Faith vs science

Proteus wrote: So, I see we're talking about the personal aspirations of the scientists themselves with their proccess. In this way it's being said that "faith" or "hope" is nvolved in the scientist's relationship with their work.

So now the question is: does the (at least seemingly) objective outcome of a scientist's results depend on that scientist's faith / hope to be what it will be?

Yea I did mention hope as a type of faith. Perhaps fear is another type of faith, but in terms of mostly subconscious fixation - because we expect it at some level to be true enough to be worth worrying about.

I don't think the result is dependent on the motivation of the work. Rather I think we inherently associate weighted values on all our decisions, to justify the decision to and level of engagement with the resultant likely process. Such that is not a simple cause-effect, supply-demand, want-get, hunger-sate etc mappings through fields of affordances and detours, but rather a collection of routines which represent a body of existence, each related in various interconnected ways with each other so we can orientate to unexpected change in a more fluid dynamic then a stochastic re-calibration. When 'work' loses entirely all meaning to ones life it gets very hard to turn up, and naturally turning up is half the effort required for working! I was only drawing the connection to the purpose of science being to get closer to reliable 'truths' and that failure of such was akin to writing fiction.... but yea if the scientist is just in it in entirety for the paycheck alone, then I don't think any faith would lay in the success of the endeavor but that rather the faith would lay in the employer paying them on time As my answer was in the context of where was faith and belief in science.

Carlos.Martinez3 wrote: One can’t have faith in their project ? Their hypotheses? Faith in themselfs - faith in their cause ...?

Yes. The same way the beaten wife has faith that their husband will change. It is attachment.

There is nothing wrong with betting on yourself, an organization, and its vision. But there is a difference between rallying behind a cause and blindly believing it will succeed only because you are positive. I would argue in this sense science and faith are opposites, in that faith tries to see the positive in spite of evidence to the contrary (or no evidence for either way), while science compares, contrasts, analyses, and thus finds ways to improve on whatever weaknesses it might find.

Faith is saying “I am going to be in great shape!”. Science is saying “I am going to be in great shape. I already tried option a and it didn’t work. I had more success with option b under x and y circumstances. Let’s try to replicate those circumstances and see if I make progress, and keep a log to periodically reassess and shift directions if necessary”.

Human morality is something i am very interested in. Its impossible to consider morality without broaching the topic of evil. I just now found of a case of a very young girl who was held captive by three men in a trailor and raped repeatedly for 29 days. I want to issue you this intellectual challenge: succinctly explain to the forum why what those men did was wrong. My reply for every point that you make will be some variation of “So what? What does that matter/whats actually wrong about that?”

We should furthermore distinguish and separate the scientist as a person from science as a means of information generation. For the question of how faith and science interplay it is entirely irrelevant what any individual scientist believes, or even what the majority of them do. Particularly in life sciences but even in chemistry you'll find a lot of talk of causation or truth thrown casually around, and even upon a challenge to such claims many a scientist might at first try and defend such notions, being poorly versed in the philosophy surrounding them.
However, at its root the only defensible position with regard to the operation and function of science is the instrumentalist one. In their capacity as scientists, noone need have faith in the reliability of their senses or instruments, or the uniformity of nature, because we can instead test all of that beyond any set threshold for reasonable doubt, and who ever makes claims significantly more specific than their testing could have warranted will be forced to retract those claims at the penalty of an effective career termination. If we want to go back to the dictionary and say that faith can also be a "complete confidence or trust", by all means, let's: The "complete" part of that definition is what makes it unwarranted by any amount of evidence or inference from evidence, and as such antithetical to the methods of science in that it is unreasonable.
Hope is not a belief that anything is or will be a specific way, it is rather the wish that it do. Now, again, there are weak minds out there aplenty, and while there is something of a shortage of them in the scientific community, they are still far too many even there. You will find people who believe that things are the case just because they wish that it be so, because people are not perfect thinkers and scientists are no strict exception to that. Not everything a scientist thinks is scientific.

Gisteron wrote: Hope is not a belief that anything is or will be a specific way, it is rather the wish that it do.

I think hope is more enduring... existing as a foundational orientation to motivation, and as such it inherits faith else it be irrational and quickly found wanting. Otherwise it might as well just be called trust (a specifically condition type of faith), want, preference or some other less attached statement of outcome.

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

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

"Clearly, then, 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. For that reason, both monotheistic religion and orthodox science fail to provide a complete account of physical existence.

This shared failing is no surprise, because the very notion of physical law is a theological one in the first place, a fact that makes many scientists squirm. Isaac Newton first got the idea of absolute, universal, perfect, immutable laws from the Christian doctrine that God created the world and ordered it in a rational way. Christians envisage God as upholding the natural order from beyond the universe, while physicists think of their laws as inhabiting an abstract transcendent realm of perfect mathematical relationships.

And just as Christians claim that the world depends utterly on God for its existence, while the converse is not the case, so physicists declare a similar asymmetry: the universe is governed by eternal laws (or meta-laws), but the laws are completely impervious to what happens in the universe.

It seems to me there is no hope of ever explaining why the physical universe is as it is so long as we are fixated on immutable laws or meta-laws that exist reasonlessly or are imposed by divine providence. The alternative is to regard the laws of physics and the universe they govern as part and parcel of a unitary system, and to be incorporated together within a common explanatory scheme.

In other words, the laws should have an explanation from within the universe and not involve appealing to an external agency. The specifics of that explanation are a matter for future research. But until science comes up with a testable theory of the laws of the universe, its claim to be free of faith is manifestly bogus."

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

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

In the first place this is a fallacy, an appeal to authority. The opinion of one man does not make his statements true just because he is an authority figure.

Loudzoo wrote: "Clearly, then, 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. For that reason, both monotheistic religion and orthodox science fail to provide a complete account of physical existence.

It’s not the job of a scientist to provide a complete account of physical existence. They make no claims of truth. And belief is not the correct word to use here. They do not believe, they hypothesize. Those are totally two different things. Belief is the end of exploration. Hypotheses are not. They are set and then attempted to be proven true or false. Belief is not a factor in this process.

Loudzoo wrote: This shared failing is no surprise, because the very notion of physical law is a theological one in the first place, a fact that makes many scientists squirm. Isaac Newton first got the idea of absolute, universal, perfect, immutable laws from the Christian doctrine that God created the world and ordered it in a rational way. Christians envisage God as upholding the natural order from beyond the universe, while physicists think of their laws as inhabiting an abstract transcendent realm of perfect mathematical relationships.

This is an incredibly arrogant statement. He is trying to speak for all scientists and this is yet another fallacy, the bandwagon fallacy. I for one do not consider the laws of nature in this way.

Loudzoo wrote: And just as Christians claim that the world depends utterly on God for its existence, while the converse is not the case, so physicists declare a similar asymmetry: the universe is governed by eternal laws (or meta-laws), but the laws are completely impervious to what happens in the universe.

Once again scientists do not make this claim. No one has ever said anything about eternal laws. In fact that can’t be proven because we can’t observe or test “eternity”. So by definition this statement falls outside the purview of science. So far we have not been able to study past the Plank time of the big bang, so we have no idea what came before the big bang. It could have very well been a place where time and space did not exist. We just don’t know and so we can’t make any statements about it as this guy is trying to do.

This idea that the universe is fined tuned for our existence is also a fallacy. It’s not. It was the other way around. We are the result of the state of the universe, the universe is not the result of the state of us. In a different universe a form of life would evolve that suited its parameters and it’s a pretty good bet it would look nothing like us.

Loudzoo wrote: It seems to me there is no hope of ever explaining why the physical universe is as it is so long as we are fixated on immutable laws or meta-laws that exist reasonlessly or are imposed by divine providence. The alternative is to regard the laws of physics and the universe they govern as part and parcel of a unitary system, and to be incorporated together within a common explanatory scheme.

Yet another fallacy. This is simply an argument from ignorance. Just because we do not know something now does not mean we are incapable of ever discovering it.

Loudzoo wrote: In other words, the laws should have an explanation from within the universe and not involve appealing to an external agency. The specifics of that explanation are a matter for future research. But until science comes up with a testable theory of the laws of the universe, its claim to be free of faith is manifestly bogus."

This is categorically wrong because of my first comments. Why should the laws require an explanation from within the universe? He just does not get to make that claim without evidence or justification. This is fallacy as well. Argument from assertion. None of what this guy had to say remotely reflects the ideas of science. Once again, this is not faith, it is hypothesis. A hypothesis is not a position of faith or belief. It is a position of speculation based in curiosity. That is all.

Kyrin Wyldstar wrote:

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

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

In the first place this is a fallacy, an appeal to authority. The opinion of one man does not make his statements true just because he is an authority figure.

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...

EDIT: All in all, why do we disregard peer reviewed and discussed evidence as 'a fallacy' in discussion?

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.

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.