Source
argeaux•

Clearly, then, both religion and science are founded on faith — namely, on belief in the existence of something outside the universe

This guy is stretching his interpretation of "faith" quite a bit. It's amusing, but not accurate. Science is not based on faith.

This guy commits a common fallacy many theists commit. He talks of "functions" as if they are "laws". Logic is not a "law." It's a function of the way our brain works.

I haven't seen this much perverse logical rationalization since I watched, "What the bleep do we know?"

When you read this op-ed, you can tell the author set out with a premise (both science and religion have equal amounts of faith) and then decided to manufacture a rather haphazard, narrow line of reasoning to justify his foregone conclusion. That's about as un-scientific as things get. Any "laws" in science are merely theories that have not been proven wrong in the face of overwhelming observation and evidence. They can be changed at any time should evidence indicate otherwise. "Faith" on the other hand, is exactly the opposite, and a position that is predicated on the very non-existence of evidence.

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nphinitOP•

Perhaps science in its purest form isn't based on faith, but his argument (as I understand it) is that as it is practised today (believing the laws of the universe must be simple and elegant, believing there should be a grand unified theory out there somewhere) involves a lot of it. He doesn't mention this, but take dark matter...the universe is held together mostly by something we can't observe or prove exists? You may call that a theory, but he would likely call it a leap of faith.

I saw Davies give a speech on his book tour a few months ago, he's not some sort of troll. He's mostly known for writing very popular pop physics books and I thought his op-ed (which conveniently touches on the subject of his latest book) was interesting.

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reddit_user13•

Probably the biggest steaming pile of horseshit I've ever read in the NYT.

1
[deleted]•

Interesting article. He argues against science and religion with regards to why are the physical laws the way they are. But just because we don't have any idea and no way to test any idea we might have, doesn't mean science is a faith. Everywhere we've looked, seemingly random things give way to order -- we have no reason to believe that there isn't an explanation for the laws of physics. We just don't have the views or the place to use them.

I can't see the back of my head without special tools or the right vantage point. Until we get those, we'll have to just shrug at his question and carry on.

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