What does it tell you when someone says "I don't believe in evolution"?

Yes, but I also have the opportunity to introduce my own mistakes. Under your view you regard yourself as more reliable than others, but since I am not you, shouldn’t you agree with me that I am better off taking your word for it than figuring things out myself? I’m sorry if that sounds facetious, but I don’t understand how you can be empirically more reliable to you but not to me.

Your use of the five-colour/four-colour proof seems ironic to me. I can understand the five-colour proof but not the four-colour one, but the four-colour proof is still a proof. And while it is possible that the four-colour proof has a flaw in it, it is also possible (I would say less likely) that the five-colour proof has a flaw in it.

You place a good deal of value on verifying things yourself. One thing I have thoroughly verified for myself is that I can make mistakes and be wrong, and so having verified things for myself doesn’t mean they are right. Have you not had similar experiences?

Come at me bro

One of my programming assignments at university was to write map colouring software that would use recursion to find the minimum amount of colours necessary.

First of all, I never said anything about regarding myself as more reliable than others. The distinction I’m making is not one of reliability. Put it this way: I assert some scientific principle X but you disagree and assert not X. Now, if I believe X only because it is a matter of scientific consensus then the best I can do to convince you of X is simply to argue: “Well, X is the scientific consensus.” Whereas if I believe X because I understand the evidence and reasoning that provide the basis for that scientific consensus then I can actually explain to you why X is true. That seems to me a glaring difference between understanding a principle for oneself and simply accepting scientific consensus on a principle. The actual explanation why X seems to me a stronger argument than simply saying “X is scientific consensus.” And I think I’m more justified in believing X if I’ve taken the effort to understand the reasoning and evidence than if I simply accept X due to an argument from authority.

Second, try to follow your reasoning through to its conclusion. If no one believed themselves competent to investigate scientific principles for themselves then it would be impossible to arrive at any kind of scientific consensus because scientists would be trying to defer to other scientists who in turn are trying to defer to other scientists. The buck has to stop somewhere, and it has to stop with someone who thinks they understand the scientific principle and are competent to test it themselves. It seems rather obvious to me that such a person is in an epistemically different position than someone who simply defers to a scientific authority. Even if you don’t want to concede there’s a difference between a non-expert understanding a principle for themselves versus trusting someone else on it surely you must concede that there’s a difference between the expert who personally tests it as compared to the non-expert who accepts the experts’ results?

That’s actually been a matter of debate among mathematicians, logicians, and philosophers of mathematics for decades. The possibility of a flaw in either of the proofs is quite besides the point. The point is that when I studied discrete math there was a qualitative difference in my experience of the five color theorem between hearing about the theorem and actually reading and understanding the proof. I directly experienced that difference and trying to tell me there really is no difference between hearing there is a proof and understanding what that proof is is going to be pretty much like banging your head against a brick wall. I know there is a difference between those two states because I have experienced it for myself. So it’s bizarre to me when someone tries to tell me that no, those states are actually completely interchangeable. Going back to my first paragraph of this comment, there is at the very least a difference in being able to explain the proof to someone versus simply being able to tell them that such a proof exists.

Of course I have. That I am capable of making mistakes and being incorrect has little bearing on the fact that understanding why X is true (or believed to be true) is a manifestly different state of being than simply believing that X is true on the basis of an argument from authority. This state of being is different both subjectively (in that I actually feel a difference between the two states) and behaviorally (in that in one case I can explain the reasoning and in the other I can only appeal to authority).

Most of your comments are wasted on me. I am an atheist and believe that science is the best method for deriving reliable knowledge about the world. I’m relatively scientifically literate and do a fair amount of reading in philosophy of science. It’s really a waste of time to try to convince me that scientific reasoning is a more reliable guide to the world than religious faith.

[quote=“Dave_Baxter, post:103, topic:18722”]
Yes, but that statement, without all the additional information I mention above, is simplifying the distinction between what goes into this “acceptance”. It isn’t blind, or without safeguards or options, as it is with religious acceptance.[/quote]

It isn’t always blind but it’s certainly possible – and I believe almost certainly happens in at least a few cases – that the acceptance of science actually is blind on an individual basis. I believe scientific methodology to be reliable because I have studied it and have some understanding of why it is reliable. But take a hypothetical person who believes scientific results only because they have been acculturated to accept scientific results without ever having questioned the epistemic basis for doing so. I think that such a person would believe in science just as blindly as someone who believes in religion. They might be correct to defer to scientific expertise, but they are correct for the wrong reasons.

There is quite obviously a difference between being able to explain the reasoning behind a principle X and only being able to make an argument from authority for X. Furthermore, there must be some difference between an expert who personally tests X versus a non-expert who accepts an argument from authority for X (otherwise no one would be able to test X in the first place and no scientific consensus could be reached).

Trying to assert exact equivalence between the two cases seems even more absurd to me than asserting there’s no difference in epistemic justification between religious claims and scientific claims. (I think the latter is absurd, just not quite as absurd as the former.)

I never claimed they are equivalent any more than I would claim that electric guitars and acoustic guitars are equivalent. However, despite the lack of equivalence between electric guitars and acoustic guitars there are nonetheless similarities and I see no problem to referring to both classes collectively as simply “guitars” unqualified. It does not seem to me “disingenuous” to refer to electric and acoustic guitars collectively as guitars. This is exactly analogous to my use of the word “faith” in this discussion. If you have a problem with it, please understand that it is entirely your problem. I leave you to cope with it as you see fit.

Science is an epistemological praxis, a technique for discovering what is (at least subjectively) true or false. Science itself cannot have a boolean true/false value. It’s a tool. Saying it’s “true” is like saying “the Bible is inerrant” - it’s a vaporous statement of faith, and not scientific :wink: at all. The word you want instead of true is probably reliable? Or something like that.

[quote=“NathanHornby, post:106, topic:18722”]
If nobody believed in God, he would cease to exist, or return to not existing, depending on how you look at it. If nobody believed in gravity we wouldn’t float away. The two are very different.[/quote]

Nathan, you’re ignoring pantheism again, an ancient religion still followed by millions of people, obviously including me. If you don’t believe in our god, nobody will cease to exist, because God doesn’t care that much whether you understand that you are a participant and not a supplicant of divinity. You are the eyes of the world, my friend. God is all there is, and God loves you if anybody at all loves you.

I consider myself a scientist, but frankly I use my religious beliefs to guide my actions; science is too slow and cumbersome for most everyday uses. I can’t eat fifty sandwiches and compare outcomes in order to change my lunch plans today. Luckily my religion is completely 100% compatible with science, yay!

Yes, that is badly worded, sorry! “Science is true”. Ha :slight_smile:

‘You don’t need to believe in it for it to exist’ is more what I was going for. But I do mean the ‘contents’ of science, what it encompasses and represents, rather than the concept itself.

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And this is our fundamental disagreement - not whether or not there is a difference between being told something and finding the truth for yourself, but whether or not directly experiencing something lets you know it is true.

You really think that if you have directly experienced something then you know it is true. I think that if I directly experienced something then that is one piece of evidence that might lead me to believe it is true. You think I am foolish for not recognizing the truth of my experience and I think you are foolish for not recognizing that people are wrong about things they directly experience every day.

You say that trying to convince you otherwise would be like banging my head against a wall. That, to me, is faith. After all, the consensus definition among a quick survey of dictionaries (ignore those that specifically mention religion or god) is that faith is “complete trust or confidence in someone or something.” Your faith that there is an important epistemic difference between knowing something by report and knowing something by direct experience, by your account, is akin to a religious faith. After all, trying to convince a person who has a personal relationship with Jesus that there is no God would also be like banging my head against a wall. Trying to convince me, however, that there really is a huge difference between observing something yourself and being told about it would be a matter of conducting experiments that demonstrate this and that outweigh other evidence I’ve seen to the contrary.

In trying to get to the truth, direct experience of any individual, myself included, is not at the top of the totem pole.

As for being able to explain it to others, I see that as a sideline. It is unrelated to the question of whether you require faith to believe and explaining things to others is heavily dependent on the other (who may respond better to authority than reason anyway).

Edit: I want to note that this is why I “accused” (for lack of a better word) you of thinking you were more reliable than everyone else. To me, believing that your direct experience leads you to truth is an assertion about your own reliability, and if you aren’t taking other people’s word on their own direct experience, that tells me that you don’t think they are as reliable.

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No I don’t. I have never claimed this and don’t see from where you’re making this inference. In fact, I’m not even sure I believe there is such a thing as “truth” in the sense you’re using it here.

No, I don’t think you’re foolish. I’ve already gone on at great length about the possibility of error and fraud in epistemology so I don’t see how you could possibly infer that I don’t recognize that people are wrong about things.

Then you misunderstand what I was saying. Let me try to explain. Suppose I have tinnitus and I tell you “I’m hearing a ringing sound.” You can try to convince me otherwise by proving there is no ringing sound for me to be hearing. I could quite plausibly accept your demonstration that there is no ringing sound and yet still factually maintain that: “Despite the absence of an actual, physical sine wave-shaped pressure gradient traversing the local atmosphere, I am nonetheless subjectively experiencing a ringing sound.”

You can doubt I’m lying but you’re in absolutely no position to provide any evidence one way or the other regarding the assertion that I have the experience of hearing a ringing sound. Similarly, I personally, subjectively experience the difference between simply knowing of a proof and actually understanding a proof. Now, you could find some flaw with my understanding of the proof – I don’t dispute that my understanding of the proof might be wrong. Nonetheless, I still have the experience of understanding the proof and that is different from not having that experience.

No it’s not. It’s based on evidence. I’ve already explained this evidence to you. There is both the subjective experience of a difference between the two cases and the behavioral difference of being able to explain something I know by direct experience whereas I am only able to provide an argument from authority for something I know only be report.

I have just provided some evidential basis for thinking this distinction is legitimate. More importantly, you’ve ignored my question about whether you think there is an epistemic difference between the experts who establish a scientific consensus and the non-experts who simply believe it. Obviously someone has to make the discovery first-hand before anyone can learn about it by report. Is that not obvious? Is that not an important difference between the two cases? Perhaps even more importantly, if second-hand knowledge is just the same thing as first-hand knowledge, how can science ever progress? For science to progress scientific consensus must be challenged. But what will it be challenged by? It has to be challenged by first-hand scientific discoveries. The scientific consensus cannot be challenged by itself, it must be challenged by a principle derived from some method that is not an argument from scientific consensus. If you’re right and there’s no difference between first-hand and second-hand accounts then there should have been no way to replace Newton’s theory of gravity with General Relativity.

“The question of whether you require faith to believe” is, as I see it, a sideline. The ability to explain something is, as I see it, a definite distinction to be made between believing that thing on the basis of authority vs. actually having some understanding of that thing. You are claiming that understanding something first hand is the same as understanding it second-hand. I am showing that they are not the same because there is at least one difference between the two cases.

If I demonstrate that A is different from B in any respect then I have shown that A is not the same as B. I don’t know of any other way to prove that A is not the same as B. If you cannot accept that any difference between A and B shows they are two different things then I’d have to say your position is much more akin to religious faith than is mine. At least my position is logically consistent – yours violates the law of non-contradiction!

So, to sum up, here is a list of differences between belief due to first-hand experience and belief due to second-hand experience:

  1. There is a subjective difference; it feels different to have some understanding of a subject X (even if that understanding is incorrect or flawed) than it does to have no understanding of X and yet believe it anyway on the basis of an argument from authority.
  2. There is a behavioral difference: if my belief that X is challenged then in one case I can provide definite reasons for my believing X besides trust in an authority outside of myself.
  3. There is a difference in priority. Knowledge of X cannot come into being without first-hand experience of X but it can come into being without second-hand experience of X.
  4. There is a difference with respect to discrediting current consensus. Second-hand reports cannot be used to discredit the current consensus because second-hand reports are justified by that very consensus. Only first-hand reports can be used to challenge the current consensus. Science can’t even progress without recognizing the difference between first-hand and second-hand claims of knowledge.
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Is “faith” in science misplaced? Is control of the natural world impossible without certain knowledge unobtainable through scientific observation?

Yes, I agree with this statement entirely. But I think that having this piece of evidence (direct experience) is different from not having this piece of evidence (no direct experience). If we can agree that it’s reasonable to have different degrees of confidence in different claims based on the evidence we have and if we can agree that having direct experience of something should affect our degree in confidence in claims about that thing then we essentially agree.

My impression of your argument to this point is that you’ve been arguing there is literally no difference between experiencing something first-hand and hearing about it second-hand in terms of epistemic reliability. But the notion you state above that directly experiencing something constitutes evidence for that thing contradicts that – it is a definite difference between experiencing something first hand (having the evidence) and not doing so (not having the evidence).

Is this not the case? Can we agree that having first-hand experience of something should actually affect your degree of confidence in believing that thing? I’ve never argued that second-hand reports shouldn’t influence our degree of confidence in believing things; all I’ve argued is that experiencing something first-hand should influence our degree of confidence in believing it and you seem to admit as much in the statement above.

That question is the origin of the entire discussion! If you don’t think there is an important distinction between: a) most people need to use faith to believe most science; and b) most people do not need to use faith to believe in most science then what on Earth have we been arguing about?

You said that most people basically have faith in scientific conclusions, other said that’s not faith, argument ensued. If you think the question of what to call “faith” is entirely beside the point then we aren’t talking about anything.

If your point regarding direct experience is that you had a subjectively different experience by learning something through one method than by learning it through another, then I still disagree (I think the depths of self-deceit we are capable of extend to being wrong about our own direct experiences - and that goes doubly for experiences we had in the past; its uncontroversial that I could be very mistaken about whether I was hearing a ringing in my ears yesterday) but I don’t think the point is worth belabouring. My question is, why is that difference in your experience at all relevant to the question of whether:

A) We should call belief based on reports of scientific consensus “faith”; and
B) We should call belief based on direct verification of facts for ourselves “faith”

You feel differently and you behave differently if you have understood the proof. But I feel differently and behave differently if I have a slice of cake in front of me than if I don’t. You have to meaningfully connect that feeling and behaviour to the idea of “proof” if you want to argue that one state constitutes “belief without proof” while the other does not. If you really don’t want to argue that point then I would simply say “case closed.”

To answer your question about the epistemic difference between people who actually do the experiments and people who merely hear reports of them, I would say there is none. It is the method that determines the truth, no the people who do it. The result of any experiment has to be filtered through some medium to get to us and we can’t observe anything without changing it, and more people in the chain of broken telephone means there is more likely to be errors, and certain people have more competency to carry out the experiments than others and lots of other factors go into making a reasonable decision about whether to believe something or not. But it never comes down to taking someone’s word for it.

As I say above, I see points 1 and 2 having no impact on whether or not something constitutes proof. I also don’t see how 3 is relevant. In math you give credit to the person that finds the first proof, but you don’t go on using their proof if a better one is found. We improve things all the time, so priority doesn’t make something better or more proofy.

On 4 you are just wrong. If there is a consensus and a series of experiments are done to challenge it (because people like to see things reproduced) then the consensus will change because of published journals, not because everyone goes and verifies those experiments themselves. Reality is, consensus changes through second hand accounts.

My argument is that there is that the difference between the two things is not that one gives “proof” and the other does not. And thus, the difference between them does not allow us to distinguish between “belief without proof” or not. And thus, if we say that believing in a scientific consensus require “faith” in science then we are basically saying that believing the results of experiment we conduct ourselves in an exercise in “faith” as well. And by doing so, we have reduced the concept of “faith” to meaninglessness.

And when I said that I put “faith” in scare quotes and clearly indicated that it is not necessarily the only word that could be applied. I also said in the comment that anyone that has a problem with using the word “faith” in that context should feel free to substitute any other symbol string they wish in place of “faith”. From the very beginning I have maintained that whether or not we call unquestioning, blind acceptance of scientific consensus “faith” or not is besides the point. The point is that many people have unquestioning, blind acceptance of scientific consensus and that this is not so different from religious believers having unquestioning, blind acceptance of religious dogma.

It is somewhat different in that in principle the unquestioning, blind accepter of science could engage in study to acquaint themselves first-hand with the justification for their beliefs. This could be direct, first-hand verification of the scientific results in question or perhaps a meta-level first-hand understanding of why scientific consensus is more reliable than religious dogma. But until the individual actually engages in this first-hand study of the epistemic justification for their beliefs they are in the same boat as anyone else who believes things purely on the basis of cultural authority.

Whether we are capable of self-deceit is completely besides the point. I explained this rather clearly in my previous comment. It may be that the ringing noise I hear is not really a sine-wave shaped pressure differential traversing the local atmosphere but I nonetheless can’t deny my direct subjective experience of having heard a ringing sound. Even if I am mistaken that I experienced a ringing in my ears yesterday I nonetheless can’t deny the subjective experience of believing myself to have experienced a ringing in my ears yesterday.

Suppose I had the experience of seeing a ghost. I would be terribly skeptical that I had actually seen a ghost. I would probably lean more towards hallucination or similar as an explanation for my experience. But that my experience was not caused by an intersubjectively verifiable apparition does not change the fact that I had the experience in the first place.

I don’t care what you call it. The semantic debate about whether or not the word “faith” should be allowed to be used in this context is tedious and pointless from my perspective. We can call it “guffle” or “fnord” for all I care. I am only arguing the following:

  1. (A) and (B) are two different things regardless of what we call them.
  2. Someone who accepts scientific consensus simply because they were acculturated to do so and has never questioned the epistemological justification for doing so is in the same position epistemically as a religious believer who believes religious dogma because they were acculturated to do so and has never questioned the epistemological justification for doing so.

OK. Take the team of astronomers who first verified the precession of the perihelion of Mercury. According to your reasoning, it seems to me that this team of astronomers should have concluded that their observations of precession were in error because those observations contradicted the scientific consensus summarized in Newton’s law of gravity: that planetary orbits should not precess. I don’t see any way for those astronomers to maintain confidence in their experimental results unless we concede that in at least some cases, first-hand knowledge should trump second-hand consensus. Can you explain to me why their observations should not have been concluded to be faulty on the grounds that they contradicted the scientific consensus?

It’s like you’re not even reading what I’m saying. I didn’t claim that first-hand reports are necessarily more reliable than second-hand reports. (In fact, I very explicitly said I wasn’t claiming that.) I simply claimed they are different things. To demonstrate that they are different things I supplied a list of differences between those things – that’s the only way I know to prove two different things are, in fact, different things.

You yourself said that first-hand experience counts as a piece of evidence. I agree with that. I think that first-hand experience should affect one’s degree of confidence in the thing they are experiencing. You seem to think that I think first-hand experience is the only factor. I do not and have never argued this was the case. I simply think that first-hand experience is another factor in addition to second-hand reports.

Another straw man. I never claimed everyone has to go verify the experiments themselves. I claimed that some people have to go verify the experiments themselves. Do you deny that some people have to go verify the experiments themselves?

I don’t care to go back and quote lines from your many posts in this thread. I felt it was fairly clear that myself and others argued with you not about people who blindly accepted anything they read in a science textbook because they were told to, but about those who tend to accept conclusions that come from reliable sources because they have confidence in the outcome of the scientific method. If this was a source of misunderstanding then let’s be perfectly clear, and let’s do away with the “semantic” argument as well by talking about “belief without proof.”

(1) People who blindly accept their religion because they have been raised to do so.
(2) People who accept their religion because they have had personal experiences that lead them to believe there is a God/Have a personal relationship with Jesus
(3) People who blindly accept the conclusions of science because they have been raised to do so
(4) People who accept the conclusions of science because they have experience that makes the believe that the scientific method is a good way to find out things
(5) People who accept those conclusions of science that they are able to verify/understand themselves and have a notion of “provisional” acceptance for the rest

If you agree that (1) and (3) are examples of “belief without proof” and (4) and (5) are not, then I can chalk the entire disagreement up to a misunderstanding (even if some of the underlying metaphysical disagreements are not based on misunderstanding). We could still disagree greatly on (2) but that’s not really been discussed.

I don’t think you understand the level on which I disagree with you on this point. I reject “I think therefore I am” as a valid argument. Consciousness itself may be an illusion and we may not be having the experiences we believe ourselves to be having. I don’t mean that I could be mistaken about seeing a ghost, I mean that I could be mistaken about having the experience of seeing a ghost. As I said above, I don’t think think this is a point worth belabouring in this discussion.

Edit: Gah! I got mixed up about what A and B we were talking about so the following does not make sense: The only context I have argued that A and B are similar in is that they are similar in our ability to derive proof from them and thus similar in their relevance to whether or not something is “belief without proof.” Replace the actual A and B that you were referring to in that quote with first- and second-hand knowledge.

If you feel I have been misunderstand your points then it is good that you are clarifying them, but that doesn’t make my argument a straw man. I am responding to what it really appears to me that you said.

In this case, even with the clarification I think what I said goes to the heart of the point and that word “everyone” isn’t really central to what I’m saying. The reality is that the consensus in science is changed by a discussion in journals, not in a laboratory, so your contention that first hand experience changes consensus and second hand experience does not is false. All first hand experience of experiments to verify something could vanish entirely in a series of freak accidents and the consensus would be entirely unharmed. That such first hand experience has to have happened at some time is not much of a point because the second hand experience also much have happened at some time, otherwise there would be no consensus.

Yes, I was talking about cases (1) and (3) the whole time.

This is getting off-topic but it is an interesting argument. I agree that “I think therefore I am” is a really problematic argument. However, when you say “consciousness itself may be an illusion” I’m not sure what you mean, or even what you could mean. The only understanding I have of the concept of “illusion” is mediated through my conscious experience. In general, the only access I have to anything in the universe is through my subjective experience. Thus, if I concede that my subjective experience is merely an illusion then I simultaneously admit my basis for knowing anything at all about anything whatsoever is predicated on an illusion. If I cannot trust that I experience things (whether or not I believe that those experiences are “true” in any sense) then I certainly cannot trust the inferences made from that experience such as there is such a thing as the universe. If I discount my experience of illusions as merely an illusion then I no longer have a concept of illusion to apply to my conscious subjective experiences.

In other words, I think the position that consciousness is an illusion is self-defeating. If consciousness is an illusion then we have no basis for believing anything at all. It’s no so different from Boltzmann brains or Last Thursdayism.

Sorry, no. In this case you were literally putting words in my mouth. I explicitly claimed that some people have to perform the experiments, not that all people do. You argued against the latter instead of the former. You argued against an argument similar to mine but weaker. That is the definition of a straw man argument.

But the experiments must be performed in a laboratory before the results are discussed in journals so my contention is actually true. (I said first-hand must be prior, not that second-hand experience has no effect. This is another example of you claiming I made an argument I did not. I’ll refrain from using the dreaded “s-word” this time.)

Again, it is a valid point because the first-hand experience must come before the second-hand experience. The second-hand experience depends on the first-hand experience. Otherwise there would be nothing to report second-hand.

My point was that it is the discussion of results that creates a consensus, not the production of results. Without the discussion of results it would be necessary for everyone to conduct the experiment to create a consensus. Allowing the discussion of results to form the consensus is precisely what allows only some of the people to do the experiment. I was relying on the fact that you said that only some people conduct experiments and contrasting it to the idea of everyone conducting them to make a point.

Let’s take a look at what my “straw man” was actually responding to:

[quote=“wysinwyg, post:118, topic:18722”]
Second-hand reports cannot be used to discredit the current consensus because second-hand reports are justified by that very consensus. Only first-hand reports can be used to challenge the current consensus.
[/quote] (emphasis mine)

If I misunderstood because “first-hand reports” means reports from people who conducted experiments (that is, accounts rather than direct knowledge) then we completely agree that accounts of experiments change the consensus. I took your point to be that only by doing experiments can be change the consensus, not by discussing or reporting on experiments. I disagreed with that because in reality both are necessary.

I must have been born before I murder someone but they don’t put me on trial for being born. Coming first, even necessarily coming first, doesn’t mean it is more important. In science, conducting experiments and sharing results of experiments are both important and no meaningful progress would ever be achieved without both.

I’m okay with that.

OK. What I meant was that, using your analogy, you must be born before you’re even accused of murder let alone convicted of murder. I never intended to say that you wouldn’t also have to plausibly have committed murder to be convicted of murder.

I think you must admit that plausibly having committed a murder before being born would be quite a trick.

What does it mean to be “okay with that”? Isn’t being “okay with that” just a subjective conscious experience? If it is, and if subjective conscious experience may just be an illusion, on what grounds do you conclude that you are, in fact, “okay with that”?

If your subjective conscious experience is just an illusion then the act of reading words from a computer screen must be an illusion. If that is the case, then what is it exactly that you are “okay with”?

Epistemological arguments in a web forum! And it seems like you guys are actually trying to understand each other instead of just beating each other up. Awesome!

Apparently. The point of the comments is not to convince you they are true, but that they’re pertinent to our argument. But you’re dismissing them simply because you don’t contest them from a factual standpoint. That’s nice, but also missing the point. If you agree the two faiths are not equivalent, then no comparison between then will be equivalent either due to the distinctions. This includes “blind faith” comparisons - the differences are still extant regardless that the faith is blind or otherwise.

Not in an equivalent way as religious blind faith, though. In no circumstance is any faith, blind or otherwise, with something that both has been verified by scores of others, the proof documented, and available for scrutiny, the same kind of “blind” as religious blind faith which contains none of these elements. Again, to point to the money-in-the-bank comparison, a certain kind of blind faith is required to believe that a bank actually has your money at any given time. Most individuals do not understand the complex mechanics of how banks work, about how they could potentially lose their money, how the money could still be stolen or unprotected or lost during an economic catastrophe, etc. But having blind faith in a bank whose exact workings you don’t understand is a very different kind of blind faith then believing someone who simply says they have your money waiting for you under a bed in their house, but they can’t give it to you until they think you’re ready. The bank version has verification abilities the house version does not. The fact that neither is fully understood by the layman, offers similarities but never sameness.

Incorrect. This denies what “scientific results” are, which are long-term peer evaluated and constantly challenged knowledge. The peer/group element does change the fundamental make-up of the belief. Nothing can be “just as” blind when there is documented evidence, multiple sources of agreement based on documented experiments, and the free ability to continually verify and challenge.

Perhaps the point of distinction can be phrased in your own terminology to make it stick for you: someone may not understand the mechanics of an individual science, but we all understand the mechanics of science itself, the scientific method. Perhaps not perfectly, but everyone who believes in science, if pushed, could stumble through the laundry list of necessary elements that make scientific method the scientific method and nothing less objective. Because we understand THIS, and no one has yet come up with a more demonstrably objective approach to knowledge gathering, we therefore decide to believe “in science”, which is just a shorthand way of saying we believe in the scientific method. From there, no belief in science that has actually come from the scientific method can be “just as” blind as religious belief. Because we understand and have intellectually accepted the method.

There isn’t really: in both cases the explanation would be the same, you’d either give it because you conducted the experiment yourself or because you read about it/heard about it. But what came out of your mouth would essentially be the same conclusion.

There is, but not the difference you’re suggesting, which is one of trustworthiness. Both examples come with drawbacks in truth and objectivity - the expert who personally tests can get hung up on their own beliefs, results, approach to the experiment, and conclusions. They trust themselves, at the expense of trusting anything more objective, which would be a group consensus. If some third party trusts the group consensus over any individual experiment, then they have LESS blind faith than the person who only trusts their own results.

But it would be disingenuous if you entered a discussion debating the merits between electric and acoustic guitars and said: “They’re both guitars, it’s possible to play any kind of music on one in the exact same way on the other.” Which is not incorrect, but impishly dismisses the entire point of the conversation, which is what the merit of the distinctions are. Pointing out the similarities does not invalidate the distinctions. And the distinctions are not insignificant in the face of the similarities. They do not make electric and acoustic guitars just “guitars”. For practical real-world use and discussion, the differences must be acknowledged and accepted.

Yes, but this is key you both my and Humbabella’s points - science by necessity contain first hand accounts. Many of them. That makes belief in science very different from any other kind.

Beyond the existence of the group consensus of first-hand accounts, though, while they are necessary they are not continually the most important factor. Once consensus is reached, continually demanding first hand repetitions becomes an outlier activity, individual and trusting only of one’s self, when in fact application and additional new theories that can be tested is much more productive and actually challenging, though these only come about when people accept the original theory and move on. But accepting and moving on requires belief in the consensus. If we didn’t do this, science would never advance.