Strong Atheism starts from faith

[Zhalentine]

Okay this also is interesting. You say you use the scientific method for scientific claims for establishing truth claims but I'm here to tell you that sometimes the science is simply not available when a scientific job needs to get done. As a professional mechanical engineer of 10+ years experience in billion dollar plus resource projects, I use science where it is available to deliver my designs but where it is not available I must rely on previous experience or my own "gut feel" or apply what is affectionately called in my game the "fudge factor". So what happens for you when you don't have the science? May I hold you to your definition of how you "establish truth claims"? I would like to come back to that.

I'd also like to hold you to your definition of how your describe faith. May I do that?

Anyway, I am not sure if you are a strong atheist.

Using the scientific method for proving scientific claims is different than using the scientific method to make a judgment call when the science isn't available.

I'm not sure if you're implying that he would be using faith to make the judgment call when the science isn't available, but based on the definition he gave you, "a belief that is neither logical nor based on evidence," he would not be using faith because using past experiences that can relate to the topic is what a logical person does. He would be using faith if he just picked a random solution and hoped it worked.

As part of my work as an engineer I do not pick random solutions and hope they work because society and my clients do not expect that from me. Moreover I can not always rely on previous experience to demonstrate my designs will succeed because once I have a base design in place I rigorously and systematically hypothesise failure modes that may lay outside my realm of direct experience. I then must design mitigations and safe guards to these failure modes and implement them so that they become reality.

Are there scientific facts that are established through the result of such a failure study? Yes - I may install a 6" ball valve where there wasn't one before, or provide a 20 L fire extinguisher where there wasn't one, or increase a flange from 150# to 300#. But was there a scientific process that was gone through? Yes and no - it involves alot of conjecturing, using gut feel, teasing out problems, but where it appears scientific is that the framework for conducting the study is robust and exhaustive, and if I have calculations I need to perform they are done through established mechanical and process engineering standards.

Are there also non-scientific facts that are established but which nonetheless are important in reality? Yes - the safety level of my system has improved. Quantitatively it means that the probability of failure for a given node has decreased. Qualitatively, it means an operator can now access the valves more ergonomically.

This is a situation where both scientific facts and non-scientific facts are established using both scientific and non-scientific methods.

I never claimed nor implied that you picked a random solution and hoped it worked. I did not mean that using past experience to make judgment calls is the only other way to logically make a judgment call where science hasn't yet provided a solution; I only mentioned it because that was one of your points on how you make decisions. You mentioned using your "gut-feeling". There is something that is causing you to think that will work, whether it be a past experience that worked or you notice a trend and think that will work, you are still using reason and logic to think it out. Based on my definition of faith (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/faith) I do agree with you that making these decisions does require faith, but based on the definition we are using, the decisions you come to are logical and therefore do not require "faith."