Quote:
Originally Posted by SeattleUte
If you weren't intending to analogize between scientific hypotheses or theories and religioius faith, I don't know what point you were trying to make in bringing faith into this.
The extent and certainty of scentific "belief" that the earth is 250 million years old begins and ends with the objectively verifiable evidence and whatever uncertainties may exist with respect to that evidence. The concepts are fused. No scientist has a stake in the issue except insofar as what hypothesis or theory may reasonably be drawn from the evidence. No scientist claims to know for certain. They would gladly be persuaded that the earth is 6,000 years old or 250 billion years old if the best available evidence and reason so suggested. When they tell you they estimate it to be x years old they will add all kinds of provisos and caveats because that for them is truth, and the kind of truth that is their currency. They don't assume or even believe in anything that can't be hypothesized or theorized form objective evidence and reason. So I don't understand how you arrive at the conclusion that this constitutes any kind of faith whatsoever, under the first, second, third, whatever Websers' definition of faith.
I have read that it takes faith to believe in reason, to believe that things are as your senses perceive them to be, and that things are supposed to make sense. That's an arguably profound point, but it's not the one you have made and it's not usually the point religious poeple try to make when they say scientists engage in faith.
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It is faith in it's most basic form simply because there is no such thing as objective evidence and reason; faith: "confidence or trust in a person or thing"
The scientists with reason in tow is the 'person', the so called objective evidence is the 'thing' ... it's a simple equation and very logical.
Ergo the scientist effectively is God, ascended to his station through the discipline of method honed in academic settings, wherein he/she/it determines the relative definition and value of evidence.