Point taken.
None of the stories contain the wording of the actual survey, but extensive use of the word “belief” in reports lead me to question the validity of the poll.
To a scientist it’s very clear that using the word in saying “I believe in God” means something very different than using in saying “I believe in evolution”.
But to a religionist: maybe not so clear.
The problem with the whole question is that there is virtually no common vocabulary or understanding. “Just a theory” is a good example (a scientist would express the implied meaning as “just a hypothesis, not yet a theory”).
The other common misunderstanding and cause for useless debates is that scientific theories are simply “the best we have so far that hasn’t been falsified yet by previously unknown evidence”. Science technically can’t claim that something is exactly so (it get’s very very close for all practical purposes though), but it very easily can show that something is false. Hypotheses that are false are obviously useless, but more subtle, hypotheses that are not in principle falsifiable by evidence (shall it be discovered) are equally useless. The hypothesis “The earth is 6000 years old” is easily contradicted by evidence. However, the hypothesis “there is a god that never interacts with our observable universe in any way” is not falsifiable, and therefore has no relevance to science (or to anything else for that matter).
Lastly, the word “belief” is also used differently. Scientists do believe in the scientific method (mostly as it has been very successful so far), and in the accuracy of literature. It boils down to transparency and reproducability though - we don’t check everything ourselves every time, but if there are contradictions it will be checked, and so far the fundamentals have been reproduced, cross-checked, improved and re-measured many many times. Discrepancies usually stand out fairly quickly. It’s a far cry from believing something based on zero evidence that has never been reproduced by anyone, and that doesn’t even allow the very concept of scrutiny or questioning.
I don’t think it’s that misleading. Of the 54% of Democrats I mentioned, exactly half believe that “A supreme being guided the evolution of living things" and half believe that humans were created in their present form (i.e. “Creationism”).
I think that squares pretty well with exactly what I said.
I understand that you’re saying that “a supreme being guided the evolution of living things" may be closer to believing in evolution than in creationism, but it still doesn’t square that great with natural selection. It’s still a fundamentally flawed understanding of evolution.
I think the word you’re looking for is “faith.”
Scientists believe in a large number of things, and the things they are unsure of they can look up the evidence for themselves, or try to reproduce the experiments.
The religious have faith, and looking up the evidence is meaningless.
Believing scientific hypothesis “on faith” is very unscientific, and your use of the word is very different from a religionist’s. Ignorance about deep mathematics or obscure physical phenomenon does not discount a foundation of knowledge based on mathematical reasoning, experimentation, and empirical validation.
“Faith” and “belief” are the end of knowledg, the death of scientific pursuit. Once “belief” and “faith” are established, we needn’t know anything else. Curiosity dies, and we can put the facts in their right places and stop thinking about them.
I just want to chime in to support those who have noted the problem with a lack of definition of “anti-science.”
If I say that people who don’t believe in evolution are anti-science I mean they are uninterested in changing their opinions and beliefs when given facts or that they don’t regard science as a mechanism that produces facts.
If I say that a group of anarchist Mennonites who bomb a university research lab are “anti-science” I presumably mean something stronger.
But also, the idea that belief in evolution and knowledge of science are 100% unrelated seems pretty incredible to me. Does he mean when you factor out things like wealth and education level? Because surely he can’t mean that you find exactly the same belief in evolution in a random town as you do in a biology PhD program. And if he is factoring other things out, it would be nice to know what, because if you factor out degrees in biology then you are kind of factoring out knowledge of science.
I’m not saying it’s “closer”, I’m saying it’s “empirically indistinguishable.” The only basis on which you can claim that theistic evolution is a “fundamentally flawed understanding of evolution” is by invoking Occam’s Razor, but that’s a philosophical argument and not a scientific one.
The distinction I’m making is between people who:
A) recognize all the experimentation, observation, and theorizing that goes into evolutionary science as entirely valid and try to harmonize that valid scientific work with their private, faith-based beliefs
vs.
B) reject all experimentation, observation, and theorizing in evolutionary science as completely invalid.
Group (A) accepts every scientific conclusion about evolution. They only reject the entirely philosophical assertion that evolution operates on a completely materialist basis.
At least, those who say they “believe” aren’t putting their own ignorance on an equal footing with the scientific consensus.
But surely we need to acknowledge that the vast majority of people – even scientifically literate ones – don’t bother to personally verify all the scientific research of the last 300 years. If “faith” is “belief without proof” then as an atheist I still have to acknowledge that most of what I “know” I know on “faith” (by the above definition). If you don’t like using the word “faith” in this context feel free to substitute another arbitrary symbol string that is more to your liking.
Except that I am deeply religious, and in both contexts I use the word in its Kierkegaardian sense. It simply can’t be “turtles all the way down,” and even if it was, that too is unproveable.
Also, don’t mention the anarchist Mennonites again - I believe there’s a task force at NSA looking into them.
“Reality is that which doesn’t go away when you stop believing in it” - Philip K. Dick.
Unfortunately, Kahan’s position is rather questionable.
In the article, he claims that we should only consider how many people claim “belief” in
“naturalistic” or “Darwinian” evolution
(i.e. a strict understanding), while the count of people who admit to any other forms of “beliefs” in evolution should be ignored.
In the chart he emphasized this position by circling the only data points that he deems usable:
That seems overly restrictive.
Instead, if you look at the “Humans have existed in present form” column, which shows people who completely reject any form of evolution, there is quite a difference between 2009 and 2013.
So, as far as I can see, Pew had a valid point to start with, while Kahan is lost somewhere between the tree that hides the forest and the “no true scotsman”.
“Faith” as used in religion has to do with the absence of proof/evidence. It really isn’t possible to legitimately compare that to “faith” in a scientific principle where the proof and evidence is readily available if one seeks it out, and where additional evidence is being continuously sought.
I will agree that my usage of “faith” is not the only one possible and that in many religious contexts it means something rather different.
However, my usage of “faith” corresponds to a quite frequent conventional usage of the word. Furthermore, since I explicitly defined the term it shouldn’t matter what the word is. When I explicitly define a word then that word becomes simply a symbol to refer to the definition I’ve given.
Moreover, your objection depends on the following: “where the proof and evidence is readily available if one seeks it out”. In any case where I don’t seek it out – which is most cases! – I’m accepting that a justification for the scientific principle exists on faith (since I can’t be sure the justification exists or is valid otherwise – the justification is absent until I actually take a look at it).
Please don’t take this as an attack – i’m merely using “religionist” and “scientist” as opposing ends of a continuum. I don’t mean to say that “all religious people think X” nor “all scientific pepole think Y”.
But you miss my point.
A religionist fills in lack of knowledge or understanding with “faith,” while a scientist admits ignorance.
You know, I’m not shy about letting people know I don’t believe in God but deepities like this one are making me more and more hesitant to call myself an atheist.
You defined faith as “belief without proof”, which is an extremely vague definition that could cover both of my statements (both an absence of proof and an ignorance of proof). Your response then uses that definition’s vagueness. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to accept your assertion that this vague definition is accurate enough for the discussion when we’re explicitly comparing religious faith to scientific knowledge.
Whether you, personally, seek out that evidence still does not cancel out the fact that the evidence exists, the things you believe are based on the work of people who did seek out the evidence, and anyone (including you) can get access to that evidence and attempt to disprove it at will. To conflate that with the religious use of the term “faith” is extremely sloppy.
Some scary stats, found while perusing Kahan’s blog:
Correct answers to factual knowledge questions in physical and biological sciences, by respondent characteristic: 2010
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind12/append/c7/at07-10.pdf
Sample results:
Now you’re assuming that the evidence exists. It doesn’t always. There have been hundreds, maybe thousands, of scientific hoaxes within the last few hundred years. That’s not even counting errors by scientists which are much more frequent.
In other words, you’re taking it on faith that anything a scientist says is backed by good scientific work when in reality sometimes the work is not so good and sometimes it was not done at all. Until I look I don’t know. If I accept a scientific finding without checking it myself then I am accepting it on faith because I cannot be sure there is actually good evidence for it. (Or more precisely, I am accepting an argument from authority which is exactly how most religious claims come to be believed as well.)
Progress in science requires skepticism towards established results. You’re advocating credulity towards established results. You’re probably going to call me “anti-science” next.
BTW, feel free at any time to introduce a new term to cover this concept since the word “faith” seems to bother you so much. I suspect it’s because you’re using it as an identity marker (as the linked article says of “evolution”) since my usage of the word has been pretty unremarkable.
Your providing an alternative definition does not negate the various connotations carried by the word.
