> > Individual opinions on non-religious matters are frequently as dogmatic as
> > their religious views. There is little about a religious view that is
> > materially different than the other views most people hold in practice. The
> > problem is not religious views per se. Most secular opinions are based on an
> > equal paucity of analysis.
True, it cannot be any other way, given how vast
our base of knowledge has become.
Our collective ability to analyze, understand
and scientifically validate far exceeds the
ability of any one individual.
At some point, even the greatest scientist
must extend provisional trust the peer
review process.
> > A great many people hold scientifically reasonable opinions as articles of
> > faith; evolution is a good example of this. Most people that support the
> > idea of evolution cannot explain the reasoning behind their opinion, it is
> > simply what they were taught all right thinking people should believe.
While the theory of evolution is something that
most educated people really _should_ make some
effort to understand, there's always an area
where you've just got to depend on someone else.
Example:
There are lots of engineers who accept the idea that
you can't find the roots of quintic (or higher degree)
polynomials analytically. Maybe they've even heard
somewhere that the proof of this is related to the
Platonic solids... but couldn't do the proof if their
life depended upon it.
A mathemetician might scoff at such a person, while
someone else would be impressed to hear the engineer
say anything related to abstract algebra at all.
> > There is no more rationality informing their opinion than the people raised
> > to believe creationism is correct. I do not see any merit in believing
> > something that, by coincidence, happens to be a reasonable.
No, that's not true.
The critical difference is that the person who believes
in creation is placing blind faith in a belief system that
is fundamentally not auditable and/or not falsifiable.
The person who accepts "received wisdom" regarding a highly
successful scientific model (such as evolution) or a mathematical
proof (such as the result regarding the quintic) is placing provisional
faith in an auditable, falsifiable assertion under the scrutiny
of mutually skeptical and competitive researchers who are obligated
to divulge their evidence and/or methods to the point where another
researcher could replicate the result independently.
Belief in scientific findings is corrigible.
Religious beliefs are often totally incorrigible.
> The merit is the appreciation that this belief is a result of somebody's
> analysis that a lot of others who do similar analysis for a living agree
> with, but also that it leaves room to the possibility that this might change
> later as technology and the collective understanding of the sciences
> involved increase.
>
> At least I hope so. Not looking forward to the time when Feynman's lectures
> are used as the basis of a religious cult.
Sometimes, the peer review system falls flat on its face.
The beauty of the system is that errors & fraud _can_ be
detected (cf: cold fusion), and misplaced trust can be
withdrawn.
You can't say the same thing for trust placed in a religious
teaching, because there is often no universally acceptable
technique for refutation.
-Jon
