Science and Belief

 

It’s time to make the plea again; the plea to tighten up and formalize and limit the use of the words ‘believe’ and ‘belief’. I’ve mentioned it before and seen eyes glaze over and roll back. It’s the same look I get when confronted with an insurance salesman on the make.

Which leads me to revealing why I’ve taken up the task yet again to address the problem when discussing science with ‘believers’. That confusion – at least in part – stems from the casual use of the words cited in inverted commas above. 

Kent Hovind. If you don’t know who Kent Hovind is, count yourself lucky. Think: ‘Ken Ham’, the schmuck who built the Ark theme park for ‘True Believers’. That’ll bring you into the ball park. 

Mr Hovind is a Creationist and a Bible literalist. He’s a promulgator of ‘Intelligent Design’. (Now, there’s an oxymoron worth its salt.)

Mr Hovind has been on a very extended quest to debate Aron Ra on the verisimilitude of the Theory of Evolution. During one episode (on YouTube, if you must know), Kent decided to build his straw man out of the words of non-scientists found in a Google search. Kent chose some quotes in which the word ‘believe’ was used informally. (e.g. ‘Science believes that the universe started from a singularity.’)

From there, he set the straw man on fire with the errant declaration that ‘science is a belief; science is a religion’. This is one of his primary assertions; science is faith-based because – get this! – since the concepts of black holes, the Big Bang, cosmogony, evolution, etc are not completely understood, then they are accepted as articles of faith and are ‘believed’ by scientists. That is; these theories are accepted as matters of faith and therefore are indicative of religion. ‘Science is a religion!’, he proclaims.

Q.E.D. 

Balderdash.

Science is NOT a belief system. Science is the exact opposite of a believe system as science is based on evidence. Are there dogmas in science? NO, there aren’t. There are theories which are accepted. There are hypotheses and proposals which are considered, examined and challenged.

That’s the difference between science and religion; the theories and hypotheses of science are meant to be challenged but the tenets of Faith are not to be challenged except under penalty of eternal damnation. Challenging articles of faith is forbidden and anathematized.

Think ‘the Spanish Inquisition’.

Try challenging the dogma of ‘Virgin Birth’ or the ‘Resurrection’, for example and watch heads explode amongst the ‘Faithful’.

Contrarily, challenge ‘The Big Bang’ and prepare to be engaged in weighty conversation. Is that discussion passionate? Of course, it is, but the debate is not considered blasphemous or heretical as it would be if one were to challenge virgin birth or the resurrection of Jesus.

Why?

Science is not faith-based. Nothing proposed by scientific method is ‘sacred’. Even the most establish, accepted theories are subject to change as verifiable evidence is presented supporting that change.

Consider the Theory of Gravity. Just recently, evidence of ‘gravity waves’ were observed and verified. The theory was amended.

Dogmas are not amended. The amendations are branded as heresy. They are stamped out. 

Speaking of gravity; try believing you can fly, then launching yourself from the roof of a building. 

Splat! 

‘I believe I can fly’ makes for a wonderfully up-lifting song lyric but it’s shite as a rational appreciation of gravity. 

It might seem that this discourse has strayed too far afield but it has not. The point made at the beginning, citing the lax, casual use of the terms ‘believe’ and belief’ is a sound one. When, in discussion of science versus religion, that wayward use of those terms become the sticking point, as Mr Hovid demonstrated when he cited the use of those terms to set up his straw-man argument equating science with religion.

That misuse, that acyrologia, is a stumbling block to sensible discussions of every-day matters. In a conversation with a friend about this rather pedantic misuse of the terms of faith, he asserted that in order to sit on a chair one must have faith that the chair would support one’s weight. The simple, ordinary act of taking a seat was an act of faith, therefore. 

The counter-argument was that while one may assume (or hypothesize) that a chair could support one’s weight, that assumption could be nullified by evidence that the chair was too feeble or ill-made. If, as one sat, the chair wobbled or creaked or gave some other sign that it was structurally unsound, then one would take another chair.

Hypothesis: the chair can hold my weight.

Evidence: the chair is unsound structurally. It wobbles.

Revised hypothesis: the chair can’t hold my weight.

Conclusion: choose a different chair. 

An even more banal example; ’I believe it’s going to rain’, may sound sophisticated in its phasing but it is erroneous at its base. It’s not expressing a belief. One senses the moisture in the air, sees low, heavy clouds, feels the cooling breeze and concludes from that evidence that there will be precipitation.

Better to say 'I think'…
Or 'I surmise'...
Or 'I contend'…

Deduce. Guess. Conjecture. Conclude. Suspect. Speculate. Presume.

The intention, here, is not to belabor a pedagogic point. It is to reveal a common malapropism as a stumbling block to intelligent discourse about science, religion and matters of everyday life.

Especially with a 'True Believer'.