(October 5, 2017 at 9:14 am)Little Rik Wrote:(October 5, 2017 at 7:39 am)Harry Nevis Wrote: No, it is not. Religious faith is nothing of the kind, because science has supporting evidence, where religion does not. And how is "common faith in god" legit? Because it's common? I know it makes you feel good to try to drag science down to the level of the blindly religious, but it doesn't work with thinking people.
That is bizarre Harry.
Someone say that evidence is not proof.
Now is all getting very complicated.
In science …
Everything’s a theory.
Proof doesn’t exist.
Nothing is certain.
http://theconversation.com/forget-what-y...-thing-578
color mine
It's not bizarre. It's not complicated.
'Theory' in science doesn't mean the same thing as it usually means in informal conversation. Your linked article fudges that distinction when it says that all ideas in science are "theories". That's not strictly correct. The author seems to be using the everyday, informal sense of the word to underscore the tentative nature of scientific ideas.
Proof is not something that science supplies except only in the sloppy, everyday use of the word in informal settings. Properly speaking, 'proof' is provided in mathematics and logic -- not science.
'Nothing is certain' is a sloppy way of saying that all ideas/theories in science are tentative, pending further evidence that might falsify them or cause a re-evaluation of the way we think about them. Tentativity: that splinter of honesty that all dogmatists like you seem to lack.
