Would you agree or disagree with Leslie Newbigin when he says that science is incapable of being free from faith?

Similar questions: agree disagree Leslie Newbigin science incapable free faith.

I disagree. What does he mean by faith? There are two definitions for the word, one colloquial ("I have faith in you, Son"; "I have faith that this chair will support my weight") and one religious ("I have faith that God exists and will keep me from harm").

In your clarification you link to an article by Newbigin which seems to address the question at hand, and in it he says: "Both science and religion claim to give a true account of what is the case, and both involve faith-commitments. " It seems that neither simple use of "faith" above is sufficient to parse this sentence, but I can make an educated assertion and borrow a Wikipedia definition: "To believe without reason. " Based on who Newbigin is, and what he has written, that seems like a fair definition of "faith" in the context of his assertion that both science and religion are dependent upon it, and that "science is incapable of being free of faith."

More concisely, I think that Newbigin means to say that religion and science have the same faith-commitment. Insofar as colloquial "faith" can mean simple induction ("I have faith that this chair will support my weight"), there’s no room to disagree with the statement that science cannot be free of faith. In this sense, yes, of course -- much science is based on induction.

But to substitute this version of faith for Newbigin’s and therefore accept the claim isn’t honest -- it’s agreeing with a strawman and exposes no thought. It’s like a creationist agreeing with "evolution" only after first redefining the term to match his worldview ("Of course I believe in evolution -- the genetic variation within kinds of creatures"). Newbigin also quotes an author, Bloom, paraphrasing Nietzsche, and from this we glean Newbigin’s view of science: the operation of the modern critical scientific method must make it strictly impossible to assert of any proposition ‘This is true,’ or of any course of conduct ‘That is right.

’ Superficially, this is an accurate assessment of the scientific method. Science is not normative -- it does not tell us how things ought to be or how we ought to act. Neither is science pretentious in its ability to uncover absolute truth -- every scientific statement involves a margin for falsifiability, so all scientific statements are assigned not the truth but a truth-value; science is the practice of successive approximations of what is the case, not declarative assertions.

But I don’t think that’s what Newbigin (or Bloom, for that matter) means. I think Newbigin has made a strawman himself, a stuffed science that presumes to have truth, the answers, and perfect knowledge, and it is against this science that he can rail and exclaim "How do you know? " and "See, science is incapable of being free from faith!" (See first quote above.

) On this ground, I disagree with the claim that science is incapable of being free from faith, and I say this in hopes that Newbigin and I are working from the same glossary. If Newbigin’s claim is that science must necessarily base itself upon that which it must "believe without reason," he is incorrect, and I would argue that the opposite is true. Methodological materialism, the bedrock of the scientific method, specifically excludes all that which must be "believed without reason" -- the working worldview in which all natural phenomena must have natural causes.

(Don’t confuse this with metaphysical materialism, the view in which only a natural world exists. ) But what if Newbigin means something else entirely? Take this quote from his article: a kind of knowledge which is immune to doubt, which involves no faith-commitment on the part of the knower, in contrast to everything else about which we can only say ‘I believe,’ which means, ‘I do not know.

’ To keep the discussion fair, one cannot categorize science with the former ("immune to doubt"), and perhaps Newbigin has not, since he’s claimed that science requires a "faith-commitment" and so seems to group science with religion in the domain of things about which we say "I believe" or "I do not know. " Newbigin certainly seems to be a careful thinker, but I still think that he is mistaken in thinking that the scientific and religious "reasons for believing" are similar.It is here that the definition of "faith" decides the outcome of this consideration. The ways in which science reaches its truth-values are very different from the ways in which the nonsciences reach theirs, which leads to a final quote with which I disagree: The work of historians and philosophers of science has surely shown conclusively that the attempt to draw an absolute boundary between science as what we all know, and religion as what some of us believe, is futile.

Considering the current and continued breadth of argument and discussion about the "demarcation problem" in science, I do not feel that any thing "conclusive" has been shown. I daresay that Newbigin is begging the question when he claims that science is subject to the same faith-commitment as religion.

Science yes, scientists probably not. Science, simply put, is an activity or method. Science is not a body of facts.It is a method for testing proposed facts.

It is a way to test proposed facts, and if they pass the test, to add them to a body of accumulated facts. (And incidentally, it is not easy, and it requires training and effort.) The way those statements are tested in a few ways. One way is whether there is objective evidence to support them.

Another (weaker) way is to see if they fit well with other, already established facts. Faith, as I understand it, means accepting certain statements without looking for supporting evidence. There may or may not be supporting evidence, but that is seen as irrelevant or unnecessary.

So yes, the pursuit of science is inherently not based on faith, and does not accept faith as a valid way to determine whether or not a given statement is true. Science requires more than simple faith. Science doesn't even have faith in "science", as most people mean the term.

Even the most accepted, well-established theory can be tossed out (or more likely, revised) if new evidence appears that requires it. For example, evolutionary biologists would be very excited (though perhaps not very happy) if the theory of evolution could be objectively disproved. They would scream and fight to be allowed to see the evidence.

It would be a revolution, and somebody would likely win the Nobel Prize. There may be some very basic articles of faith implicit in the scientific outlook, such as "The world can be understood by logic. " or "The world actually exists.

" There is no empirical proof for either of those. But for the first statement, we have assumed that the world could be understood by logic for centuries, and have yet to be proven wrong. People have said many things will never be understood by humans, but none of those predictions have been borne out.

Even the so-called "ineffables" like "Consciousness," "Love" or "Existence" are turning out to be explainable logically. But scientists, the human beings, are a different matter. Like all human beings, they can apply one standard to one part of their life, and others to another.

A scientist might require herself to prove some astronomical or biological theory with absolute rigor, but she won't require absolute proof to accept the idea that her son needs a hug (or a haircut.) According to a survey ran a few years ago by Scientific American, American scientists are about as religious as the US as a whole (but the very top scientists tend not to be religious. ) Freeman Dyson, world-famous physicist, writer and all-around nice guy, has a non-doctrinaire Christianity that he talks about often.

I think faith and science have little to do with each other Those who are most effective scientists are the most rigorous. They have faith in nothing and challange everything. That's what helps them find answers quickly and accurately.

Maintaining a personal sense of religious faith is purely a personal decision and has no bearing (at least no positive bearing) on one's scientific merit.

Disagree. Assuming you're using the word "faith" in the context of religious faith... Science in its objective glory is completely free of religious faith. It has to be.

You have to be able to examine facts and evidence without prejudice or agenda, or the entire scientific method will be compromised. Just as in many religious faiths, you have to look beyond proven scientific fact in order to follow the spiritual path you've chosen as defined by the chruch. You have to make that great leap without necessarily having the safety net of physical evidence.

For their own survival in pure form, the two must be mutually exclusive. PenguinSage's Recommendations Ladies Lab Coat W/ Back-Belt .

Science will always bump into faith, because science cannot explain everything "God is in the details". I read this quote to mean that we humans of faith assert the things we cannot explain to God's domain. It has been done for thousands of years.

Scientists can track the universe back billions of years to the Big Bang. But what triggered the Big Bang? Isn't there a species of bee whose weight to wing area ratio is so out of kilter, that science cannot explain how it is able to fly?

What happens to us after we die? Science cannot answer these questions, but that does not mean we should stop trying to. Science cannot be free from faith, because it cannot answer all of our questions.

And sometimes, its answers seem to conflict with our faith. Some of the related discussion points point to the difference between the age of the universe in science and faith. Without attacking faith's value of a few thousand years, my question is, "what is a 'day' to God?"

There are several pasages in the Bible where a "day" lasted longer than 24 hours. Much of the time missing from faith's age estimate is contained in the first few days when God created the Heavens and the Earth. Was the first day exactly 24 hours long?

Science has already proven that the Earth's spin has changed over the centuries. Couldn't God have allowed the universe to expand over billions of years, and called that the first day in the Bible? Many of the timetable arguments between faith and science hold God to our measure of time.

How arrogant! The Bible says God made man from "dust", not evolution. Science says our solar system contracted from the "dust" of the explosion of previous stars.

Couldn't God set evolution in motion without having to explain himself to us? Science and faith can never be free of each other, because faith is believing without data, and science is believing only after testing the data. They complement each other.

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GREAT SERIES. Agree or disagree? It's on RIGHT NOW (Wednesdays at 8pm)!" "can we grace ourselves out of obedience?

Religion and Spirituality" "Religion & Spirituality" "Who said this? Do you agree or disagree? Why?

(Don't answer unless you've been persecuted for your faith).

GREAT SERIES. Agree or disagree? It's on RIGHT NOW (Wednesdays at 8pm)!

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.