(October 16, 2012 at 7:14 pm)Simon Moon Wrote: If the definition of 'believe' you are using is 'the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true', then yes, by that definition scientists believe they exist. If you are using 'confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof' as your definition, then no, they don't believe they exist.I didn't define faith or belief as "confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof."
Even using your definition, you have to admit scientists have confidence in things "not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof" - that is, the scientific method itself. What proves the scientific method produces real knowledge? Answer: your faith that it does.
You have faith in an epistemological method, just as a religious person does. Your epistemological method doesn't prove itself. You believe in it, and so it works for you.
Science studies from the middle of the process; they do not study the origin. We must know the beginning. If you suddenly see a plane fly into the horizon, will you say it came from the sea or the sky? But the scientific explanations are similar. They say "This existed, and then all of a sudden, by chance, that occurred." But what about explaining the original cause?
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