In the words of the Vatican’s former chief science person: Science seeks to explain the ‘how’ question regarding creation, religion seeks to understand the ‘why’ question regarding creation.

The problem about the “literal word of God” in the bible was created during the reformation. The Catholics could always claim letitimacy by tying the pope all the way back to Peter being the bishop of Rome, and the words of Christ granting him premiership. The protestands, wanting to break away from the Church had a canoninical law problem – they had to find a basis for separating from the mother church. They decided that they did not need the pope as an intermediary to God, that they could just go to the Bible as the intermediary. Thus the idea of the bible being the literal word of God made it seem like, instead of a conduit to God, the pope was a barrier.

Nice foot work by the Prots. But it was a faustian bargain because the idea of the bible being the literal word of God was pushed into their DNA, and now Scientist have pretty good idea that the world wasnt created in seven days. The debate raged beyond the reformation, forcing ideas to harden. Then becoming emotionalized.

The problem comes with confusing scripture with the diety. In the process veneration for the bible becomes idle worship. Indeed, the bible is a graven image, ink applied to paper creating an image of God through literary explaination as apposed to painting or sculpture, butits the same thing.

The whole thing is positively emotional, not faith based. As you said, faith is belief without proof. Furtherm more, the God in the new testement, is prone to using parables to explain complex concepts to rather simple people, why wouldn’t the God of the old testement do the same thing when trying to explain something as complicated as creation, to people even more primitive living at least one thousand years earlier. Plus there’s all that business about old testement characters living hundreds of years.

God in the new testement boils the ten commandments down to two. Give him credit for liberating us with that. Then he ads a few more commandments of his own:separate church from state, and to know the truth(it will set you free).

Science is never about untruth. It is by its very nature, about truth. Nature is Gods creation. Know the truth about nature, and you will see and know directly what the hand of God wrote.

Humans have a tendancy to inject God whenever they just get tired of thinking. Biblical literast are just insecure people trying to impose certainty where it can never be, and denying certainty where it could be found, and where it can help make our lives more secure.

Whether or not science is a belief is a matter of perspective. Science believes that what we see or its instruments are capable of measuring is “real.” The belief component is in relying entirely on sensory capability (or the mimicry of senses through instruments) to support whatever theories are put forth.

The problem is that what we can see or measure is not proof of anything other than what we can see or measure. Science is the proverbial three blind men and the elephant but most scientists are unwilling to acknowledge the limitations of science in this regard. The belief that scientific methods are accurate or particularly useful in understanding the way the universe works is just that, a belief.

If you study human biology and start to see how much our sensory apparatuses are designed *not* to perceive certain stimuli or sensory data because our brains are not designed to interpret too much or certain types of input, you can see where believing in our senses to measure everything is misplaced. Instrumentation, as a means of extending our senses is still limited by our ability to design the instruments in such a way as to provide information our limited senses can interpret.

Scientists have a belief that existence is as small as our senses. Religious people believe it’s greater than our senses. They’re both still beliefs.

Shari:

First, let me define “belief.” In this sense, I would define “belief” as accepting something as being true without having reproducible, quantifiable evidence of the existence of a thing. If we use the definition of “accepting to be true,” then in fact, science is more of a “belief” than religion, as it questions its own accuracy more than religion tends to. But that’s not the common definition of “belief” in this context, which refers to accepting without solid evidence–in other words, you hear a story or feel an emotion, and that’s the “evidence.”

That said:

I would disagree with you on the basis of philosophical hair-splitting. Of course science is limited to sensory perception–but that is not a limitation so much as a definition. That which cannot be measured via empirical means does not belong in the realm of science. That does not make it a “belief,” it simply defines what the subject quantifies. Your definition simply puts into question the assumption that what we sense is “real,” which simply sets all considerations at a removed level. Science must work within certain assumptions, one of them being that we are not delusional or tricked by thinking that what we sense is “real.” If you want to call that a “belief,” then fine; if you want to say that it then equates science and religion as beliefs of the same order, then I’m not fine with that. Let’s settle by saying that science demands a much different and far more rigorous/quantifiable type of sensory input than faith/religion does, and leave it at that.

As for the three men and the elephant, you are simply describing the initial stage of the scientific process, and not the entire process. Science allows for mistaken assumptions, and demands they be tested. If the three blind men tried to test their assumptions, they would quickly discover their mistakes, if by no other means than by continuing to feel the parts of the elephant beyond the leg, trunk, and tail. The elephant would move, trumpet, and display other behavior which would cause the three men to revise their theories and test them further.

Science understands and accepts that current knowledge is incomplete and most or all of it may be wrong. That is why error-correction is built into it. That individuals who call themselves “scientists” often violate these rules and make unwarranted assumptions does not alter the basic foundations of science itself.

Science, at its core, is nothing more than a description of what exists and an attempt to explain it in a way that stands up to reproducible testing and verification. That, in my book, is not a “belief,” all metaphysics aside.

“Belief,” on the other hand, accepts things as true simply due to tradition, needs, emotion, or some combination of these; beyond that, it’s nothing more than unsubstantiated guesswork. It may refer to a higher level of “reality,” but it is not in the least bit about accuracy or practicality. It’s a completely different animal.

Shari:

I reject catagorically your analysis. Its all or nothing. Science just takes the information that we’ve gained from the imperical method, and says this is what it tells us so far. As we get more information the explanation changes. Even strongly held explanations such as Plate Techtonics, which explains, quite consistently, quite alot, is held with a caviate that it might not be correct.

As we get more information, say from places like Mars, or even deep space, long held ideas get tossed out and new ones come. I don’t see arrogance coming from science, just individual scientist. And individuals may have their own reasons for an athiestic perspectives: like if there is a God how could he allow for things like the holocaust, the fates of tens of millions of African’s subjected to the middle passage over several hundred years of the triangular slave trade and suffering in general. The pre-columbian Mesoamericans looked as suffering and decided that God or the Gods were indifferent to it, and engaged in human sacrifice on a massive scale, a sort of preemption policy for avoiding climatic disasters by satiating the Gods taste for human suffering and blood shed.

Finally, you even rely on science in your very critique of science: specifically biology and evolution.

I get your point that there are limits to science and religion. But that no reason for rejecting either. Plenty of scientist are neither arrogant nor athiest.