The Black Vault

Hello,

Both religion and science are founded on faith — namely, on belief in the existence of something outside the universe, like an unexplained God or an unexplained set of physical laws, maybe even a huge ensemble of unseen universes, too.

Faith is not a bad thing it is necessary.

All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn’t be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed. When physicists probe to a deeper level of subatomic structure, or astronomers extend the reach of their instruments, they expect to encounter additional elegant mathematical order. And so far this faith has been justified.

The most refined expression of the rational intelligibility of the cosmos is found in the laws of physics, the fundamental rules on which nature runs. The laws of gravitation and electromagnetism, the laws that regulate the world within the atom, the laws of motion — all are expressed as tidy mathematical relationships. But where do these laws come from? And why do they have the form that they do?

Even in science, until one possesses all knowledge in totality, one will need faith in order to believe an understanding to be correct or incorrect in total affirmation.

Just one more thing that ties Religion and Science together, Faith.

Here is the full artical from The New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/24/opini ... ted=1&_r=1

"Both religion and science are founded on faith" Really? Sounds like an opinion.........

Criticism

Scientists critical of what they see as the religious overtones of Davies's writing include Jerry Coyne, Nathan Myhrvold, Lawrence Krauss, Scott Atran, Sean Carroll, Jeremy Bernstein, PZ Myers, Lee Smolin, John Horgan, and Alan Sokal.[2]

Other scientists who have made this point are Richard Dawkins[3] and Victor J Stenger.[4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Davies

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Templeton_Prize

as for the common man, science is very much a matter of faith.

Thanks for adding to the thread MonarchSmile, and fortwynt.
The Wikipedia artical was interesting. I din't know Davis had won the Templeton prize. I'd like to read more of Davis's work.

I agree with you Fortwynt about the common man and faith. I think everyone has a smidgen of faith or how could we trust that the sun would rise in the morning?

Item7 wrote:I think everyone has a smidgen of faith or how could we trust that the sun would rise in the morning?

Do you really have "faith" that the sun will rise tomorrow, or do you have confidence rooted in and supported by scientific evidence?

If you lost your memory, had no recollection of the sun ever rising, and had no contact with other intelligent beings with experience of the sun rising, would you still have faith the sun would rise, or would your faith diminish along with your evidence?

Hi humphreys,

Good questions.

Do you really have "faith" that the sun will rise tomorrow, or do you have confidence rooted in and supported by scientific evidence?

If you lost your memory, had no recollection of the sun ever rising, and had no contact with other intelligent beings with experience of the sun rising, would you still have faith the sun would rise, or would your faith diminish along with your evidence?

I think faith is the confident belief or trust in something, so I have faith that is supported by scientific evidence, personal experience, and a sustained acceptance of this reality, that the sun will rise tomarrow.

If I was in a condition like the one you describe in your post, I would be like a newborn. Since I believe that faith takes time to develope, I would not have the faith I would need to trust that the sun would rise. My faith would not diminish, but it would take time for it to grow.

If something were to happen that would cause all evidence to be gone, then nothing would be here, including myself to have faith in. So then it would make the question null and void.

I personally think that when your confident belief is rooted in scientific evidence, it cannot accurately be described as faith. Faith occurs when your confidence level exceeds what is warranted by the evidence alone, and in the example of the sun rising, that isn't likely the case.

Thats cool humphreys. I understand what your saying.

I started thinking about this some more, its very interesting.

When I say I have faith that the sun will rise tomarrow {which is a lie because it dosen't actually rise, lol} I am expressing a belief in a future event which no amount of scientific data can prove to me that it will happen. Its pure faith.

Every "belief" we have is rooted in faith, even so called scientific evidence. If we do not believe in something it ceases to be "true" for us. For me belief and faith are like two sides of the same coin, you must have one if you have the other.

This is an enjoyable conversation for me, thanks!

Isn't it better to have confidence that the sun will rise, at a level that matches the amount of evidence available?

Very little, if anything, can be proven beyond any doubt whatsoever. Every belief is based on some level of evidence, and that evidence can be totally convincing, or not convincing at all. If our level of confidence matches the level of evidence available, we are acting rationally.

When we say we have faith, basically we are saying that we have a confidence level greater than we should have based on evidence alone, and that it irrational. I can see no merit in doing this.

You have every reason to be very confident that the sun will rise based on scientific evidence alone, and therefore, this belief is a rational belief, and is not "faith", in my opinion. Otherwise, we all must have faith by definition, and the word loses all useful meaning, and we might as well just scrap it.

Faith I feel is something that we sould keep close to us. If you think about it if you knew you were going to die and there was nothing after.. dont you think you would be scared beyond all measures right on your death.. not only that the faith I find kinda amazing its a positive thing... have you ever picked up a camera and thought how is this chip inside this machine able to caputer your image in air and then look at your eye and realize its doing the same thing but even more and we dont have a chip lol.... or the colors we are able to project from our brains... to me when i took a step back and started lookin at the very small things a body could do... I had even more faith, that the person that created us has even more instore for us.... But I can only have faith to think this will happen.