I question the expertise of any scientist who is willing to believe things with no evidence. It’s as simple as that.
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tetris11@feddit.uk 4 hours agoPlenty of religious scientists. The more you lesrn, the greater you are aware of how much is uncertain. You can still believe in a God whilst respecting the scientific method of reasoning
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 hours ago
brendansimms@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
There was a shortformvid clip I saw some time ago that stuck with me: You can only ‘believe’ in something that does NOT have evidence for it (or at least not conclusive evidence), otherwise you would KNOW it to be true. Belief requires a certain amount of uncertainty. Note that I am in no way religious and in no way am saying people should believe religious texts, just sharing an interesting take on the concept of ‘believing’
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 hours ago
Ehh, I don’t necessarily agree with that but I understand the point.
I think if a thing is evident, then it’s irrelevant as to whether or not someone believes it. But it’s still a thing.
abigscaryhobo@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
There are also a fair number of scientists that believe there may be a higher power or an afterlife that still devoutly hold to scientific study. You can be a person of science and a person of faith. As long as you don’t deny science along the way then there’s no problem with that. Now if you don’t believe in evolution or something then yes your credentials are weakened significantly, but believing that there is a higher power beyond earth doesn’t mean your test results are invalid.
Nalivai@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
That’s not exactly what believe means. In a way we can’t be sure of anything, including our own existence, so everything we do is believing something based on what evidence we have. The difference between that and a religious conviction is that religion requires you to stop basing your believe on any evidence at all, and believe in their stuff regardless.
If I tell you I ate a piece of bread this morning, you’ll believe me. If I tell you I ate a piece of Uranium, you wouldn’t. Even though, you have the same amount of evidence for both claims. That’s normal believe. Religious believe requires you to believe everything religious higher ups tell you, but because humans aren’t wired to do that, they only tell you shit you can’t actually check, so your believes are “justified”.
Fluke@feddit.uk 4 hours ago
Rightly so. If the scientific method is applied to religious claims, they fail as untestable assertions. Every time.
Nalivai@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
There are people who’re scientists and also religious people. People are amazing at compartmentalizing. My physics teacher in school was young earth creationists. She had no problems spending the whole academic hour correctly explaining how lead is formed over millenia in a heart of a dying start, and then spending an hour after school explaining to all who could listen, with the same conviction, that the earth is 6 thousands years old everything was made in 6 literal human 24 hours days.
People contain multitudes. Science and religion, however, are mutually exclusive. Scientific method is the opposite of religious conviction, and anyone who don’t see that doesn’t know what either of those words mean.
MisterFrog@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Yes, but similarly, the god of the gaps is pretty hard to ignore.
There will be questions we never will have the answer to, and if you’re actually serious about the scientific method as a philosophy, you aren’t uncomfortable with “we don’t know”.
To me, a mysterious universe is more wondrous than “god did it” and yes, I do very much question religious scientists, despite many great scientists being religious.
If you’re willing to just believe things “just because” then how can I trust you’ll actually apply the scientific method (also a philosophy) reliably?
I can happily coexist and work with mildly religious scientists/engineers, but I would straight up refuse to work with a creationist or someone born again. Religion is anti-scientific.
Religion vs science is not a false dichotomy, despite it being possible to be religious and a scientist at the same time.
tetris11@feddit.uk 19 minutes ago
It’s less accepting the uncertainties, and more seeing familiar patterns and constants and wondering of their nature. Why Pi, why 3 visible human dimensions, why the golden ratio in so many flora and fauna, why quark trios.
The scientific answer to many of these is “Nature of the universe, energy minimization dictates, we have Math models”, all which are fine answers. But you do still question why those values/patterns compared to others.