Why faith? When I try to understand the word, I might translate it with trust. Trust that stories on the topic of God made sense. That science without God overlooked something significant. In 1865 Rudolf Clausius stated: “The energy of the world is constant. The entropy of the world urges towards a state of maximized entropy.” Later Willard Gibbs said this system should be described as: “Constant in volume and energy, with a shell that would not change in size nor let through energy in any form. If the entropy within could increase it would, where entropy could never decrease, and as a result entropy would maximize into a dead state equilibrium with maximized entropy.” Applied to the world this is called the heat death of the world and it was the great fear of Herbert Spencer the inventor of survival of the fittest. But it forgets photosynthesis and the food chain that it feeds and the increase of molecular complexity which is compared to the prebiotic soup a decrease of entropy. A decrease of entropy that could never happen in the idea of Gibbs when the idea of Rudolf Clausius would be true. From many molecules in the prebiotic soup, poor in energy, biodiversity is a decrease in number and an increase in energy, with chemical energy between atoms, made from sunlight by photosynthesis. This is the gain of molecular complexity outside the Gibbs/ Clausius/ Spencer idea of Nature. When deserts grow, forest fires burn, woods are logged and the ecosystem in the ocean dies, the decrease of entropy due to photosynthesis ends and spontaneous reactions will erode the chemical energy on earth till entropy maximizes. The decrease of entropy outside the thought of Herbert Spencer I trust to be something special and in that I have faith.
“The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.”
Wow seems that
#340300 @yoramdiamand, this is supposed to be a discussion forum.
A “discussion” requires listening to what others are saying and process it and responding.
I bring it up because within a few minutes I seem to have run into that same quote on three different threads.
That’s just being a poster boy, with your ears plugged - not very participatory.
Learning requires a two way street and but you are posting dead ends.
What I think to know, I believe to know, what I know for certain is not known?
When you say let us discuss, listen to what I have to say, I do not mind hearing what you have to say apart from let us discuss
What I think to know, I believe to know, what I know for certain is not known?What do you know for certain and can prove it?
In the history of philosophy by Durant there is a large part on Herbert Spencer where he laments the end of evolution in the form of equilibrium. In A choice of Catastrophes by Isaac Asimov, chapter the increase of entropy he explains how the plants with photosynthesis feed the evolution which is in his view is a decrease of entropy and a direct violation of the second law of thermodynamics. That law describes a system constant of volume and energy and is not built to describe biology. Biology demands to make the sun part of the energy analysis of life. Of that I am certain.
W. Durant (1940 in my Dutch translation) quoted Herbert Spencer:
“But finally, and inescapably, comes “Equilibration.”
…Gradually, and then rapidly, equilibration will become dissolution, the unhappy
epilogue of evolution. Societies will disintegrate, masses will migrate, cities will
fade into the dark hinterland of peasant life; no government will be strong enough
to hold the loosened parts together; social order will cease to be even remembered.
And in the individual too, integration will give way to disruption; and that
coordination which is life will pass into that diffuse disorder which is death. The
earth will be a chaotic theatre of decay, a gloomy drama of energy in irreversible
degradation; and it will itself be resolved into the dust and nebula from which it
came. The cycle of evolution and dissolution will be complete. The cycle will begin
again, and endless times again; but always this will be the denouement.”
Asimov with his view on the
possible catastrophes, chapter: the increase of entropy (1979):
“The laws of thermodynamics apply to closed systems. The plant world produces
the food and the oxygen (the key component of air) that the animal world lives on
by the process known as ‘photosynthesis’. It has been doing so for billions of years;
but then plant and animal life taken as a whole are not a closed system either. The
plants derive the energy that drives their production of food and oxygen from
sunlight. It is therefore sunlight that makes life possible and the sun itself must be
included as part of the life-system before the laws of thermodynamics can be
applied to life. As it happens, the sun’s entropy rises steadily by an amount that far
outstrips any entropy-decrease that can be brought about by life. The net change in
entropy of the system that includes life and the sun is therefore a pronounced and
continuing rise. The vast entropy-decrease represented by biological evolution, then
is only a ripple in the tidal wave of entropy-increase represented by the sun…”
Yes, what is so unusual about extinction of evolved physical patterns? Evolution is a result of natural selection, and 95 % of all living things are now extinct. This principle holds for all things which are not constants, but which are subject to evolutionary processes, including natural selection.
Now we are off-topic in this forum…!!!
You asked of what I was certain, so I told you. Which you call off topic.
The OP simply assumes the truth of premise that there is no difference between religious faith and the more ordinary kind that one uses, for instance, to trust scientists when they say that a scientific law is true.
They’re not at all the same, of course, but I admit that this does not fit with the new tenor of this thread about listening to people.
The OP simply assumes the truth of premise that there is no difference between religious faith and the more ordinary kind that one uses, for instance, to trust scientists when they say that a scientific law is true.The OP asks about "faith in science", which is very different from "faith in the bible".
Faith (trust) in science is based on evidence and ability to produce repetitive results in accordance with the scientific method… i.e. “proof”
OTOH, faith in the bible is not supported by evidence and cannot be repeated in accordance with any logical method. i.e. “faith”
2. strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof. Oxford dictionary.Religion is not considered science, it's mythology.
How about the concept of Faith in Honesty?
Religion is not considered science, it’s mythology.Why would that be?
Well, for one science is based on observing our physical world.
… Religion is based on the thoughts you produce in your head.
Science demands sound facts and constructive arguments.
… Religion demands blind faith in whatever dogma you’ve chosen.
Science is dynamic and it grows as we gather more evidence and understanding.
… Religion is stale, without change, and possess a grotesque disregard for Earth and the world beyond one’s ‘faith.’
Science is open to all qualified information and allows facts to direction our provisional “faith” in one claim or other.
Such as I have extreme faith in the sun rising tomorrow morning, though I’m incapable of proving it to you.
… Religion is full of rejecting everything outside of it’s dogma, no matter how obvious and undeniable the facts staring us in the face are.
and so on and so forth.
Faith is about spirituality and the afterlife you don’t look for science answers there. Science is how man has come to understand the environment around him. Really the only problem between science and religion is the Book of Genesis. How else do they come in conflict I’m not seeing it.
Because the Book o Genesis is not based on evidence, whereas Science is and therefore is replacing a lot of mythology in the Book of Genesis with demonstrable Truth.
And sometimes, truth hurts… 
As long as faith NEVER pretends to know anything that science doesn’t. As long as faith NEVER pretends that it is science’s equal, that it’s a 50:50 split. It’s a 0:100 faith : science-scientism-rationality split using sense data, evidence, reasoning. Faith as the substance of things hoped, yearned for, desired is OK, that makes it 100:100 with scientific rationalism / metaphysical, ontological, philosophical naturalism. As long as the twain never meet. Except of course in feeding back the latter in to the former in the moral nature of God.
madman was here for two days. youramdiamond, I don’t remember anything about them.
My thought, religion will become more like philosophy. One of my favorite Richard Carrier talks is the one where he describes where philosophy fits in the wheel of knowledge, science, politics and other named disciplines. Philosophy is only worthwhile when it delineates its conclusions from those based on data and evidence. If you conclude based on scientific methods, then its science. If don’t have the data, but you need to decide, as in choices about punishment, war, abortion, and all the other “trolley problems”, then its philosophy.
He also mentions, if you are making conclusions without data and evidence, or much logic, and not calling it philosophy, then you are doing religion.
