I disagree with your last line. A hypothesis is a great analogy for faith. It’s a belief that something is true. Science involves testing the hypothesis, just as faith can be tested.
It’s important to remember that science, by definition, does not prove anything either. There are only supported and unsupported theories.
I think what I’m saying there is that faith is more of an on-off switch. You see an astronaut who’s returned from space and he’s holding a pencil and he lets go of it in the air, goes and does something, and returns to the place where he let it go expecting the pencil to still be there.
It’s not there, but he BELIEVED it would be, because he had no doubt. It surprised him that it wasn’t there.
Hypothesis is quite a different thing. If I hypothesize there are crackers in the pantry, all I have to do is go and open the pantry and look and see if there’s crackers. That’s testing the hypothesis.
One does not talk about the existence of things like love, or truth, or God, in the same way one talks about crackers in the pantry. They are metaphysical, and they are different.
Close. You’re comparing a repeatable phenomenon to an unrepeatable one. Unrepeatable phenomena are where science is equal to religion, in that there may only be a hypothesis supporting the theory.
For example, according to the current scientific theory of creation, two masses collided in the Big Bang. The laws of physics state that neither matter nor energy can be created or destroyed. There are scientific theories on how the masses came to exist, and what set them in motion, but there is no way to test an unrepeatable phenomenon. Interference-based creation is just as possible.
So what you’re saying is that here in 2024 we’ve got it all figured out?
*Note that: 2024, everything figured out.
“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” -Shakespeare
There’s physics. And there’s metaphysics. One does not come to Faith the same way one produces a hypothesis.
I disagree with your last line. A hypothesis is a great analogy for faith. It’s a belief that something is true. Science involves testing the hypothesis, just as faith can be tested.
It’s important to remember that science, by definition, does not prove anything either. There are only supported and unsupported theories.
I think what I’m saying there is that faith is more of an on-off switch. You see an astronaut who’s returned from space and he’s holding a pencil and he lets go of it in the air, goes and does something, and returns to the place where he let it go expecting the pencil to still be there.
It’s not there, but he BELIEVED it would be, because he had no doubt. It surprised him that it wasn’t there.
Hypothesis is quite a different thing. If I hypothesize there are crackers in the pantry, all I have to do is go and open the pantry and look and see if there’s crackers. That’s testing the hypothesis.
One does not talk about the existence of things like love, or truth, or God, in the same way one talks about crackers in the pantry. They are metaphysical, and they are different.
Close. You’re comparing a repeatable phenomenon to an unrepeatable one. Unrepeatable phenomena are where science is equal to religion, in that there may only be a hypothesis supporting the theory.
For example, according to the current scientific theory of creation, two masses collided in the Big Bang. The laws of physics state that neither matter nor energy can be created or destroyed. There are scientific theories on how the masses came to exist, and what set them in motion, but there is no way to test an unrepeatable phenomenon. Interference-based creation is just as possible.
Good point. I appreciate your insight
We’ve got way more figured out than what religious people think.
Faith is the rejection of the possibility of producing a hypothesis.
Science is, among other things, the rejection of metaphysics.
And I love science, embrace evolution, and don’t have any beliefs that require me to reject any scientific finding.
Science covers the physical world nicely. Materialistically, it’s got the goods.