Friday, March 30, 2007

Faith

Reasonable faith and blind faith. Applying qualifiers to a word that already implies belief regardless of anything else.

But this raises an interesting point. Science, all of it, is based on the sense of belief. This belief is based on evidence gathered thus far. On the basis of the fact I have seen the sun rise every morning and that the planet we live on hasnt just floated away I believe that the sun will rise again tomorrow. This belief is based on theories that have come about that attempt to explain empirical evidence. These have stood the test of time and so it is reasonable, and convenient to accept these explanations as fact (until of course someone has observed something that doesn't seem to quite fit in with current theories. Theory then goes right out the window. This is the very stuff of science, that it allows things held in good light for years together to be demolished on the basis of a single contradictory observation. Of course the fact that we humans practice science, thereby infusing it with all sorts of petty mindedness is another story altogether).

The next time I want to know something about the Sun, I do not go about collecting evidence, instead I look to science to offer me explanations and reasonable beliefs.

Theists or believers who are otherwise smart enough to understand that all of science is also based on belief somehow draw the line at accepting that the belief in science is based on hard empirical evidence.