Faith and Science two sides of the same coin?

Question

Do you think there's a level of faith people put into science? I get told all the time to question my beliefs as a Christian and not to just blindly follow what my pastor tells me on Sunday (I started out atheist and found God through reason not by going to church). I propose that people put every bit as much faith in science. Their bibles are the textbooks they read in class. They have full trust in experiments they didn't perform themselves nor even know the people who did them. In addition science is not objective. It is very much subjective. One only needs to look at the global warming debate to see that. In the end if someone wants to beleive something they will find reason to believe it. So wheter you don't beleive in God or you do. I think it comes down to what you ultimately want to believe. What do you think?

Answer 1

I figure both religious people and non-religious scientists are simply doing the best they can to try to understand this large and mysterious world we inhabit.

Answer 2

There's more than one sense of the word 'faith' that you're confusing here. Putting one's faith in science, evidence, reason, fact, and so on is not the same thing as 'blind faith' or faith just 'cause you have faith.

Reason works. Bridges don't hold traffic due to faith, but because someone who knew what they were doing figured out how much weight the bridge would have to bear, understood the nature of the materials they used, and used principles of engineering, that had been developed over time by many people's contributions, to decide its structure.

I put "faith" in scientists who seem to know what they're talking about. When you read and think a lot you can tell whether what someone says hangs together, is sufficiently complex given the subject, fits in with what other knowledgeable people say, etc.

Faith healing has been debunked with evidence; surgery (often) works.

The computer on which you typed your question is not the product of faith in the religious sense.

When you say "their bibles are their textbooks" you are speaking figuratively, not literally.

BTW, the "global warming debate" as you call it is political, not scientific, as every reputable scientist who knows anything about the topic and understands the science, and is not in the pay of the corrupt, has been in agreement on its reality.

The basis for my trust is gazillions of pieces of evidence from my entire life's experience. Microwave ovens do, in fact, heat food. Cars move, sometimes run out of gas and won't move any more -- the whole story hangs together and maps onto reality very well.

Answer 3

I drivedown the street every day rusting that people i don't know in the next lane will not arbitrarily hit me. It's in both of our interest to uphold the integrity of that relationship. This amounts to criteria for faith in the relationship.

Science itself is primarily a method, not a paradigm. If somone can come up with a substantial reason to disreguard the method, so be it. No single study or personal belief defines scientific fact, that requires several other things. In hard science it's criteria such as clear disclosure of method, reproducibility and peer review. In theoretical science its constincy, explanatory power and simplicity. Criteria constrain all science in such a way the even if some faith is involved it is so different inscale from religion that it ends up being different in kind. A book of metaphor does not provide any of these criteria.

Answer 4

Thanks For Your Question
Well I totally agree with you but the problem is you can't find a religion the relies on both , faith and science....Only one that has so many science in it, and their holy book is considered an science book its Islam

I read from a couple of days a verse that says " And He it is Who has created the night and the day, and the sun and the moon, each in an orbit floating. "

If you are into science you will know that Kepler is the first one who started discovering the orbital motion of the planet this was from 400 years ago but as you see this verse i 1400 years old which means it is 1000 years older from what Kepler discovered

so you see these kind of scientific things makes this book allot stronger than any other

Answer 5

There is a certain faith that comes from science as well. The people who base their beliefs on science are taking faith in the scientists and their experiments. In many cases about big bang and evolution, the answer comes down to "we don't know". We don't know where antimatter came from to make a big bang. We don't know how the first cell ACTUALLY combined to be a cell, but we have a lot of experiements that make some people feel as though they had to have happened. So yeah, there is a certain faith aspect to science.

Answer 6

Not at all. First of all, the facts of science are openly disclosed for all to see, and verification of the results of scientific experiments are encouraged to prove their veracity. Secondly, because the nature of the universe as discovered by science is fact based, the universe behaves the way it does whether you believe in it or not. Thirdly: though science deals in things we can't normally perceive (like atoms), saying "The universe is made up of atoms" actually MEANS something -- it predicts how the universe will react under certain conditions, and those predictions, borne out by experimentation, are the basis for such disciplines as chemistry, physics, astronomy, etc. When theists assert, "God exists," there's no conclusions or predictions about the physical world that follow from that assertion; and woe to anyone who DARES to try to test that hypothesis of divine existence!

Answer 7

I do agree that some people are fanatic about science as much as some people are about religion. If someone where to take the viewpoint that what science is trying to understand is how God was able to put things together. Just think how boring it would be if we did not try to understand our world. Also I feel that religion for the most part tries to allow people to live together and set a moral foundation, it should not be used to attempt to try to prove or disprove natural laws.

Answer 8

I think your totally right! I mean, as a kid in school I put faith in science and they told me Pluto was a planet now they have changed their minds.

Science is ever changing. It says one thing one day and another the next. A theory that has been assumes to right for decades can be overturned in 3 days.

My faith in God does NOT change day to day and the words of the Bible do not change day to day. In my view, my faith in God is a lot more concrete than any science.

Answer 9

I think you said that very well. I've taken a statistics class, and oh yeah, you can make numbers say anything you want.

And I don't think science and God have to be such polar opposites as so many people think. I think science is one way of learning some of Gods methods.

Answer 10

Absolutely not. Faith and science may contradict one another. They are two separate spheres that need not and should not battle each other, nor even meet.