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Quote by: MerlinsByte I would beg to differ, pointing out that today's most dearly held theories are accepted on FAITH, that is, a faith of scientific methodology.
We have beautiful elegant (incomplete) theories that explain all manner of natural phenomena. To accept an incomplete theory is to take this theory on FAITH! As distasteful and down right repugnant to some men of learning this is nevertheless a fact. The scientists are priests of a scientific method, their God is the belief in themselves.
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I think you are confusing scientific methods which are intended to explain and study our experience of reality in an objective manner with what could be called scientism.
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Scientism usually means the acceptance of scientific theory and scientific methods as applicable in all fields of inquiry about the world, including morality, ethics, art, and religion. Here, science is held to be the ultimate recourse in questions of public policy and even religion. However, contemporary usage is usually in a pejorative sense, implying that this acceptance of the universality of the scientific method is a dogmatic and uncritical assumption analogous to the dogmatic and uncritical attitudes of religious True Believers.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism
Incomplete theories may have an element of hope that they will lead to greater discoveries but they are not based on faith as in, "A strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny."
I find that often when science demonstrates what is false in a set of religious beliefs (such as the earth being the center of the universe) that the religious conveniently move the goal post and go on about what science cannot demonstrate.