And indeed, both science and faith has its flaws. And there's more to it than that. But I take it back; you don't seek understanding. But I'm not really one to elaborate.
Here is revealed something which is all too common in the human condition, being the limitations to understanding which people impose on themselves in the course of maintaining their worldview. You seem genuinely ignorant that your own stubbornness is preventing you from understanding me. It is unlikely that you seriously considered any proposition, observation, or declaration I made. Instead, you eschewed credible justification or earnest exploration and crassly repeated your original mistaken assertion, implying a parallel between two institutions which does not exist. Then, when faced with lack of validation from me, your response was that I apparently "don't seek understanding." Again, the irony is excitingly thick.
You could make a number of valid criticisms of me, but lack of curiosity is not one of them. I understand what you were trying to say, gibberish though it is, and I even see the root error: You conflate the physical with the metaphysical. I can appreciate that you think you are on to something. Curiosity does not preclude me from forming conclusions, however, and you, like many a mook before you, have mistaken my rejection of your claim for closed-mindedness. You would perhaps realize your error if you were to bring something credible to my attention that I had not previously considered. But what you have shown me thus far in these exchanges of religion is nothing new, nothing I haven't seen a hundred times already. There was a time when you struck me as smarter and less dogmatic, but I am beginning to be able to see that that perception was my mistake, resulting from the fact that I am much less familiar with modes of expression by people in your culture than I am with people in my own. You're more of a Truthordeal type, sans the rigid Christian moralism.
When you insist that science and faith are parallels on the premise that both amount to a system of decisions to commit acts of belief, you are committing what I might call "the classic faith-based misinterpretation of science." Scientific data are statements of fact, valid as far as the underlying parameters of observation are valid. Facts are truths of a kind, but science itself is not concerned with "the truth" per se. Scientific theorization is premised upon the consistent description of the behavior of phenomena--so that we might be able to draw conclusions about how things were, how they are, and how they will be. The province of science is the physical world, and, except to the extent that all physical quantities are "true" in that they exist,
truth itself is not a part of the physical world. It doesn't actually matter if a scientific theory is metaphysically true or not--the theory need only be valid--and a
true (heh!) scientifically-minded individual won't interpret scientific conclusions as statements of "truth" (granting that they might use the word "truth" because of the functional similarity between truth and validity). This is one of the great powers of science: It empowers us to talk meaningfully about our world without having to own any truths. That's why good scientists will blithely pronounce that they may damn well be
wrong and are quick to admit when it happens.
"The truth" is a metaphysical concept, not a physical one, and it belongs in the province of logic, not science. The truth isn't relevant to science, and so the institution of faith doesn't apply, because faith deals in (knock-offs of) the truth--not statements of fact. Belief is simply not required. Thus, your characterization as science as a belief system is wrong to the utmost. And this becomes readily apparent when you start using faith in place of factual information. "Here is a new microwave! No need to check the power rating; I believe it is 1200 watts. I will cook my food accordingly." Most people who go that route, notwithstanding the few who hit false positives when their microwave turns out to actually operate on 1200 watts, are going to end up with undercooked or overcooked food.
Religious people consistently fail to understand this. To them, atheism is a religion and science is a belief system. The power of faith is so corrupting that these individuals become unwilling or unable to see the world outside the lens of "the truth." It is beyond them to understand that science doesn't use belief because it isn't interested in the truth. It's analogous to what I might call "the classic faith-based misinterpretation of nonreligiosity," wherein religious people are genuinely stupefied at how nonreligious people could possibly have an ethical grounding or any sense of satisfaction in life.
Because science describes the physical world with predictive power while religion does not, the counterstroke of believers has long been to degrade the value of factuality and assert that science is nothing more than another belief system. That's what you've done here. You get zero points for doing so. It isn't that I'm not curious; it's that you're mistaken and you don't realize it. That said, you have been a friendly presence here, so at least you don't get stuck up on yourself like some of the others do. If only you would extend your humbleness just a little farther, into your worldview!
