Irony of science and faith

[shannontg]

I'm an atheist because Science provides (to me) the most reasonable arguments about the workings of the world around us. However, I'm not a scientist. Scientists peer check their results and repeat experiments to ensure accurate predictability and the quantification of truth. If you are not a scientist who has conducted these experiments for themselves or seen with their own eyes the results, would you then be making a judgment of truth based on the word of those who have? Science seems pretty reliable, yet there are influences such as human error, political interests and monetary goals which sometimes distort the truth for dissemination.

Most atheists are not also scientists, so is it reasonable to conclude that our belief in the ideas put fourth by science are no better than the word of the scientists we trust? If atheism for most entails trusting rather than knowing for certain, does that not also imply that atheism is a leap of faith just like a religion?

[obscureatheist]

`even all of us were scientist we couldn't claim that scientific thing is completely true.
some people (philosophers of science) says that science just tries to get near to truth (like karl popper) it models the truth but its modeling has never been perfect.
and the most important duty of every new model is falsify the false thing and ...
some other see the science as an instrument (instrumentalists)
some other ...(if you are interested in these issues i recommend a book about philosophy of science : "What is the thing called science?" by alen chalmerz)
there is not any putative definition of science.
BUT i always accept the science even when a new scientific subject denies and disprove my previous scientific beliefs and i know maybe this one tomorrow won't be seen as truth too Why? because i have accepted that there is no more trusty resource of information(i think there is not any worthy alternative).so we should trust in science

[dnaunion (deleted)]

shannontg wrote: If atheism for most entails trusting rather than knowing for certain, does that not also imply that atheism is a leap of faith just like a religion?

No, because our scientific positions can - at least in principle, and probably usually in fact too - be supported by valid, objective, positive evidence, even if we ourselves cannot do it.

[whollyheretic (deleted)]

`Atheism and "Leap of Faith" are a contradiction in terms.

Atheism is the absence of theism. Christians have tried to re-define it as a belief. A belief in no god, because for them belief is the centre of their cock-eyed reality map. Being so fragile they cannot tolerate anything that contradicts their belief in belief.

[physiqueper4 (deleted)]

`Basiclly this post is very clever and prooves how vast your mind is.You are enlarging your mind to accept even the auto-criticism, hat is to be approciated and so many atheist infact think he same way. However we can not claim that beleiving scientists is a kind of "'religious blief" Simply because sientist do experiences and publish it, any one who has enough time can read about is,, see how it has been done, compare the results and even if he could criticise it.Institutions and laboratories can repeat the experience til they get convinced of its results, does that happen with religions??No so what happen is like so: you trust a word of a religion man so you are a man of faith .You trust the experience that you do under the suggetion of scientist and you are a normally thinking human beign.If you in a personal level can not repeat the experience wait for a whil to se its applications. Laser a direct application of the physics of the early 20'th century , rockets and planes are the result of Newtons theories,,medecine is a direct application of biotechnology....and so on. so even if you are not aspeciatlist you can see the fruit of whatscientist are talking about. In the interior ages the regular man who did'nt even understan Latin( in which bible was ritten and were understood only by priests in europe),the regular man considered him self as non specialist but still did blieve the church in hope that some day he will se the fruit of what religion people are talking about,he found nothing but wars after wars after wars,, lands took from his, slavery which he knew was not human,, politic envolved with religion,etc etc etc so the he decided to turn the page and try some thing else, from there Renaissance began and the train was on the way. Un like religion the regular man sees every day the application of what scientist are debating and researching, is there still any way to compare? i do not think so.