Thread: What is faith?
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Old 05-17-2007   #35 (permalink)
latecomer
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Default Re: What is faith?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bnonn View Post
The latter statement presupposes and relies upon the former. Science supposes a great many things which are rationally unjustified within the scientific worldview. For example, the uniformity of nature. If evolutionary theory relies upon science, and science rests upon rationally unjustified (ie, irrational) presuppositions, then evolution is irrational. If you're unsure why the uniformity of nature is rationally unjustified, I would recommend simply trying to rationally justify it.
First of all, I think your understanding of science, its aims and methods, and, ultimately, its value, is rather limited at present. For starters, feel free to feed your brain by reading this, this and this.
Hopefully, this will deepen your understanding of what science claims it can and cannot provide. Philosophy of science is a very rich and complex field of study, so there's no rush

Secondly, with your point about the principle of uniformity of nature, and irrational presuppositions, I take it you mean to say that science uses some assumptions which cannot be directly proven to be true. While this, at first, may seem like a good point to make, by now, if you've done your suggested reading, you will realise this is not as big an issue as you think it to be. (I suppose that, ultimately, it boils down to a kind of solipsistic argument, which, while highly entertaining in its own right, is not a very practical one.)

Thirdly, and this is the thing that really baffles me. How can you justify it to yourself, intellectually, to set such high and rigorous standards to the validity of science on the one hand, while, on the other, you quote at length from a book of obscure provenance, using words like truth and fact in the same breath. By what rationale do you assume this book to be a reasonable basis for making pronouncements on the nature of reality? Furthermore, even if one were to assume this book to have any authority, it seems to me to have almost as many interpretations as it has readers, as evidenced plainly on this forum, your own discussion on faith being a particular case in point.
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