FreThink

Scientific conclusions are not believed in in the same way gods are believed in.

We do not consider scientific conclusions to be absolute truth, we do not worship scientists or credit them with fantastic superpowers. Unfortunately there are no holidays in science. In a totally pragmatic society we’d have to find some other criteria for giving ourselves days-off from work and reasons to get paid for work we aren’t doing. That’s if four and maybe even three day work weeks don’t become more popular first. I don’t doubt economic feasibility studies are already underway.

We “believe” in many of the conclusions science has come to because they make sense in our view of reality and they are conclusions drawn from evidence or consistent with the knowledge we’ve already gained historically. The “belief” of the theist and the “belief” of the non-believer are based on very different degrees of skepticism and the requirements for validity. We do not believe in evolution to the degree a theist believes in their creation story. We do not accept the majority of creation stories because they do not satisfy our skepticism, they do not answer questions to our satisfaction and they offer no evidence of having actually happened.

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009, 8:14 pm   |   ID/Creationism, Science, evolution  |  RSS feed |  Respond  |  Trackback