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Comment by matthewtoast | Hacker News Reader

Via Wikipedia, science is defined as:

> a systematic enterprise that creates, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.

The key word being "testable". The fallibility (or falsifiability) of scientific hypotheses is the great strength of science: We can improve, or prove wrong, our understanding.

Dawkins writing celebrates this, and I think it's unfair to characterize his passionate (OK, sometimes strident) advocacy as "unquestioning" fanaticism.

If it's a "leap of faith" to accept the axiom that we can refine/invalidate knowledge through experimentation, then "a leap of faith" isn't a very profound deed.

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I did not define Dawkins' beliefs as fanaticism. Don't inject words into a point that I never made.

What I said is that Dawkins injects a large degree of faith into his opinions on science vs. religion. Do you deny that? Dawkins himself admits that he (and science) don't know everything about the beginning of the universe, life, evolution, etc. I agree with him there. I also agree with him when he questions why we would inject God into our attempts to observe and understand natural phenomena, thus complicating our research with an attribute that cannot be observed. However, he still does use his imperfect knowledge on many scientific subjects to reach a conclusion that makes him "6.9 out of 7" sure that God doesn't exist. Whether you like to admit it or not, that is faith.

I'm not an expert on Dawkins's writings, but surely that is not what he is saying. Presumably his conclusion is more along the lines of "I'm am nearly certain that no relevant god exists" (i.e. no god that actually interacts with us meaningfully).

In his book The God Delusion, Dawkins creates a 1 to 7 point scale where 1 = I know God exists, and 7 = I know God doesn't exist. It his book, I believe he placed himself at a 6 on his scale, but later, in a debate at Oxford University, he declared himself a 6.9.

No, it's not faith. It's drawing a conclusion of invisibility based on best available evidence, and then acknowledging that invisibility looks a whole lot like nonexistence. Faith would be drawing a conclusion despite the evidence.

Interesting definition. Do you mind telling me where you got it from? Personally, I prefer these dictionary definitions of the word faith:

Dictionary.com: Belief that is not based on proof; e.g. "He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact."

TheFreeDictionary.com: Confident or unquestioning belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.

MerriamWebster.com: Strong belief or trust in someone or something.

So, since science is admittedly fallible, since we don't know everything, and since we often times don't have proof, wouldn't you say that our leaping to conclusions based on incomplete information, regardless of how strong or accurate that partial information is, is faith, according to the definition of the word?

The scientific method is a tool for discovery and obtaining knowledge, and it often times isn't a very good tool due to our limitations. Faith is another tool, and we use it every day. We get up in the morning and go to jobs we don't like because we have faith that, come Friday, we'll get a paycheck. We spend a lot of time and money going to college because we have faith it will result in more knowledge, a better job, etc. We employ the scientific method because we have faith that it will increase our understanding of the world around us. Faith is a principle of action. Too many people mock faith as being a passive, religious concept and mistakenly define it as you have, and then go on to hypocritically embrace faith under the guise of science, I think.

"Faith" doesn't describe how you feel about your paycheck. It's an expectation grounded in experience (the job you don't like paid you last week) and lack of contrary indicators (e.g., weeping executives). It's a justified and defensible belief. If it were not, then it would be faith.

Dawkins's critique of religion is neither scientific nor rigorous (nor knowledgeable), and philosophy is not his strong suit. Philosophy calls for a different kind of inquisitiveness which he lacks, and it is in this sense that Dawkins is unquestioning.

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