(August 31, 2014 at 12:45 pm)Dawsonite Wrote: Our situation is the same as this. It's just on a wider scale. It's argument by authority.But as I pointed out, it's to an authority that we recognize as fallible. I think that in the 1930s, as now, people tend to trust science and technology based on its track record. Scientists may fail and be wrong a lot, but the general trend is towards more knowledge and understanding. Believing that the scientific method is superior to the 'wisdom' contained in ancient books is not the same as replacing god with scientists. We expect and receive very different things from them.
In our everyday lives, both the theist and atheist place about the same amount of faith in science. We use electric lights to see, pens and pencils to write, we use calculators and computers and automobiles and radios and computer networks and cell phones and so on. We benefit from research into medicines and human health and fitness. We accept the fallibility of scientists, but our faith in their ability to produce working technology is rewarded dozens, possibly hundreds of times every day.
It's when we turn from that authority to the supernatural that the sides diverge. If faith in god paid off in ways as consistent and obvious as faith in science does, then no one would doubt that god existed.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
