I am tired of this argument

[jimbob_barnes]

Ok guys, this one crops up often enough to make me want to collect together our ideas on it. It runs as follows:

Atheist: Faith is belief without evidence which means belief with no rational basis (excluding a priori knowledge). Thus faith is irrational, thus faith is stupid, thus you are stupid. (final clause optional)

Theist: Ah! But you have faith in science, therefore both viewpoints are equally valid.

atheist makes a face

Now faith is actually a particular subcatagory of belief, namely belief in a religion. However we do believe that methodical examination of the world around us will lead us to facts about the world and how it works. Unfortunately we only induce that nature is uniform in some way i.e. we only think this because we are yet to observe something to the contrary.

This is not a particularlly firm foundation.

So anyone got any good arguments as to why science > not science?

[grammar king mike]

I've never come across that particular argument because obviously belief in science is not faith. Science has rid the world of smallpox, it's given us wellington boots, velcro, computers, fertilizers. Everything we know about the universe is thanks to science. When was the last time faith brought us something like that? I mean cmon, Jesus was God incarnate and the best he could do was turn water into wine. Belief in the scientific method is not faith by any stretch of the imagination.

If you want an easy way to make this apparent, here's one Roger used to use. Just say "there are two aeroplanes, one's built by scientists and the other by not scientists (or priests). You have to choose between them and then they're going to be driven off a cliff. Which one are you going to choose?"

The more common argument is that atheism is a faith position just as much as theism is, but I'm sure you can argue against that.

[norman]

The answer lies in your original statement.

Faith is a belief without evidence. Evidence exists for trust in science, it doesn't for trust in a deity.

Atheists tend not to believe in science, they tend to rely on the scientific method as the most relaible way of analysing the data available and forming a conclusion. This is not faith. It is a resuly of all available data suggesting that it works.

This whole argument is, in my opinion, not particularly useful as the very ideas in which religious people have faith are by their definition outside the scope of evidence based investigation. If they could be proved they would have been by now.

The line I tend to take when approaching this argument is why God does not allow himself to be submitted to the scientific method? Why is there no test for the god hypothesis?

[jimbob_barnes]

WARNING: THIS POST GOES INTO THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK

""there are two aeroplanes, one's built by scientists and the other by
not scientists (or priests). You have to choose between them and then they're going to be driven off a cliff. Which one are you going to choose?""

This argument is a faulty one, is there a rational reason to induce that because something has worked before it will work in the future? Theists often argue that prayer can work as a method of healing, however do we think it would work if someone prayed for us?

Further more, I did not mean that we believed in the results of science. I am aware that we trust in a method and its results are essentially incidental. My point was how can we argue that there is a rational reason for trusting in the scientific method as opposed to some dogma?
Certainly scientific results explain phenomena e.g. relativity explains why light bends in gravitational fields.
However our hyperthetical Theist could argue that "God did it" is an equally good hypothesis as the claim that evidence gives credence to a thesis is not an a priori statement, we accept it when we accept the scientific method. Thus from inside the paradigm of science looks best as evidence is everything. However our hypothetical theist is in a different paradigm, one which is indifferent to evidence.
Thus what rational reason do we have for accepting the scientific method over something else?

I suppose it is unlikely that you would meet out hypothetical theist as they are quite rare, most theists have science and God and so evidence can me submitted. However they do most certainly exist, and although you can take comfort in the thought that they are just being quibbling if there rhetoric is good enough they may make you look silly in debate.

[norman]

Are the paradigms mutually exclusive, or is possible to overlap or flit between them in our daily lives, i.e. can I use the "god did it" explanantion for one question and "science explains it" for another?

Faith is not inherently irrational. Rememeber that rational is not exactly equal to impirical. It could be argued successfully that faith can be arrived at rationally.

This, however, is not an argument for theism.

I guess the argument isn't that faith is irrational, hence they shouldn't believe what they believe. The argument is, the features of the conclusion they have drawn are not rational, therefore your rational faith in the irrational is logically absurd, therefore irrational in itself.

I can probably phrase this better, but it's late and I am going to think about it in bed :P

[jimbob_barnes]

empirical is spelt with an e. On a more serious note, the paradigms are mutually exclusive in the sense that you can't subscribe to two different ones at the same time however you could choose a third which mixes the ideas of the other two, however again we have no way of judging which is best out of our two extremes and the more compromising third.

I disagree that faith can be arrived upon rationally, either something is a-priori (before experience) or a-posteriori (after experience).
I am yet to come across a convincing a-priori argument although there are many examples of them, for instance, the Ontological Argument.
So if there are no a-priori reasons for believing in God then there must be an a-posteriori reason for our belief to be rational. However what would be sufficient? I.D. claims that the world around us is clearly designed however we counter argue that although things could be designed there is no way to test to see whether they are designed, thus for the argument to work there must be a-priori knowledge that the world was designed, which I have already dismissed.
Thus as I am yet to come across a reasoned argument for faith I conclude that, as far as I know, there is no reasonable reason to believe in a God i.e. have faith. So faith is irrational.
If someone could put forward a rational argument I would revise my statement.
Note: arguments such as:
Premise: God exists
Conclusion: God exists
are of course rational however I reject the premises

I agree with you that the corollaries to the existence of a God i.e. he loves you, wants you to love him e.t.c. are even more irrational but I don't think they start on a reasoned footing

Apologies for the poor language, I just noticed 2 "however"s in the first paragraph

[Conrad]

I'm going to go with a very Karl Popper direction on this topic (sorry).

Science accepts that there is some underlying true system at work in the universe (possibly described by relativity or quantum theory or some undiscovered theory) and attempts to describe it. Any thoery that differs from the actual observations of the universe must eventually be rejected, although such theories may act as good approximations until something better is proposed. Therefore, any faith in science is not faith that the current set of theories is correct but faith that innacuracies will be corrected.

This differs from religious faith, where a set of theories is taken to be a correct description of the universe and therefore above questions of accuracy.

To sum up, faith in science is not faith in the theories but it is faith in the ability to revise and correct them.

PS, I wrote this in some weird storm induced electrical situation that affected the lights more than it affected my laptop, so sorry for any inaccuracies.

PPS, I wrote this under the influence of alcohol so I may have screwed up some fundamental ideas. I'll review this post tomorrow.

[norman]

You are nicely arguing agnosticism - i.e faith in anything is irrational, the question must be left unanswered until a framwork is created to answer it definitively.

The other way of thinking about it is this. Does the scientific method/science/etc actually have anything to do with theism/atheism?

I am not atheist because of science, just as I am not a scientist because I am an atheist.

Would you be an atheist even if you were unaware of the scientific method?

Going back to the original question...

Science is not a doctrine, it is a practical tool to acheive certain aims. The equating of science and religion is fallacious, science is not a worldview.

The question to ask in reply could be soemthing as simple and dismissive as "what else is there?" Then at least you get to knock down whatever other way of seeking knowledge they propose as being suitable.

[jimbob_barnes]

Conrad, Karl Popper was a realist, however not all scientists are. Anti-realism is the view that scientific theories which talk of thinks which we can't directly observe need not be considered true. All that they must be is empirically adequate i.e. explain phenomena. They argue to talk of unobservable things as existing is unscientific, as science is based on empirical evidence.

I am not an anti-realist this is just an objection to your blanket claim that we need a true system. Also see Khun who considers the idea that there is no such thing as objective scientific truth, merely results which are consistent with our background assumption.

I think Norman has a good point there "Scientist <=> Atheist" is not a valid statement, I think when we have debates atheists often get labelled as scientists because of our demand for evidence.

Also his point that this argument pushes us into agnosticism is also valid. It had occurred to me that their argument doesn't make their POV better just everyone else's equally crap, I just hadn't formalised it into that concise statement.

Conrad, another thought occurs, although your description about Popper is accurate we often make claims such as "evolution happens" which we should actually formalise as "We are yet to discover evidence to the contrary of evolution" which is a purely rhetorical point, however my point was why pick the method which we INDUCE will correct what we perceive to be inaccuracies, over the dogma?

[Chris_Hassall]

An interesting discussion. The rhetorical force of the argument appears greater than it is. The atheist simply need ask for a definition of the terms being used. What is science? What is faith? What is religion? Once the theist defines his terms he refutes his own argument. The answers are "the process of testing hypotheses to construct an epistemological framework", "belief without evidence" and "a worldview which includes truth-claims and behaviours which follow from those truth-claims".

I have often been asked what it would take for me to believe in the Christian God. Depending on my mood I would either answer "Your God is omniscient therefore he should know, isn't the fact that he hasn't converted me evidence that he doesn't wish me to be converted?" (if I was feeling flippant) or "I can see some evidence, but it requires too much faith" (if I was feeling polite). In the latter response I draw a dichotomy between evidence-based and evidence-less belief, with the first being the product of science and the second being "faith" itself.

I think we just have to ensure that we are epistemologically coherent when we talk about our beliefs. Both Christians and Atheists sometimes claim to "know" things. Both are incorrect. We believe things on the basis of incomplete data which mean that we can only draw speculative conclusions (although some have such a strong body of evidence that we can be pretty confident in our beliefs). Hence Dawkins always saying that there is "almost certainly no God" rather than "there is no God". Science doesn't "know" and will always change to fit new data. Religious faith claims (wrongly) to "know" and will not change (unless the Pope says so...).

In summary, ask them to define their terms, point out that science doesn't "know" anything whereas faith claims to do so and then ask them whether they use faith or science to decide whether to leave their second floor flat by the door or the window each morning. Failing that, an in-depth discussion of Hume's problem of induction will bore them until they leave you alone...

[ChloeC-F]

my contribution.

http://img388.imageshack.us/img388/232/religionkv0.png

[Conrad]

I largely agree with the posts saying that I need to do a lot of reading.
Can I just clarify that I didn't mean to suggest that we'd eventually discover the "true system" or that we'd know if we had (if we can only reject inaccuracies then it would be impossible to know that we had landed on the actual true system for the universe). I only meant to say that the universe appears to have a system, on the basis that science would have failed pretty spectacularly if it didn't.

[Richy]

Atheist: Faith is belief without evidence which means belief with no rational basis (excluding a priori knowledge). Thus faith is irrational, thus faith is stupid, thus you are stupid. (final clause optional)

Theist: Ah! But you have faith in science, therefore both viewpoints are equally valid.

atheist makes a face
Faith is defined to be belief without evidence.

The scientific method establishes belief through the acquisition of evidence.

Therefore faith in science is belief without evidence in the principle of the establishment of belief through the acquisition of evidence.

But the scientific method does have evidence, namely the fact that the scientific method has consistently worked before. Therefore there is no need to have faith in science (indeed, if you know the evidence, this is almost illogical).

I think the place where you're getting confused is that the scientific method almost establishes itself as correct which seems like circular logic but such is the way of things. If you reduce the number of words involved you'll see you just end up with "evidence suggests that evidence suggests truth" which is obviously true.

As for the hypothetical theist who believes that we do not need evidence to explain anything at all and all we need is "God did it", they will get far in life.

Chloe, your image is wrong, religions don't ignore contradicting evidence, if they just ignored it then there would be much less arguing in the world :p

[norman]

You can't use the scientific method to prove the scientific method, i.e. you cannot assume the scientific method is true to prove that truth can be derived from the scientific method.

The scientific method allows us to develop models of the real universe, but does not expalin the real universe. We use the models we create to make predictions and test hypotheses but these are just predictions, they are not "truth" in the way that jimbob means in the gist of the original post.

The crux of this means that science makes no claim to know anything, as Chris H pointed out, only makes a claim to predict what might happen based on previous data.

It is rational to believe in science as long as you define science not to be omniscient, i.e. that you make no claims about science knowing anything, but is just a tool to make useful predicitions based on evidence.

I reiterate my point that science and theism are not equatable in the terms outlined in the OP. It is not valid for the theist to say "you believe in science, which is the same as me believing in God, therfore either we are both wrong or both right".

Again, as Chris H pointed out, the main problem with debating the theists is that we don't actually debate the same thing - their terms and ours usually don't match! One thing I have learned over the past few years that it is impossible to debate unless you clearly define what it is you are talking about when invoking evidence, god, religion, belief, faith, science, knowledge, experience etc etc etc.

[jimbob_barnes]

Yes there is a fallacy of equivocation in there. The whole argument is one big sophism, I think it is espoused by people with little or no understanding of philosophy or science but who have pretensions to both.

Defining the terms seems to be a fair repudiation. Any other standard arguments we can develop a response to?

[norman]

Plenty!

We run a whole meeting on it, then follow it up with a course!

[AlexMagd]

There are certainly a ton of arguments I would love to see retired permanently. I'd love it if people took as read that some lines of argument are done, over, answered. Pascal springs to mind!

[Richy]

You can't use the scientific method to prove the scientific method, i.e. you cannot assume the scientific method is true to prove that truth can be derived from the scientific method.
No, I said "suggests", not "proves"... oh ffs.

I guess the point is that the scientific method has nothing to do with absolutes which is what I get at when I say towards the end that some people are beyond hope.

[Samizdat]

THE SCIENTIFIC PARADIGM

Assumption 1: evidence and empiricism are a good way of finding things out about the universe. We base this assumption on experience, but since we are using experience to support the use of experience, it is circular logic, and thus the basic assumption of science.

This assumption is useful, because it has allowed us to improve the material world (as we perceive it). Questioning this assumption is not useful, because even if the material world is illusory, it is all we can certainly experience. Because science is based on this assumption, nothing within science is ever 100% certain, and all conclusions come with the unspoken disclaimer “...assuming that the material world exists, and human senses under average conditions are essentially trustworthy in providing an accurate picture of this world.”

THE RELIGIOUS PARADIGM

Assumption: is right.

This assumption is not useful because it can be used to justify literally any belief, provided one is certain of it, without providing any useful distinction between true and false beliefs. It disregards evidence as potentially illusory.

Assumption: my senses and interpretations are always trustworthy, unless I personally have reason to think I have been under the influence of some mind-altering experience (i.e., hallucinogens, serious illness with obvious physical symptoms).

This assumption is not useful because people often hear, see, or feel that which is not there, and interpret things they have seen, heard or felt incorrectly, as the result of otherwise undetectable environmental influences or illness. It can be used to justify any belief (different people may interpret the same experience differently, as confirming whatever pre-existing belief they hold).

Quite simply, because science is only useful in describing the material world, it cannot be used to describe the immaterial, or even to determine whether such a thing exists. What religious people seem to think is that [I]because science cannot, faith can. This is a false assumption: science cannot, but there is no other legitimate method that can (as evidenced by the multiplicity of contradictory answers provided by faith, gnosis and individual sensory experience). Although science cannot make truth claims about everything, it does not follow there is anything that can make truth-claims about those areas beyond scientific experience. Anyone making a truth-claim based on anything outside empiricism is making a useless assumption.

‘Faith’ is not just belief without evidence, it is certainty without evidence. It is the same certainty as when you know you put the keys down over there when, in fact, they’re in your coat pocket. Or when you know you asked your kid to walk the dog and they are certain you didn’t. In the latter case particularly, the impossibility of providing evidence either way (unless there’s a tape recording) means that both parties will hold onto their beliefs irrationally forever more. As I see it, there’s a spectrum of certainty:

1. where you put the car keys
2. superstition
3. religious belief (moderate)
4. religious belief (extreme)
5. diagnosable paranoid delusion

Religion is, depending on your perspective, an extreme form of unjustified certainty or a mild form of delusional disorder, which is, in turn, a malfunctioning of the basic human certainty instinct.

"It requires too much faith" is a legitimate argument even if faith were trustworthy: you can't choose, or even try, to have faith. It comes through external persuasion. I tried for a few years to become a neo-pagan, but it's just not a matter of choice (which makes a mockery out of the Abrahamic claims that entrance to Heaven is based on faith not works...)