Why do people always take science for being the truth?

Wow. You are mixing up different things.

Science involves proving something through repeated, controlled experimentation.

Religion involves belief in an unknowable, unseeable, all-powerful being.

The two are apples and oranges. There is no comparison.

Science involves facts and religion involves faith.

Because people commonly misunderstand the nature of science.
It is a process of establishing knowledge, which is provisional and subject to further revision or even refutation.
I think alot of people tend to come away from their education with a faulty understanding of science as a list of facts (and this is the same for history, don’t get me started…).

This is a question I’ve often wondered, too. But just to prove that not everyone takes Science to be true, then I’ll admit that I don’t believe many of the things Science claims. Yes, we get taught at school that there are atoms, and our teachers got taught at school that there are atoms, and their teachers got taught at school that there are atoms, and so on and so on, but who’s actually proved it? Who actually decided that black and white aren’t colours?

So yeah, not everyone believes Science to be true. I don’t think there’s many facts involved in Science. But I too wonder why everyone just assumes it to be correct.

You don’t seem to have an understanding of scientific method. Hypothesis, theory, and fact are not the same thing.

Frankly, having a questioning mind and having a closed mind are the vital differences between progress and ignorance.

Please do not take my comment as a personal attack on you or your question! But your terminology immediately makes me think of individuals who I consider a tremendous risk to our country, those that want to teach “creationism” in school as fact, those who stand in Congress and spout idiotic treacle – in my opinion, our country is turning it’s back on a history of research, invention, and scientific progress. To be replaced by what?

@lookingglassx3 We’ve actually photographed molecules before, which is pretty much proving the existence of atoms. To be specific, we didn’t photograph it with light, but by using a scanning tunneling microscope.

First of all, the question is not valid. Second, brainwashed religious people refute any science that differs from the view of their bible or koran or whatever.

Here’s one piece of science that people accept as truth: No two fingerprints are the same. Has anyone ever proved that – OR, is it simply an assumption?

@tups. Scientists will tell you that there is much they don’t know. For every question that they answer, twenty more will come along that they don’t know the answer to. It’s good to question what you think you know. It happens in the scientific community all the time. And a scientist who thinks he knows everything will be shot down by other scientists who know better.
Science is based on observable evidence, but there is often more information which becomes available later which causes what was previously considered to be the truth to be scrapped. We are continually adding to what we know, and continually finding out that the more we know, the more we know that we don’t know.

The widespread misunderstanding of science and spirituality well-noted above, enable a lot of ‘faith’ in ‘science’, in plenty of people who are generally not scientists and whose spirituality is accidental and/or casual.

The “oops” of this is that plenty of folks have not observed either science or the problems in peoples lives enough to notice that not all problems can be solved by any current state-of-the-art scientific technique. If they have then they will Not put any more faith in science than is warranted.

Let’s clarify the definition of “science” in this case, to include engineering, whole role in providing solutions is, to most folks, just the getting-hands-dirty part of science. Let’s accept that manufacturing (...defining methods for repeatable results) is all part of “science.”

Science brings us clean water, medical techniques, TV, reliable cars with reliable tires, and tablet computers. Science has solved a lot of problems.
The people in the OP believe that science can solve any other problem, or more realistically feel that science is the most reliable toolbag we have so why consider anything else.

But calling science truth is just incorrect. Truth doesn’t solve any problems, truth illuminates the facts and feelings. The honest mind can’t ignore truth.
The scientific method of considering data is a subset of working with truth. Science also demands repeatable results or there is no fact, no truth, there was misinterpretation.

Interpreting the truth to motivate solutions is a different process from science or engineering or faith, that’s a philosophy. And a good philosophy will use truth wherever it is found.

@Charles Science doesn’t say “No two fingerprints are the same” it will say no two sets of fingerprints have been observed to be the same. People are accepting as ‘truth’ a misinterpretation in that case.
Science also knows where it relies on so-far-unprovable assumptions, and will acknowledge the risk of doing so.

The main reason people believe in science is because it works.

Because opinions aren’t truth; we can’t improve our physical world based on opinions. There will never be such a thing as an absolute, objective truth; you can believe what you want in the end, but in our world certain facts remain: two oxygen atoms + one carbon atom = carbon dioxide.

I’m not sure if I have explained my thoughts correctly. I’m not even sure if I can explain it correctly. I am not saying that science is false or that it is a lie. I know that science has been useful just like @dabbler said. I’m not against science. I didn’t mean to compare science to religion, either. In fact, they don’t have to be opposites. They can work together. Again, it’s a matter of what one chose to believe in.

What I mean is: We only get to be one person in the world. We can never really know what other people are thinking. So how can we really know anything, other than our own thoughts and our own feelings? How can we know what the world is and what life is?
So. Like @Keep_on_running said but in our world certain facts remain: two oxygen atoms + one carbon atom = carbon dioxide”. How can we be sure that is a fact? “Because of evidence” might be the most common answer. What is evidence? How can we know it’s real?

And @syz don’t worry I am not American, so I’m not threat to your country. ;-)

To further the point that @syz was making, there are some who rely on science and have closed minds. And as my friend @Future Memory stated on another thread, I won’t mention any names.
And your rambling ideas here; “So how can we really know anything, other than our own thoughts and our own feelings? How can we know what the world is and what life is? ” are two different things. Not knowing what other people think has nothing to do with our ability to prove under strictly controlled conditions that certain parameters are met, thus proving or disproving a theory.
Your choice of words is far too broad for the specialized ideas of science is. The “world” and “life” are very general terms. Maybe that’s where your initial problem is. Your concepts seem to be a bit fuzzy. Science itself narrows down and defines specifics.

@tups Obviously you are asking philosophical questions that no one can answer. So I can’t help you any further than to just reiterate what everyone else has put so well.

I am wondering how much you have been exposed to science. Have you taken any science courses, including lab courses, at the college level?

Mostly because of the scientific method’s near impeccable track record of success and reliability.
Every single bit of technology you use, medicine you ingest and food you eat is based on the discoveries of science and none of it would work if the science it is based on was wrong.

Interesting web sites to be found on the subject; Proceed at your own risk…
http://www.godandscience.org/
http://toptenproofs.com/article_godsexistence.php
http://www.creationism.org/heinze/SciEvidGodLife.htm

In a dream one night I asked myself, “is this a dream?” And after considering the question for a few moments, I decided it wasn’t a dream, it was real. And when I woke up, I freaked the fuck out because I thought I would never trust reality again.

And it’s true, I guess there really isn’t a way to prove that our perceptions of the world are real, that we’re not living in the Matrix, that other people are really conscious, and all this isn’t just some absurd illusion.

But does this mean that we should not make decisions based on sensory input? Should we really doubt our perceptions so much that we throw away this information as unreliable? I don’t know, that would be a waste of a lot of potentially useful information. How much can we really achieve if our baseline for reality is, “I think, therefore I am” – that doesn’t give us much to build on!

No, it’s a lot more productive to assume our perceptions are real. If Edward Jenner and other scientists of old had spent all their time pondering the nature of life and death instead of assuming they are real phenomena and that there are ways to extend life and delay death, we wouldn’t have vaccines today.

These philosophical questions have a place, but we shouldn’t refrain from studying our sensory input just because we can’t be sure they’re not an illusion.

@Mariah Oh fuck, I just cried.

As other’s here have said, science in not the search for truth, but of what might be probably true. Before the invention of the microscope, few believe in germs. Now there is no doubt as to their existence. A problem with some religious beliefs is that what was known about the physical world thousands of years ago lead to notions accepted as fact, but that now has been demonstrated to be false (when human kind began, for example).

The desire by many to hold historical beliefs constant creates a need to deny any evidence that refutes what is taken on faith to be Truth. Though the Old Testament supports the notion of slavery and the subjugation of women, few today in the Western world believe that this is what their God expects. I believe the same can be said about homosexuality (though many still think this is against ‘God’s Will’).

That we agree collectively that white is the combination of all hues and that black is the absence of all color, may not be Truth. Even the experience of color may be an illusion. What you see as red others may see differently, yet associate the label ‘red’ with their perception. The color blind, a misnomer since most ‘color blind’ people see color, because of a deficiency in the number of specific cones will see color differently.

Lastly, some believe that everything is an illusion. Nothing is real. Reality exists only within an individual’s experience. Nothing ‘known’ exists outside the mind that ‘knows’ it, as Quantum mechanics suggest. Nothing exists (at least at the subatomic level) without it being observed. However, we need a collective reality or we will go insane. Science is the best means of finding such a commonality, and religious beliefs are the best means of bridging gaps in our knowledge, and perhaps provide a purpose for creation.

@Mariah Amazing answer. And I totally agree. I’m not saying we shouldn’t rely on science, we should. I am not against it to make it clear. The only thing that bothers me is when some people claim to know the truth better that other people and claim to have a better understanding of the world: “There’s no facts, only interpretations”. I love that quote. Every person could live their life in they believe that solipsism is the truth, but that would not be a very good way to live, if it is not the truth.

There are some people who won’t open their mind at all. That’s just what I don’t understand. Who knows, maybe I’m one of them without knowing it.

“There are some people who won’t open their mind at all. That’s just what I don’t understand.”

Like who? Are there specific people you’re talking about?

@Bill1939 Great answer, too. We will indeed go insane if we deny any kind of reality. I have thought about that a lot once, it wasn’t nice. I chose to believe there’s a reality and that other people exists and that’s amazing.

As for the religion part, the Bible is just a book. An old book. So of course times changes and the old book doesn’t seem to fit the present, even though some people still want to live everything after that old book. It seems to me that people too often compare religion and faith. People can really believe what they want, if it’s some book or their own belief.

@Keep_on_running Different people I know. I’m not referring to anybody specific on Fluther, don’t worry-

You assume I exist and that the world exists and that it is not an illusion. If you also assume that you can learn something about me and the world, and you go about learning via observation, testing, hypothesis, theory, measurement and peer review, then that is more or less what science is.

Science is held at such a high standard because it constantly produces observable, testable and repeatable results. When I press the submit button on this question it will post my answer, when I drop a hammer it will fall, and so on.

The fact that we can talk online, the fact that I can live past the age of 30, and the fact that I can drive or take a train to work, and the rest of our entire civilization and technology, all points towards science working as a tool to know things about the world.

“Isn’t it just about choosing what we want to believe?”

Sure, if you’re ok with looking like an idiot sometimes. Sometimes science has the best explanation at the moment. Things can change due to the scientific method, and some things will be the same forever.

Science can never be wrong, because science is all about the knowledge of all things. There are people who suffer from the confirmation bias syndrome or Semmelweis effect who give science a bad name though. Not even all of those involved in the various scientific disciplines agree with each other, and to an extent that is a very good thing because people, unlike science, are fallible.

@Paradox25 Really? Science can never be wrong? Never ever?

@tups Never. Read the entire post, not just the first sentence of what I’ve written above.

@Paradox25 Of course I’ve read your entire post. I’m lazy, but I do care about stuff.
Anyway. What about when scientists assumed the Earth was flat? Doesn’t science develop all the time? How can you be sure it’s never wrong, then?

@tups This is why paradigm shifts occur in science, but a paradigm is not science in itself but a way of researching it. Actually it was religionists who oppressed knowledge deliberately (obscurantism), and they were the ones who pushed the flat earth propaganda. I do believe that many accepted paradigms today, such as mind being exclusively a brain function, will fall apart within the next century. There are many other things that will eventually change as well in my opinion relating to science. Remember, this isn’t about science, but about fallible people.

Scientists TEST their theories, and are ready to let them go, admit they were wrong, if their tests don’t uphold their theory. Religion never, ever admits they’re wrong.

I DO believe in gravity! I DO believe in gravity!

I can’t see the wood for the trees!?!

@Dutchess_III No, because religion can’t be proved. That’s why they call it faith. They don’t try to prove it, science try to prove everything. It’s about belief, really.

@Paradox25 I’m not really sure if I understand you, I’m not really sure if you understand me either. I do get your point, though. You say there are paradigm shifts in science, I know that. Isn’t that why the fact that some science is true(or so it seems) is often just temporary?

@Paradox25 So you’re saying there has never been an “oops, we were wrong about that” moment in science? That is quite a generalization.

Science is always evolving. One new, tiny little discovery could potentially disprove something we have accepted as indisputable fact. We simply do not know enough to say that anything is 100% certain.

because science is repeatable and provable. Theories that are not provable don’t survive. Scientific experiments are documented and can be repeated.

Think back around 20 years to the cold fusion ‘discovery’. A couple of scientists declared that they had made huge improvements in cold fusion (Pons and Flieschmann). But in the end, other scientists could not repeat the Pons and Flieschmann experiment, and it was deemed a bad theory.

Can you say the same for religion? Can it withstand examination and scrutiny?

@elbanditoroso No, I can’t say the same for religion. Did I ever intend to? This question is not a science vs. religion question at all.

Because it is empirically verifiable. And when we learn new things in science we change our paradigms. Science does not remain stagnant it changes upon new, empirically verified facts.

Scientists become just as attached to the traditions that lead them to their conclusions as theologians are to theirs.

When the numbers did not add up to an unchanging universe, Einstein devised a cheat (the cosmological constant) to produce the results he believed should be there. However, the universe was later proved to be expanding. To his credit, Einstein considered his ‘constant’ to be the biggest mistake of his life. Ironically, now that quantum mechanics is a major scientific and technological reality (although why it is so still is being questioned), his constant is being reintroduced to explain the potential existence of dark matter and/or energy.

Another example, is the long held scientific conviction that light required a substance (aether) for propagation. Ideas, religious or scientific, held by the wise and the foolish, are not easily given up. As to scientific proofs, many theories are held sacrosanct for scores of years before either mathematics or experimental evidence is found supporting or refuting them.

I would like to point out that it is not religion that cannot be proved. It is that religions proffer some notions that cannot be proved. Who doubts the existence of a temple, mosque, synagogue or church? Just as no one can prove that the soul / mind / spirit / psyche is immortal, neither can anyone prove that everything ends when our body dies.

Science isn’t the truth. It takes us one step beyond our own experience. That may be one step towards the truth or it might be one step away from the truth.

Science is refutable. Religion is not.

When you prove something in science wrong, they give you the Nobel Prize. When you prove something in religion wrong, they burn you at the stake.

You can’t “prove” anything wrong in religion, @ragingloli. You can only question it. Then they burn you at the stake, or dis-invite you to church socials.

I’m gonna take some liberties here but I hope you enjoy it…

“Truth” is a human word. No one else talks about “truth” besides people. So “Truth” is merely what a population of humans happens to convinced of.

When people assert “Science says this is True”.. what they really mean to say is something like: “Well, the mainstream body of researchers concerned with this matter have become convinced that so-and-so is the case… so far.”

And I add “so far” because that conclusion can change if those researchers come across new evidence that coerces their opinions.

Science is really a historical record of the most we’ve been able to learn so far, together as humans. Science should be seen as current, up to date studies and understandings of things in the universe. (Those understandings come specifically through the application of a thing called the Scientific Method) As such, Science represents the limit of what humans can define as “Truth” since.. we don’t really have anything else to call “truth” besides what we’ve become convinced of.

hope that makes sense

Science cant’ be wrong because science is not knowledge. Science is a method for creating knowledge. If you understood that, you would be unable to ask this question.

Scientists make mistakes all the time. But the scientific method is self correcting, and over time, those mistakes will be corrected.

I have no idea what you mean when you say “truth.” I think of truth as a kind of comfort object you might give a child, like a teddybear. Truth—the idea that there is knowledge that will stay the same forever—is rare, and generally not available for the things most people want it for, such as the meaning of life.

Most knowledge is provisional. Worse, it is relative. It changes. It is different with different people and with different places in the universe. This does not fit with what people hunger for. It is my hypothesis that evolution has given us a hunger for absolute knowledge, because only that can keep us safe. Thus we make many errors in thinking we know things we don’t, simply because, emotionally, we feel safer that way.

People call those kinds of knowledge “beliefs.” Fortunately, there are more and more people who actually do understand what the scientific method is, and thus are less prone to making mistakes like that.

Questions like this one annoy me because they have been asked so many times and I have answered them so many times. They indicate that a person has not researched the issue, nor educated themselves.

But then, I’m lazy, too. I don’t want to see if my questions have been asked before. So I understand that it’s easier to come out and try to challenge people and see if you get an interesting reaction. Maybe you learn something. Then again, maybe you are not interested in learning anything. Maybe you just like to stir up the pot. That’s fine, as far as I’m concerned, but my feeling is that you are stirring the pot, not learning, and I just wanted to tell you that I find that pretty annoying and it does not dispose me kindly towards you. Not that you should care.

“We have to live today by what truth we can get today, and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.”
—William James

It sounds to me like what you’re really worried about are the fundamental questions of epistemology: What is knowledge? How is knowledge acquired? To what extent is it possible for a given subject or entity to be known? These are theoretically prior to questions of science. The skeptical position you mention—i.e., that we know only the contents of our own minds—is known as solipsism.

In answering some of your questions, we first need to be aware of the difference between truth and facts. Facts are a states of affairs that obtain in the world. Truth is a property that a certain kind of sentence might have. If you have a pet bird and it is perched in its cage, that the bird is perched in its cage is a fact. Furthermore, for as it remains a fact that the bird is perched in its cage, the sentence “the bird is perched in its cage” is true. Note, then, that truths reference facts and are true in virtue of certain facts obtaining.

Before we try to figure out which things are true and which possible states of affairs are actual (and thus factual), we need to address the question you ask about how we know that there are such things as facts and truths in the first place. The answer is that the alternative cannot possibly be the case. If there were no facts, then it would be a fact that there were no facts. Thus there would be at least one fact, meaning that it would not be a fact that there were no facts. The same argument can be given with regard to truths. If there were no true sentences, then the sentence “there are no true sentences” would be true. Yet this would mean that there was at least one true sentence, so it would not be true to say “there are no true sentences.”

A similar kind of strategy works for knowledge. Some people would argue that 100% certainty is required for knowledge. If you’re evidence does not absolutely guarantee that a particular sentence is true or that some fact obtains, these people would say, then you cannot say you know that the sentence is true or that the fact obtains. People who argue this way are called infallibilists. They hold that the standard for knowledge is that you could not possibly incorrect. Infallibilism is frequently used as support for skepticism (where that term is understood as involving a rejection of all claims to knowledge). The skeptic asks “are you 100% certain?” When we say that we are not, he then asks “then how can you say that you know?”

This is an argument that many people find compelling, but it is a trick. The question for the infallibilist is this: how does he know that his standard for knowledge is correct? Does his evidence guarantee that only 100% certainty could give us knowledge? It does not, so his own standard fails to support his definition. As such, we need an alternative to the infallibilist’s criterion for knowledge. This alternative is called, perhaps unsurprisingly, fallibilism. According to the fallibilist, we are justified in calling something “knowledge” even when we do not have 100% certainty—though we must always be open to the possibility that future evidence may overturn our present convictions (this is the point of the William James quote placed at the top of this post).

There are a lot of things that could be said here about fallibilism. The most relevant point to make for the purposes of your question, though, is that science proceeds on the basis of fallibilism. Even where science is thought to have proven something, that proof must always be understood as having a footnote reading “pending further investigation.” The reason that people tend to accept the most current results of science, then, is that—as @nikipedia said—science works. The claims made by scientists are among the most rigorously investigated pieces of information that we have. This means that once we accept fallibilism over the (unworkable) infallibilist alternative, science represents one of the best ways of discovering what is most likely to be true. Thus it is well worth adhering to scientific results until they are overturned—at which point we adhere to newer, better confirmed scientific results.

@Supacase There are hypothesis and theories which have been proven wrong, but this still does not mean that science in itself is wrong. Science is all about creating a method in which to research and understand things, and in fact all things. There does seem to be a reductionist type of thinking, similar to the conformation bias, that can dominate certain people or organizations involved in science, but again (yawn) this does not mean that science in itself is wrong.

Thank you for the answers, everybody. Was very interesting. Seems like it always makes a little mess, when I ask this question. People always find a way to make me look ignorant. Maybe I am. Most likely I am. Maybe we’re all.

I do know about science. There’s a lot about science that I don’t know for sure. I’m still in school. My intention was not to “stir up any pot”. There’s just certain thoughts in my head. So I wanted to try to explain one of them and see what you guys thought about. And I’m glad I did, ‘cause it resulted in a lot of interesting answers.

It was not my intention to be offensive in any way. I don’t really understand how I could be, but if that’s the case, I’m sorry for that. Maybe it’s just a very sensitive subject for some people. That’s understandable. I could keep on trying to explain my thoughts and arguing, but I’m not sure if that would lead to anything useful.

@SavoirFaire makes a very cogent explanation of science. What is interesting to me is how so many different ideas of what science is can appear. I wonder if that has to do with where most people who are attacking science are coming from—perhaps a religious perspective?

In religion, knowledge is created quite differently from science. Religious knowledge is created internally through personal perception. One knows things when a certain level of righteousness is felt about that particular piece of knowledge. The knowledge can feel like it has been revealed, presumably from a source of very high moral authority, such as God. Obviously, if any other source reveals it, the knowledge is suspect, so if anyone expects to be believed, they have to claim the knowledge comes from the highest source.

Is this a form of solipsism? The knowledge comes from the inside but it feels like it is coming from the outside. Some argue that it actually is coming from the outside. But, who can tell?

People who come from a tradition where this is considered knowledge, assume that science works in a similar way, I’m guessing. If they don’t study science or bother to learn anything about it, they may make this mistake. The moment they learn something about science, this should be cleared up, unless they have a political agenda, and then it really doesn’t matter what science is or isn’t. The person is in the conversation for other reasons besides knowledge.

@wundayatta I wonder why it has to be either religion or science? It’s common that people assume just because one might have a different point of view on science or maybe doubts it (there’s a difference between doubt and denial), it’s obviously because they’re religious. Making religion seem ignorant and science seem very intellectual. I know some people who are religious and interested in science. They don’t let the one thing exclue the other.

I’m not really a religious person myself, so that’s not where my question is coming from (not assuming that your comment was directed to me). Can anyone really be sure why we’re on this Earth and whatever made the world exist? Is one thing more right than the other?

(Forgive me for not doing what I said I would do in my former response. )

@tups You have to look at the methods for creating knowledge. There’s really no comparison. Science is verifiable and reproducible and bends over backwards to reassure people that it is on the up and up.

Religion is quite the opposite. It’s method is very unclear. It is the proverbial black box. The method can’t be documented. It is personal. It is mysterious. It can only be trusted if you have faith.

Of course, religions have lots of emotional tricks they use to get people to use faith to believe in something they can’t understand. But if you are able to look at them from a distance, most people will say, “yep, science is more trustworthy.That is how we do things when we want people to believe us. Open, transparent, verifiable.”

Religion does not create knowledge that is comparable to scientifically created knowledge. Not even remotely comparable. It is not suitable for dealing with reality.

Religion may create knowledge that is suitable for other areas of life. It creates good stories for many people (not me). It teaches morality for many.

I think that if you understand the methods used, you can put the forms of knowledge creation into their appropriate places. If you want sureness, then you should turn to religion because that is the only place you will find it. Science cannot give you absolute certainty. Apparently, we do not live in a universe that contains absolute certainty. We live in a relative universe, most likely.

You pays your money and you takes your chances. In my mind, religion knows something about spiritual practices and community building and that’s valuable. It is not very strong at creating knowledge about how the universe works on a physical level. It’s not very strong at figuring out how human societies work at a social or individual level. If religion would stick with what it was strong at, I’d have no problem with it. But when it uses revelation as a way to create dysfunctional lies about who people are, I have a problem.

Again, this is not a religion vs. science question. No, they are not comparable. Too many people compare them all the time. They can be compared, if you really want to, but it usually doesn’t end well. My point exactly is that there is no absolute certainty. How could there be?

About what you said about religion creating dysfunctional lies about who people really are, I also believe that science can do that. People can do that. Almost anything, really.

The difference between religion and science as far as dysfunctional lies are concerned is that science has a reliable method for uncovering the lies and eliminating them. Religion doesn’t. As a result, a lie might persist for as long as 50 years in science, and usually for much shorter. In religion, the lie might persist for thousands of years. There is no standardized mechanism in any religion that I know of for uncovering and correcting lies. It is all haphazard and subjective and political. Almost no-one I know thinks that politics and truth can ever be found in the same sentence.

@tups You say that your point is that there is no absolute certainty. I agree, and I bet the majority of people who have responded here would agree as well. My point to you has been that the inability to be absolutely certain does not entail that we must be skeptics who reject all claims to knowledge. I would ask you, then, what lesson you think is to be taken from the fact that we cannot be absolutely certain. If it is merely that the results of science can be mistaken, I again doubt that anyone who has responded here would disagree. This does not mean, however, that we are not justified in taking the results of science as the truth. That, after all, is the lesson of fallibilism—and science is a fallibilist discipline.

@wundayatta It seems like we are repeating ourselves. I don’t know exactly in what matters I agree with you and in what matters I don’t. Still, you are comparing religion and science. Still, it wasn’t my intention of this question. I would like to ask you one thing, though. You say religion can create dysfunctional lies about who people are, I agree. Do you think, though, that science can explain why people behave as they do and do you think that science can explain my feelings and your feelings? I’m not saying I don’t think it can do that. It probably can. I just think it seems cold in a way. Like we’re just machines.

@SavoirFaire I like your points. Will definitely give them more thought. I’m not exactly sure what lesson the fact that there are no absolute certainty can give. Yes, one could chose to deny all knowledge based on this or one could chose to build knowledge based on this. I guess I’m somewhere in between. I know that’s not very productive. I don’t really know where I am.

Your questions and response are actually asking for a comparison between the two @tups. An example of this is your question “I wonder why it has to be either religion or science?” How can one answer that without making a comparison?

@tups I am sure that, using the scientific method, we humans will come up with increasingly accurate explanations of why we feel as we do and behave as we do. Do not forget that science does nothing. It’s just a method. It is people who are scientists who use the method to create knowledge. Mostly they do this at Universities, but knowledge creation also takes place in other venues.

Educated people don’t. They know that science is agnostic about matters beyond the empirical. You can’t use science itself to answer meta-scientific questions. Take the following sentence: “Science can explain everything.” Is it true? If yes, it is also false. See the contradiction?

@mattbrowne The question doesn’t ask why people think that science is the whole of the truth, but rather why people think that the results of science are true. Furthermore, the sentence “science can explain everything” does not express a contradiction. It is a statement that happens to be false, but it is not necessarily false.

I take it that your point is that science cannot answer questions about itself. Yet if “science can explain everything” were empirically verifiable—a logical possibility some people still believe to be actual—then your sentence would not be a counterexample at all. As such, your example fails to be an instance of the strategy I outlined above.

I spent decades working as an expert in the design, execution and the interpretation of scientific research.

Anyone who is a scientist knows not to speak of “Proof” in science nor does one speak of “Disproof.” Through repeated testing and observing the same result a theory is incrementally confirmed to a greater degree. Only in Mathematics and Deductive Logic can one arrive at Proofs. This is because certain hypotheses in those disciplines are assumed to be true a priori.
Even long held theories can be overturned by new evidence and this is good and the way we do the work of science.

Religion is based on beliefs. They are accepted as true without proof or the need for froof. That is why they require faith!

One is not better than the other. They have no areas of common subject matter nor should they.

Without a proper understanding of the methods of science, one cannot intelligently discuss the results or interpretation of scientific research.

I’m sure that without a proper understanding of the beliefs and practices of a particular faith, one cannot intelligently discuss that faith, let alone make proper comparisons to any other faith.

If that is not clear, please ask me to explain further.

@Dr_Lawrence, Actually your description of science was geeat but your description of religions is wanting.

For example both Religions and science are based on “beliefs” and both require evidence at least in the form of testimony in order participate. For example, try praying to Jesus without learning his name from someone else. Or try going to church when no one has explained to you what a church is for or even its location. What if no one tells you which way Mecca is, how do you bow in its general direction?

Witness testimony even in court is known to be extremely unreliable and that is for events that can be seen or heard directly.

2 words: Alien abductions.
Lots of eyewitness accounts there.
If you want me to take your religious “testimony” or “revelation” or whatever, I demand that you accept the alien abductees’ testimony first.

WTH?

@SavoirFaire – You’re right. Thanks. I was thinking in terms of ‘suppose this is true…’ like ‘suppose this program can solve the halting problem’ and then you feed it to itself. So, suppose science can explain everything it missed the meta-scientific statement ‘science can explain everything’ because such statements belong to ‘everything’ as well.