To the extent one has faith, that faith is .. by definition ... unquestioned. To the extent one questions, one is a skeptic. No?

Find me in Darwin where he said God is dead.

I think there is far less to it than that.

He also didn't question Newtonian Mechanics, Hydrodynamics, Acoustics, Symbolic Logic, Thermodynamics, Relativity, Meteorolgy, Plate Tectonics, Biology, Genetics, ad nauseum.

Why?

Because all of them are, while by definition incomplete, are very, very, unlikely to be wrong.

So, if your experience is to conclude that all the established theories arrived at through the scientific method have proven to be outstandingly resilient at explaining the material world, one could be forgiven for failing to highlight the one you don't happen to agree with.

Darwinism isn't the only scientific discipline that could conceivably act as a God killer. There are at least several others on that list, plus more easily found, that, at the very least, paint a convincing picture that God is, at best, utterly indifferent to human existence.

Darwinism is no more a God-killer than the others, but like the others, it isn't going to act as a pew-filler, either.

Says the choir.

I do like the idea, though, that people can oft be gullible skeptics....

Jeff: It's not enough for skepticism to be a God-killer. In order to live up to its own inflated self image, skepticism needs to be a Faith-killer, which means that the skeptic needs to show that he can really do without Faith, that is, without a source of hope beyond measure of reason -- and not just in his published writing, but in the way he lived his life. If there's a big-name intellectual this past century who's managed that I'm not aware of him -- the 20th century seems to me to have been entirely devoted to the Church of the State in all her various sects, and the scientists seem to me to have been, for the most part, mild-mannered little parishioners. (Not trying to hijack the thread here, but I would like to hear some nominations for the title of Genuine Twentieth Century Skeptic -- oj, what say you? ) In the end, religion is the act, not the object -- it's not who or what you bow your head or bend your knee to, it's that you bow your head and bend your knee.

>Because all of them are, while by definition incomplete, are very, very, unlikely to be wrong.

I'm not really sure what this means. How are any of these "by definition" incomplete? They clearly are incomplete insofar as any attempts by humans to oversimplify the universe will be, well, wrong. Newtonian mechanics is certainly "wrong", in that for a whole host of physical problems, you will indeed get an incorrect answer in applying it--hence quantum mechanics and relativity. We also know relativity is "wrong" in this sense (failing for black holes and the earliest moments after the Big Bang), but we don't know what will replace/supplement it.

Besides the famous cases such as observations during eclipses which confirmed that Einstein was right and Newton wrong, we have vast number of observations which show that something is strange in the outer regions of galaxies--the standard answer is to rely on "dark matter." This relies on the "fact" that we "know" that Newton is "right" on the scales of megaparsecs, even though we already know he's wrong on even larger scales, as well as very small scales. So we're really taking it on faith, for lack of a better word, that Newtonian mechanics holds in this regime, and going from there. Once you get "dark energy" involved, you're really starting to become reminiscent of epicycles. One may argue that our assumptions can indeed account for what we observe, but of course the Platonic model was spectacularly accurate, provided you allowed them epicycles within epicycles within epicycles (much more accurate than Galileo's predictions--it took Kepler to get it right)...

Not to say that the rather strange modern cosmology is wrong, of course, but it would be nice to see a bit more sense of acknowledgement that assumptions are being made in the analysis that really aren't necessarily true, and could cause the whole structure to come crashing down. Most likely will, in fact, as soon as the next Einstein can figure out what our observations are telling us that everyone is overlooking.

And for truly extreme examples of "faith" in scientific circles, simply read stories about extraterrestrial life, with Mars being the current big news of course. It is rather amusing reading the stories in which the planetary scientists at JPL are trying everything they can to avoid the rather obvious conclusion that Spirit has landed in a volcanic crater, and not the remains of an ancient lake bed. But a lake is what they went to find, and so a lake is what they wish to see.

Brian:

Any scientific theory is an abstraction of the phenomena it seeks to explain, not the phenomena itself. So, but definition it is incomplete.

Newtonian mechanics is not "wrong." Above atomic scales, and below relativistic speeds and curvatures of space, Relativity makes predictions indistinguishable from Newtonian mechanics. But that also makes Newtonian mechanics incomplete with respect to Relativity. BTW, Relativity doesn't fail for black holes--it predicts them.

Regarding "dark matter," Astrophysicists are relying on the fact that, within the operational envelope of Newtonian mechanics, there are no known exceptions. Could dark matter turn out to be a chimera? Sure. Could whatever it is out there blow Newtonian mechanics to pieces? Sure. But you have to start somewhere, which means positing a theory with what you have and then try to confirm, or break, it.

Don't you think, though, that if the Mars lander observations are inconsistent with a lake bed, but consistent with a volcanic crater, that these scientists will change their minds, rather than continue insisting it is a lake bed?

The continual critical re-evaluation of theories based on their concordance with evidence, imperfect though it may be, is what distinguishes science from religion.

I like to think I'm the ultimate sceptic.

But I doubt it.

Crane Brinton makes the amusing point that as Enlightenment rationalism is a child of Christianity it is no surprise that Freudianism. Darwinism, and Marxism are (as Freud would have predicted) so hostile to their Father.

Barry:

People are exactly skeptical enough to inflate their own egos with the belief they are free-thinkers, but not one smidgen more, lest their own absurd faith be undermined.

suppose darwinism is not a testable scientific theory (which it is), but as you say, a 'faith'...

why would it be 'absurd'?

if you eliminate reason and scepticism and say one faith is as good as another, the word 'absurd' is empty.

All faith is absurd.

yes, i can dig that. But what do your fellow churchgoers make of it?

Christ on the cross asked why God had forsaken him.

Jeff:

I don't think we are really in disagreement on much substance of what I said, just that I seem to be more skeptical of what we as scientists say we "know." As I said: 'Newtonian mechanics is certainly "wrong", in that for a whole host of physical problems, you will indeed get an incorrect answer in applying it'. And as for black holes, past the event horizon relativity certainly breaks down--that's why we can't say what happens past that point, because our theories fail. There is no such thing as a singularity, which is just something like a division by zero in your formula, which tells you that your theory is wrong (incomplete).

And I agree completely with your statement that "you have to start somewhere, which means positing a theory with what you have and then try to confirm, or break, it." But you must also be constantly aware of what assumptions you are making, even if you're 99% sure they are reasonable. There are in fact many astrophysicists (though a tiny minority) who are actively questioning dark matter from the perspective that Newtonian mechanics are the problem. The fact that there are such scientists is of course a good thing, in that our assumptions are being questioned.

I sure hope that most scientists would change their minds about this particular crater. Especially since you can easily find lots of quotes making it sound like we *knew* this was an ancient lake. But they wouldn't change their minds about the big picture, unless every single crater were similarly debunked (not that I necessarily think that will happen). Another case, then, is SETI. A couple decades ago SETI enthusiasts talked about the near certitude that the galaxy had millions of advanced civilizations. Now, they talk about perhaps there are hundreds. But they're still convinced that they're out there. In my view, the truly scientfic approach is to say "Let's do this experiment and see what we find. Whether we ever find ETs or not, the answer will be pretty interesting." Instead they are saying "Let's find ET." What they're doing is still great, but they definitely have a bit of the wild-eyed obsession to them.

At any rate, again, I think all I am stressing is that scientists *do* make assumptions, since they have to, and how this doesn't fall under the definition of "faith" is beyond me, but then, I don't think "faith" is a pejorative.

Sorry for the astrophysics obsession, but that's what I do, so I feel I have a bit of personal experience to throw into the discussion...

They certainly do make assumptions, often without realizing it.

Orrin, for example, mischaracterized both Darwin and Mayr yesterday by saying that all the early Darwinists were agreed that there could not have been Creation.

What they actually were agreed on was that, given observations, there could not have been a benevolent creator.

It would be possible to devise a theory of biology without darwin and with a creator, if the creator were Satan or something like him.

All the early Darwinists, including Darwin, were unconsciously committed to the notion that God=good.

Orrin also equates all kinds of faith as equal because they are all "faiths." That's a semantic trick. The faith of the flat earther is different from the faith of, say, brian -- for reasons that are obvious to most people.

Harry:

"It would be possible to devise a theory of biology without darwin and with a creator, if the creator were Satan or something like him."

Finally I understand your passion for defending witchcraft.

Harry:

Yes, because they have a different faith.

SETI enthusiasts certainly hope to find ET, but I think they're all aware of the Fermi Paradox.

I'm not clear on the Mars problem. There's no question that Gusev Crater is a, well, crater. But there's also good reason to think that it held water for a while, which is of course long gone.

Brian:

Thanks for your astrophysics obsession--I envy you your occupation.

I am merely dabbler, reading as much as I have time for.

Different qualities of faith. Some propositions are testable, some not.

No, some articles of faith are testable from within the faith. Nothing is testable from outside one's faith.

Some faiths have no testable articles. And any material claim, no matter the faith, opens the possibility of material testing.

Provided you first have faith in materiality--an unprovable proposition.

Any material claim by any faith de facto invovles belief in materiality; hence, it is subject within its own terms to material disproof.

Yes, that's what I said. Proof can only come from within the faith. All faiths though lack proof.

As I've said before, that's just a pose. Nobody believes that and everbody's behavior proves they don't.

As I've said before, that's because in the final analysis no one will follow where reason leads, thereby proving dependence on it a faith rather than reasonable.

I'll bet you follow reason enough to not walk in front of speeding trucks.

Jeff:

Yes, but I'm a person of faith and reason is a subset of that faith.

What's faith got to do with trucks?

I have a sneaking suspicion speeding trucks will leave a mark regardless of one's faith.

Yes, but we can only have a suspicion.

You walk out in front of that truck, and you are going to have a lot more than suspicion.

What truck?