Faith vs science

I'm understanding here that scientists can and will have personal beliefs and faith in something but that may be a separate ordeal from the actual thing they are studying and the process they use to do so. I think though what is being pondered is if there is any kind of influence / overlap between the scientist's beliefs and the process he is using and if so, where? And how would it affect it? Is influence from a scientist's personal belief or faith an actual interference with the reliability in hypotheses, etc?

Arisaig wrote:

Kyrin Wyldstar wrote:

Arisaig wrote: What? Evidence is provided for a point counter to your own, and now its a fallacy? Yeah, technically, it is appeal to authority. But what else were we expecting? Continued spouting of personal beliefs, which are often flawed and a product of upbringing, rather than the understanding of those that actually work in the field we're discussing?

Not like points just stating 'I believe' were being taken seriously, so finally recognised scientists state their understanding on the matter. I find it refreshing. What about the discussion by other verified people after the article? Biologists, Physicists, Anthropologists... Its not one man, its one man, then followed by a great many others...

Im not sure what your trying to refute here. In your second sentence you admit it is a fallacy. And no it is not evidence, it is third party opinion piece. He provided no evidence of anything. Any statements of "I believe" should be taken not seriously but conditionally. Meaning they can be taken as seriously as the statement warrants. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. What this scientist was talking about was his bias on the matter, not any evidence. And it does not matter how many others agreed afterward. That is bandwagoning. He and others were speaking from a position of faith and that is fine but it does not prove that science is based on faith.

Ah. So no opinion, professional or otherwise, will sway your belief.

LMAO... what are you not getting here? YES you are absolutely right! Opinions can be taken conditionally based on their claim but they are not evidence. And extraordinary opinions require extraordinary evidence or they are just unfounded assertions. So why would I ever accept them as fact?

Kyrin Wyldstar wrote:

Arisaig wrote:

Kyrin Wyldstar wrote:

Arisaig wrote: What? Evidence is provided for a point counter to your own, and now its a fallacy? Yeah, technically, it is appeal to authority. But what else were we expecting? Continued spouting of personal beliefs, which are often flawed and a product of upbringing, rather than the understanding of those that actually work in the field we're discussing?

Not like points just stating 'I believe' were being taken seriously, so finally recognised scientists state their understanding on the matter. I find it refreshing. What about the discussion by other verified people after the article? Biologists, Physicists, Anthropologists... Its not one man, its one man, then followed by a great many others...

Im not sure what your trying to refute here. In your second sentence you admit it is a fallacy. And no it is not evidence, it is third party opinion piece. He provided no evidence of anything. Any statements of "I believe" should be taken not seriously but conditionally. Meaning they can be taken as seriously as the statement warrants. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. What this scientist was talking about was his bias on the matter, not any evidence. And it does not matter how many others agreed afterward. That is bandwagoning. He and others were speaking from a position of faith and that is fine but it does not prove that science is based on faith.

Ah. So no opinion, professional or otherwise, will sway your belief.

LMOA... what are you not getting here? YES you are absolutely right! Opinions can be taken conditionally based on their claim but they are not evidence. And extraordinary opinions require extraordinary evidence or they are just unfounded assertions. So why would I ever accept them as fact?

Then this isn't discussion (thesis, antithesis, synthesis).

As you put in a previous thread:

Even if one did not go through this process and just “read about it”. But then when they went to take that information and use it to do experiments on “some sort of chemical reaction” but those experiments continued to produce inconsistent results then the underlying mechanisms would be called into question. The fact that you can read about elements and then do successful experiments based on that reading is once again a peer review of the information that was read.

You were supplied something to read so to discover more facts. And instead it was refuted as a fallacy. A peer reviewed and discussed resource was handed to you, and it was passed off because it didn't agree with you.

How about you go through the resource given and refute it from within, instead of delegating it to fallacy, hmm?

Faith and Science do absolutely go hand in hand.

Faith is like seeing something in the dark. It might be there. It might not be there. It might be your imagination.

So what do you do?

You use your five sense to detect what that something is so you can wrap your mind around it; or "know it"

knowing is the basis of gnosis which is science.

So faith creates the quest and gives us new things to discover. Not knowing something isn't enough. There has to be motive to investigate or to discover. And that comes from imagining possibilities. Science fiction is a type of "faith". Sorry but religions do not get to have sole ownership of this word. In science fiction people imagine what the future might be like. Meanwhile science tries to catch up to that future and surpass it.

Much of everything we think is based on our knowledge of "something". We can represent that something with different words and symbols but we're always virtually building and constructing concepts and ideas based on knowledge of "something". This knowledge of something is a type of intellectual sense of touch. It is feeling. We have a feeling about certain things that can't be physically touched. We have intuition for things we can't see. But that feeling and intuition are based on knowledge and previous memories and experience.


So faith leads to science and science leads to faith. Everything we know and believe hangs in the balance of these two polarities.

Arisaig wrote: Then this isn't discussion (thesis, antithesis, synthesis).

As you put in a previous thread:

Even if one did not go through this process and just “read about it”. But then when they went to take that information and use it to do experiments on “some sort of chemical reaction” but those experiments continued to produce inconsistent results then the underlying mechanisms would be called into question. The fact that you can read about elements and then do successful experiments based on that reading is once again a peer review of the information that was read.

You were supplied something to read so to discover more facts. And instead it was refuted as a fallacy. A peer reviewed and discussed resource was handed to you, and it was passed off because it didn't agree with you.

How about you go through the resource given and refute it from within, instead of delegating it to fallacy, hmm?

Wow, you have conflated so many things here Im not sure where to begin. In the first place you are way off topic and in the second place you cant "peer review" an opinion. The piece presents no facts to discover so how can they be discovered? In fact this was a refutation from within. And I never cited the piece itself as an authority fallacy, I cited loudzoos use of the piece as evidence that science has faith as a fallacy. There is a difference. I never questioned the authors authority, only his opinion. In fact many of his statements are fallacy, just as any faith based claim is not backed by evidence.

If you want a great example of your (thesis, antithesis, synthesis) nonsense you are trying to claim I'm wrongly not following then go see the "What is the force" thread, where loudzoo and I discuss those details. But also know that this is not that thread. This is not a thread designed to integrate ideas. it is a thread to contrast ideas. Its a natural form of debate and in the realm of debate with this at its core there is no such thing as argument to moderation. The false compromise is in itself a fallacy because only one position can be correct and the other is just wrong. Now your job is to prove to me I am wrong. Can you do that without fluffy opinion pieces? Thats what its gonna take, hard facts and evidence, not conjecture.

Kyrin Wyldstar wrote: In the first place you are way off topic and in the second place you cant "peer review" an opinion.

Yes, yes you can. All things start as opinions. It just takes enough people agreeing to make it fact (ie. Peer Review), and enough tests without fail proving it correct to make it reality.

I'm taking this to my journal...

Arisaig wrote: All things start as opinions. It just takes enough people agreeing to make it fact (ie. Peer Review), [/color]

Really? Then why are you a Jedi? By your standards Christianity or Islam is a fact! You are living in sin and going to hell, my friend... just my opinion though, needs peer review!!

Loudzoo wrote: Many scientists believe / know / understand that science is rooted in faith:

https://www.edge.org/conversation/paul_davies-taking-science-on-faith

The whole premise of the article is to show that our current understanding of science rests upon assumptions that are not completely testable, and thus, a leap of "faith".

The problem is how you define faith (as Proteus anticipated). If we use the initial definition of faith as a "complete trust" (i.e. unquestionable trust), then the article is null, as "faith" is used as a bridge between observable phenomena and conclusions. That is NOT the definition of faith we are using here. Faith is the complete (full, unquestioning, immovable) trust in a specific conclusion, the precise opposite of the acknowledgement of ignorance the article is stating as a case for both science and faith.

Of course we don't know everything. Of course we cannot know everything. It is OK to question that. Science DOES allow it. Science also DOES allow inquiring into the nature of the divine and religion. What science does not allow is to draw conclusions that do not follow observable, replicable evidence.

You could very well say that you believe there may be a God and that would be perfectly scientific, as there is no evidence against God existing, and too many unexplained things to rule it out completely. But the moment you say I believe in x, y or z God who has this and that characteristic... that is pure faith. In the first case you are saying basically that you admit the possibility of something because we don't have all the evidence. In the second case you draw conclusions in spite of not having all the evidence.

Arisaig wrote:

Kyrin Wyldstar wrote: In the first place you are way off topic and in the second place you cant "peer review" an opinion.

Yes, yes you can. All things start as opinions. It just takes enough people agreeing to make it fact (ie. Peer Review), and enough tests without fail proving it correct to make it reality.

I'm taking this to my journal...

Things start as hypothesis. It does not take people agreeing to make it real. It takes people evaluating that the conclusions reached by the experimenter coincide with the data gathered during the experiment, and that the conditions were met to ensure there was no room for external factors influencing the data, to turn the conclusions of the experiment into a probably theory.

Kyrin Wyldstar wrote:

Arisaig wrote: All things start as opinions. It just takes enough people agreeing to make it fact (ie. Peer Review), [/color]

Really? Then why are you a Jedi? By your standards Christianity or Islam is a fact! You are living in sin and going to hell, my friend... just my opinion though, needs peer review!!

That goes off the assumption that I view them as false. I don't.

Manu wrote: Things start as hypothesis. It does not take people agreeing to make it real. It takes people evaluating that the conclusions reached by the experimenter coincide with the data gathered during the experiment, and that the conditions were met to ensure there was no room for external factors influencing the data, to turn the conclusions of the experiment into a probably theory.

Well, yeah. What did I say? 'People agreeing'. Of course, by this, I mean intelligent people capable of rational thought, not drones. When people say fire is hot, it took a couple people touching it to find out the hard way and end up with medium rare hands. It took rational people to observe and figure it out all while keeping their palms... well, very rare.