Quote:
Originally Posted by creekster
That is a foolish and short-sighted conclsuion without considering context and purpose, but it does let you ignore what else he said.
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Look creekster, as I'm sure you know, religious people saying scientists engage in a faith of their own is tired and meaningless cant. Faith is not part of scientists' lexicon, not part of their dicipline. It's tiresome to see religious people force feeding that word to them. Sceintists most emphatically reject the notion that as scientists they rely on faith, and they have plenty of self-awarenes and in terms of their work they are not charlatans. Scientific study has plenty of fruits to show for itself.
Yes, scientific hypotheses and theories are fraught with uncertainties. That is what science is all about. But scientists do not respond to uncertainty with faith in any shape or form. People who claim that are invariably not scientists (we have two real scietists here that I know of and neither would claim that scientists employ a kind of religious-like faith) and are either uninformed or pushing an agenda.
Scientists respond to uncertainty by investigating phenomena and acquiring new kowledge through a rigorous, highly disciplined methodology involving , among other things, gathering observable, empirical, measurable evidence, subject to specific principles of reasoning. Also by these techniques previous data is corrected and integrated.
It's not faith goddamnit. It just isn't. Scientists don't think it is. So why do religious people try tell them it is? Because those who do it ultimately don't place a high intrinsic value on truth. And that's what pisses me off in the final analysis.