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Comment by AmericanChopper | Hacker News Reader

To be fair, both christians and atheists who are interested in debating each other tend to have a hard time understanding the limits of their knowledge. The criticism can be directed equally in both directions.

The entire sum of scientific knowledge is based on unprovable axioms, just the same as the entire sum of religious knowledge is based on unprovable axioms. Faith is a belief in something you can’t prove, and people have faith in scientific knowledge in exactly the same way that others have faith in religious knowledge.

A wise person would understand that scientific knowledge and the various forms of religious knowledge are based on completely different foundational axioms, and as a result, any attempt to debate the merits of one over the other is entirely pointless. A wiser person might understand that criticising somebody for what they choose to have faith in is both pointless and hypocritical.

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Faith is a belief in something without evidence, correct?

Science is rooted in empirical evidence. It may be with imperfect models and imperfect measurement, but there is indeed fairly reasonably-measured evidence.

Faith is a belief in something you can’t prove. The munchausen trilemma invalidates all logical proofs. As such, all forms of knowledge are based on unprovable axioms from which knowledge is derived. If you were to try generalise some of the axioms that form the foundation of scientific knowledge, you might say that ‘empirical evidence is a source of absolute truth’ or that ‘everything we don’t understand about the physical world will either be explained by science, or is not possible to explain’. Any individual might consider those ideas and decide that they are worthy of having faith in, or they might not. But any unprovable axiom has no more or less merit than any other unprovable axiom. To say otherwise is to be ignorant to the limits of your own knowledge. You might say that scientific knowledge is more complex or rigorous than religious knowledge, but that doesn’t speak to its merit either. Flat earthers rigorously promote an incredibly complex system of beliefs, it is naturally more complex than science, because it needs to add additional ideas to explain scientific ideas that conflict with their own. That doesn’t speak to its merits at all.

What is your definition of "prove"?

Just the ordinary dictionary definition. Using evidence and arguments to establish a fact or truth.

Of course the arguments and evidence that you use to prove your truth must also be proven themselves, and so and and so forth. No matter what it is you’re trying to prove, there are only three possible outcomes. Circular reasoning, infinite regression, or stopping at an arbitrary point (usually described as an axiom). This is known as the munchausen trilemma.

Although this question has lead me to see that my previous argument is incomplete. It is possible to believe a truth without faith. That is, through ignorance. A failure to scrutinize your belief sufficiently to understand that it is based on an unprovable axiom, and is thus an act of faith. People who debate the merits of science vs religion tend to be ignorant of this, equally on both sides.

Nothing about what I’m arguing is even remotely controversial. It would be a part of any entry level course on logic at any university.

The Faithful would also call just about anything “evidence”.

Faith is not belief in something without evidence, it’s belief in something without proof. The mere existence of evidence does not constitute proof.

A wise person might also be aware that words can have multiple meanings, that "faith" is one of those words, and that equivocation fallacies don't make for good reasoning.

The general meaning of the word is belief in any idea that you can’t prove. Belief in scientific knowledge requires no more or no less faith than belief in any religious system.

Yes, I am aware that you can use equivocation fallacies to explain that we can't know anything and all claims are equally likely to be true. I was talking about what a wise person would do, though.

Please don't cross into rudeness in HN threads. Also, please do religious flamewar somewhere else, not here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Would you mind explaining what about my comment was either rude or a flame, given the context in which rationality was named as a sign of being unwise?

Any comment of the form, "Yes, I am aware that you can do stupid thing X, but I was talking about intelligent thing Y" is rude and a flame.

... when "stupid thing X" is making an argument that doesn't address the problem, and "you can do stupid thing X" is actually an explanation of what the problem with that argument is, and it's also not calling anyone names, but just calling out fallacious reasoning as what it is: Fallacious reasoning? Fallacious reasoning might well be correlated with stupidity, but that doesn't make pointing out fallacious reasoning an insult in itself.

Equally, if the topic of the discussion is what makes a certain decision wise or not, as it happened to be the case here, I don't see how pointing out that a suggested methodology does not qualify due to fallacious reasoning in that methodology is either rude or a flame. That is, unless you consider the start of that discussion (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20129547) a rude flame, which you possibly could, even though I don't think it was intended as such.

I'm afraid I'm not really following this. In a way it doesn't matter, though, because even if I missed some subtlety in perceiving your comment as rude, I can guarantee you that most readers would miss that subtlety as well. Since there are plenty of ways to make your substantive points, why not just choose ones that don't straddle that line?

I don't consider this a fair description of the two realms of inquiry.

Of course. Choosing to value a set of beliefs that make the most sense to you is how we give meaning to our lives. We all have opinions about what makes sense and what doesn’t. The only thing we can’t do is prove anything to be an absolute truth.

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