that Joe's evidenceless belief in the Sun God does.

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I say that the answer's a simple "no".

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Sure true enough science does not require faith. I dont really want to argue semantics at all! In fact I was backed into the argument. Furthermore I dont really mind if the system of belief surrounding metaphysics and the system of belief surrounding science are any different either. The argument was intended to explore the question. When you become as cynical as I am, its really irrelevent. A belief system is a belief system. Whether people find it more important that thier beliefs require faith or not, I really dont mind. So my question is now, why do you bother discussing any plausible connection between systems of faith and systems of science if you already know the answers? I'm not even going to take up such a pointless and doomed argument for the sake of discussion! Why should I bother even examining whether or not a belief in a sun god is evedenceless? I started out, and if you'd read any of my posts, saying a few assumptions.1) Science and religion are both systems of belief.
2) Neither faith nor science can validate one another.
3) Science and religion are different classifiable systems of belief.I stated that its not important to me whether or not a belief is based in reality or not, but its important to me what people believe and why.
Now if you can tell me that joes faith in a sun god, somehow makes it untrue that he believes there is a sungod, then you may have an argument.
You said that my use of the words are pointless. Tell me how its pointless when what a person believes, is something that they will kill or die for? Or fight vehemently such as you have done because of your beliefs? Tell me how this is not reality, and how it is pointless.

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The lottery and manufacturing gizmos are both ways of seeking wealth. The meaning of wealth, however, is ambiguous, allowing those who are of a mind to claim that the amusement born of anticipation one receives playing the Lotto or the pride one receives seeing all of those nice, shiny gizmos is a wealth worthy in its own right .

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This is, of course, merely back end loading: The making of lemon aid when the intended wealth doesn’t materialize, easing the guilt of bad decisions: Rationalization.

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I’m a bit hard put to understand why, since no one otherwise defined wealth then as cold hard cash when going into the fray, that it should be considered otherwise after the fact.

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Material wealth and spiritual wealth show no cause to be discussed in the same breath as if they somehow had anything close to the same meaning. They should, indeed, be given different names. “Knowledge” and “belief” would do if they weren’t already taken.

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Heh, I'm not going to disagree with that! I would say that the semantics of the words you suggested are muddying the water again, such as the word 'belief' which I do not equate with matters of spirit, I equate it with the matter of individual beliefs.If John believes he can pass his hand through a brick, his belief may be in error, if he had ever tried the resulting pain would probably cause john to discover a different belief. Then of course John could see a trained martial arts expert pass his hand through a brick, and discover that belief may have been in error. Belief to me has nothing to do with faith or whether something is rational, it just means that it's something a person thinks that a person knows.Semantics really drag me down most of the time, but some people tend to believe that it is a reason to argue, and thats fine because it allows me to examine thier subjective beliefs. I dont judge them, I actually tend to think that all beliefs are subjective, and finding a fact in belief systems involves quantifying how many occurrances of the belief there are. Its not really an appeal to authority, its just this idea that facts must be repeatable and verifiable, perhaps beliefs are the same way.Edited by OurCynic, : spelling, sometimes I catch those.

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This thread is about whether science invokes faith in the same way as religion. I don't yet see how "truth," whatever it is, is relevant.

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It's not, its an argument over semantics brought by another user. Whether science invokes faith? I really dont think it matters whether or not science invokes faith. My ideal argument would be to say no, science should not at least invoke faith. Sometimes I dont get to argue my ideal argument.If you look at the subtitle, You'll see what I'm trying to discuss in terms of beliefs. If faith and science are both systems which invoke beliefs, how do they differ? how are they the same? The entire argument was intended to compare and contrast them. Please refer to my previous message for my use of the word belief, I think I did explain at least the semantics of that much better there.

OurCynic writes

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Of course it does. Truth in many ways describes a belief and its coherence with fact.

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Um, no. The word "truth" has two meanings. One is for the behavior of reality and the other is the description of such behavior.Neither of these we can ever know for sure.And then there are religious truths, which are mostly based on bollocks.

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Trouble is, that facts are never interpreted to an absolute, making truth an extreme ideal. In order to know that facts are real, and not misinterpretations of reality, one would need to be omniscient. Such would have rendered your argument completely.

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Well, yeah, which is why I asked "does it matter?"Unless you claim to be omniscient, I don't believe for a minute that you know truth. I know there are many people out there who claim to know truth, and I call their claims bollocks.

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Then let me say that science brings us closer realistic facts than faith does. would you still take argument?

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Depends. I like to argue. So, even if you agree with me 100%, I'd still find something to argue with you. For example, I might disagree with the way you dress or the way you put on your pants each morning.Edited by teen4christ, : grammar

OurCynic writes

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Whether science invokes faith?

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I can tell you right now that science does not invoke faith. Just earlier today, my friend and I were doing a homework problem for our thermodynamics class. We were asked to prove an element of the second law of thermodynamics. We worked on it for 5 hours but we finally got it.If science invokes faith, instead of having to spend that much time working on a single relatively short problem, we could have written down "then a miracle happens..."

Hi OurCynic,I think you might be addressing something that isn't quite what this thread is about, because you say: We're not discussing systems of faith versus systems of science. We're addressing the claim that science is as faith-based as religion. In that case you might be curious why some people believe that science, which stresses evidence and replication, is faith-based.--Percy

I’m thinking that I was too cute by half in that response and would have better used “metaphorical” wealth rather than “spiritual” wealth. But I had already used the word “metaphor” or a dirivitive a dozen times today and was sick of the word.It’s kind of hard to avoid semantics when phrses like: are employeed.Hey, but what can ya’ do?

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KindlyWhen I was a child I’d slyly stick gum on the back of my little brothers head. Our horse, Brussels, would nip it off, usually getting a bit of skin along with it. As we grow old, fat and bald, particularly bald, the sins of my youth give me cause to giggle.

I don't think that's a good description of what we are discussing. The thread is a reaction to the "my faith is as good as yours" attitude often expressed by religious critics of science. So, defenders of science point out that it is based on evidence and observation, not faith. We "bother" because science is under constant attack from some types of religion, in case you've been too busy philosophising to notice. Science is not a system of belief. It is a practical tool or method of finding things out, and the body of knowledge gained from that method. If "why" is important to you, it's difficult to see how the relation to reality of the beliefs could have no importance, but I'm happy to take your word for this. That's not my argument. Joe's belief in the Sun God is a reality. That was in relation to your statement that faith is a system of finding truth. Joe hasn't found truth via his faith in the Sun God.People's beliefs being important, and having an interest in people's beliefs was not what I said was pointless, was it? I'm very interested in people's beliefs and why they have them, and, unlike you, how they relate to reality. See above. We appear to be talking at cross purposes. Here's a suggestion for you. If we have beliefs, like Joe's, based on faith rather than evidence, and those beliefs are often held so strongly that people will, as you say, kill or die for them, then isn't an enormous amount of conflict in humanity inevitable? Because the claimed "truths" are not based on evidence, then we inevitably have a lot of conflicting "truths".That's why I picked up on your "faith is a system for finding truths" phrase. Like you, I'm very interested in what people believe and why, but I'm also very interested in pressuring the world to respect evidence as the basis for their views of the universe, not blind and divisive faiths.Edited by bluegenes, : extra word deleted

Helium in zircon crystals in granite does not allow granite to be more than thousands of years old or it would have disappeared from the granite. The helium in the atmosphere is way too low for the apparent amount of radioactive decay if millions of years have passed. The fact that it's still in the granite and not in the atmosphere and we know how fast it escapes from rock shows that something is not right with the geologic column dating methods.
Apart from that -I think we are off topic for this so will mention no more here. Yes it is difficult for some scientists to be heard -we are hoping to rectify that but if they won't publish it in peer-reviewed journals than they mustn't complain about its authenticity if it doesn't appear in peer-reviewed journals.
Apparently the journal "Nature" reported similar experiments to Berthault's a decade later.I think that "Expelled -No Intelligence Allowed" should help expose these peer review publishing issues that have been around too long. That's if you have faith in radiometric dating methods that for rock of known age are so often and incredibly wrong.There is no good reason to trust it unless you just have to have long ages and slow evolution just has to have happened. Which doesn't necessarily imply that these bugs will be anything but bugs of the same recognizable kind as long as life continues on this planet. I'd be more impressed if those bugs changed into some kind of a reptile or something completely different that couldn't be called a 'bug'.

Well it seems that a lot of people believe that the answer according to the evidence should rather be "I don't know" Which is why it seems that the fossils we have must have been rapidly buried, not slowly built up over millions of years -they are in sedimentary rock layers after all so they must have been transported and buried rapidly.Why is there residual C14 in all the sedimentary strata? 'Contamination' appears to be the explanation that seems to cover up the issue rather than explain it.It must be 'contamination' because according to the millions of years idea,it can't still be there.

Science's acceptance of radioactive dating methods is based upon evidence, huge amounts of evidence. Just give these a brief look to get a rough idea of how much, as these studies on radiometric dating are just a tiny fraction of the total: With so much evidence you can only argue that the evidence is misleading or misinterpreted, not that the acceptance is based upon faith.It is often argued that the rate of physical processes like radioactivity were greater in the past than they are today, but once again huge amounts of evidence says this is not so:

• There are numerous different dating methods, they all confirm each other, and for that to happen with a young earth would require their decay rates to have been accelerated by different amounts.
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• Rapid processes leave different evidence than slow ones. For example, highly accelerated decay rates should have left evidence of recently fission events in uranium mines. There *are* actually such places, in Russia and Gabon, but their concentrations of ²³⁵U were high enough to sustain nuclear reactions at known decay rates. If decay rates were many, many times higher, as this creationist scenario requires, then almost all sites of uranium mines would have been become natural nuclear reactors back then.
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• Had decay rates once been highly accelerated, radioactive isotopes with shorter half lives would be completely absent, since they would have decayed away to negligible concentrations. Their mere presence argues that no such thing as accelerated radioactive decay ever happened.
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• Normal background radioactivity levels in most places in the world are sufficiently low as to not represent a danger to life, but under accelerated radioactive decay would have raised it to lethal levels. The fact that there is still life on this planet argues strongly against this.
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• When we look out into the universe we can see that the physical laws governing the stars were the same thousands, millions and billions of years ago as they are today.

Now you can argue against all this evidence, but it *is* evidence and clearly indicates that the constancy of radioactive decay rates is not accepted on faith. This isn't on-topic, but I'll briefly address it anyway. If creationist scientists can't get published in legitimate peer-reviewed journals, then the solution is not to argue that they deserve special treatment, but to improve the quality of their research so that it *is* accepted for publication. That's how all other accepted science became accepted, and that's the route that creationist science must also follow. Pro-creationism legislation and school district curiculums won't turn creationism into accepted science. Only by convincing their scientific peers will this ever happen. Reference please. Are you referring to Sedimentation Experiments: Nature finally catches up! by Andrew Snelling, where he says this: Perhaps Snelling has dumbed this down too much for the lay audience, because it doesn't really make sense. That large grains settle faster than fine grains is a basic principle of sedimentology, a principle that goes back literally centuries to Buffon and arguably even before to da Vinci.A couple comments about the part about pouring the granular mixture between two vertical plates and the angle of repose of large grains:

• This picture from Berthault definitely does not show "two vertical plates":
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• The "angle of repose" portion implies to me the very obvious fact that the spaces between large grains will be filled with smaller grains.
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• As I said earlier, not even the most devout of creationists would argue that the special conditions of Berthault's experiments existed worldwide throughout the flood.

But getting back to the topic, this once again seems a discussion about evidence, not faith. I again think you're not really interested in the topic of this thread. You're just shoehorning your favorite arguments into this thread by claiming anything you disagree with in mainstream science is based upon faith. If a bug ever changed into a reptile it would be evidence that there is something massively wrong with the theory of evolution.Bottom line: you've produced no evidence that the theories of science are faith-based.--Percy

How many do you mean by "a lot of people." Only about 1% of scientists have creationist leanings. When 99% of scientists in the relevant fields consider the evidence sufficient, that's pretty conclusive. You're again arguing for a different interpretation of the (and let me make it more emphatic this time) *evidence*. You're not going to convince a lot of people by adopting a strategy of calling "faith-based" any interpretation of evidence you disagree with. If creation scientists don't believe it's contamination, then they should do the research to produce the evidence that it's not contamination. These are scientific questions which should be decided by evidence. Of course, the questions have already been decided in the minds of 99% of scientists, but creationist scientists are free to continue researching if they like. Of course, it won't mean anything if the research is of unpublishable quality.--Percy

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Helium in zircon crystals in granite does not allow granite to be more than thousands of years old or it would have disappeared from the granite.

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Lies.RATE's Ratty Results: Helium in Zircons
CD015: Helium diffusion from zircons
RATE's Ratty Results: Helium in Zircons

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Apparently the journal "Nature" reported similar experiments to Berthault's a decade later.I think that "Expelled -No Intelligence Allowed" should help expose these peer review publishing issues that have been around too long.

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Ah the whole conspiracy argument. There's not much can be said against a lunatic belief like that. But what's your take on the lack of any repeatable evidence and experiments by 'creation science.' Furthermore, why is there absolutely no commercial application of creationist geology? Magic anyone? Hocus Pocus? Open Sesame?

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That's if you have faith in radiometric dating methods that for rock of known age are so often and incredibly wrong.There is no good reason to trust it unless you just have to have long ages and slow evolution just has to have happened.

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France produces a huge amount of power from nuclear reactors. The fundamental basis for such power generation is uniformatarnism in radioactivity. Why would I reject such obvious truths? Have you seen the satellite images of France at night? Hint: it's bright due to nuclear power derived from the study of radioactivity which incorporates uniformatarnism. On top of that India (and the US to a lesser extent) is spending billions of currency units to commercialize and implement the thorium breeder reactor which is based on the assumption of constant rates of decay, one of the main principles of uniformatarnism. Why would we reject uniformatarnism when ENTIRE NATIONS have huge practical, tangible, energy producing programs that are fundamentally rested upon those assumptions?Furthermore, your 'one' example of how dating is wrong is a massive lie. And why wouldn't we accept it? What evidence suggest that uniformatarnism is wrong? Do you have evidence of a previous set of physical laws?

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Which doesn't necessarily imply that these bugs will be anything but bugs of the same recognizable kind as long as life continues on this planet.

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Care to define 'allele' for me and repeat your claim with a straight face?Edited by obvious Child, : No reason given.