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Dr_Maybe

Some say that science and religion are both belief systems. The problem with this thinking is that it is completely wrong for one very simple reason.

Religion is meant to be believed, science is meant to be understood.

Believing in something requires almost zero learning, you just believe it and that's it, you are good to go. Science on the other hand takes study to understand so it's not easy, it's hard work and it can take a long time to achieve an understanding of it.

Scientists don't believe in something like the science of evolution, they understand it.

To illustrate this point I leave you with this question:

Do you understand how an internal combustion engine works or do you believe in it?

AlexOland

I would like to add something: Even if a scientist is not sure about a theory or a hypothesis but thinks there is a good chance that it might be true, they still do not say they "believe" in that idea. "Belief" means that you are sure of something. This is also a very fundamental distinction between science and religion. Science admits that there are things unknown to us while religion fills that gap with random information. This is the reason religion attracts a lot of people. The majority can't be content with not knowing so they rather accept false information.

maxx

@Dr_Maybe I @Dr_Maybe i think if one went far enough back into the past one may find they were both attemps to explain the unknown, it is possible that religion was mans first attempt at science, trying to explain cause and effect; yet over time religion and science separated. it is almost obvious that religion or what led to religion came long before any ideas of science. we may never know but it is probable that science is a branch that stemmed from the original ideas of religion: trying to find what the world was about.

ZeusAres42

On the surface, I think both religious people and scientists share a mixture of both understanding and beliefs about what they understand and believe in.

Beneath the surface, however, there is the "why" is it that each believes what they believe and the answer I will give here is that it is because one is grounded in pure blind faith whereas the other has its roots in an accumulation of theoretical knowledge and/or practical application. 

AlofRI

@AlexOland I agree with some of what you said, but, if I just "believe" a fact is a fact, I am not necessarily SURE, I just believe it to be true. 
If I'm not SURE, religion will not fill that gap. I AM sure that religion is not fact.... I just don't believe it to be true.  

AlexOland

@AlofRI You seem to be confusing two different definitions of "belief".

"Not believe" means lacking a belief in something therefore you can indeed say that "I do not believe in religion but I am not sure." like you have explained. Because "not believe" is not the same thing as "disbelief".

 But just "believe" means "accept". You cannot say "I believe you but I am not sure." because you would be contradicting yourself. You cannot both accept what someone says and not be sure about it. 

 I think you are mixing up the two definitions of "belief": 
1- accept that (something) is true, especially without proof.
2- hold (something) as an opinion; think.

 We use the second one in our daily speech. But we usually use the first one in philosophy. For example, if you say: "I believe that god exists." or "I believe that the holy book is true." nearly no one will think you are using the second definition. But if you say: "I believe we've already met." everyone will understand that you are using the second definition. 

John_C_87

@Dr_Maybe ;

Do you understand how an internal combustion engine works or do you believe in it?
There is nothing to believe the internal combustion engine does not always work. When working? We believe it to work. When not working? We believe it to be broken and it then needs to be fixed. Education and science are a part of religion a person simple see's as working in a state of shared beliefs open to the public. Faith does not hold this same visible state of working in a shared public principle learning faith in science is created in simple believable form of sharing.

Example: Something that is painful to touch and burns is hot, something painful to touch and freezes is cold. However all things can be either just hot or cold and the difference is simple measurable, or beyond measurement. In truth faith is what might just define a science and religion much like a temperature does with hot and cold. Shared belief is the united state.

ethang5

@Dr_Maybe

>Scientists don't believe in something like the science of evolution, they understand it.

Tell me, did scientists "understand" blood letting? Did they "understand" the Piltdown man?

How about the atom being the smallest unit of matter that could be divided further? Did they "understand" that too?

Dr_Maybe

Here is a simpler example.

Two plus two equals four, do you understand that or do you believe in it?

ethang5

@Dr_Maybe

>Here is a simpler example.

One which better allows you to dodge the logical error in your argument?

>Two plus two equals four, do you understand that or do you believe in it?

How are those things mutually exclusive? I believe in and understand the principle that the equation is built on.

If a scientist claims to  understand a concept that turns out to be false, he could not have possibly understood it. They believe, just like everyone else.

The distinction you are trying to make is fakery.

ZeusAres42

@Dr_Maybe

Here is a simpler example.

Two plus two equals four, do you understand that or do you believe in it?

To be fair, you can't really make a blanket statement referencing deductive proofs in mathematics as being analogous to all branches of science.

AlexOland

@ethang5 ;

 That is the point. Scientists do not "believe" in ideas because, as you have shown, they can turn out to be wrong. 

 Scientists understand the ideas and it is irrelevant if these ideas representative of reality or not. You can still understand Newton's laws even though they are wrong. Ideas are (scientifically) just our guess at what the universe might be, they are models. 

ZeusAres42

@AlexOland

I'm pretty sure it's still currently agreed by if not all then definitely most physicists that Isaac Newton's laws from 1 to 4 are actually right; not wrong. These are well established scientific laws of physics and have been for more than the last century now.

ZeusAres42

@ethang5

Generally speaking, in a lot of sciences a concept is what's known as a hypothesis, and they need to understand this in order to be able to test it to see if it is either true or false. 

AlexOland

@ZeusAres42

 Newton's laws are approximately right. But we are absolutely sure that they are technically wrong.  

 Well, it's not really fair to call them all "wrong". The real issue is with the second one: F = ma. I know that laws one and three have some issues as well but I do not exactly remember why.

AlofRI

@AlexOland ;

I believe you believe that I am confused. I don't believe I am. I don't believe, that's MY belief, and I am not confused at all about it …. believe me.

ethang5

@AlexOland

You are being equivocal on the meaning of the word "understand" as used here.

If, for example, I say I "understand" how an internal combustion engine works, it cannot be true that I think little horses prance inside the engine to give it power.

What I understand may be my fantasy, but it is not how an internal combustion engine works.

If a scientist claims to  understand a concept that turns out to be false, he could not have possibly understood it if the concept is supposed to explain a phenomena in reality.

>it is irrelevant if these ideas representative of reality or not.

It is very relevant. Perhaps it may be irrelevant for theoretical scientists, but not others.

ethang5

@AlexOland

>That is the point. Scientists do not "believe" in ideas because, as you have shown, they can turn out to be wrong. 

Belief is possible even when they are wrong.

>Scientists understand the ideas and it is irrelevant if these ideas representative of reality or not.

Untrue. You are being equivocal on the meaning of understand here.

>You can still understand Newton's laws even though they are wrong.

But I do not understand the reality the laws are supposed to explain. The point is to understand the reality, not just a concept.

>Ideas are (scientifically) just our guess at what the universe might be, they are models.

That is why for theoretical scientists, understanding the concept is enough, but for others,  no.

If I say I understand, for example, the internal combustion engine, "understand" means I can explain the reality, not just the concept.

If a scientist claims to  understand a concept that is supposed to explain reality, and it turns out to be false, he could not have possibly understood the reality.

ethang5

@ZeusAres42

>Generally speaking, in a lot of sciences a concept is what's known as a hypothesis, and they need to understand this in order to be able to test it to see if it is either true or false.

I get that, but we can understand a concept or the reality it is to explain. I understand a concept only when that concept is correctly representing reality.

For example, if I think the internal combustion engine runs because nature abhors a vacuum, I may understand my concept very well, but I do not understand internal combustion engines at all.

Concepts are supposed to correctly define reality

Dr_Maybe

So do you guys think that science could exist without math?

Plaffelvohfen

The difference is primarily that Science and Religion do not share an epistemological status, and that is what the "faith in science" statements tend to suggest, in that sense these statements are wrong...

It is true that scientists take certain things on faith. It is also true that religious narratives might speak to human needs that scientific theories can’t hope to satisfy.

And yet, scientific practices—observation and experiment; the development of falsifiable hypotheses; the relentless questioning of established views—have proven uniquely powerful in revealing the surprising, underlying structure of the world we live in, including subatomic particles, the role of germs in the spread of disease, and the neural basis of mental life. 

Religion has no equivalent record of discovering hidden truths.

So why do so many people believe otherwise? It turns out that while science and religion are as different as can be, folk science and folk religion share deep properties. Most of us carry in our heads a hodgepodge of scientific views and religious views, and they often feel the same—because they are learned, understood, and mentally encoded in similar ways. 

Many religious beliefs arise from universal modes of thought that have evolved for reasoning about the social world. We are sensitive to signs of agency, which explains the animism that grounds the original religions of the world. but this perspective is incomplete...

There are many religious views that are not the product of common-sense ways of seeing the world. Consider the story of Adam and Eve, or the virgin birth of Christ, or Muhammad ascending to heaven on a winged horse. These are not the product of innate biases. They are learned, and, more surprisingly, they are learned in a special way.

To come to accept such religious narratives is not like learning that grass is green or that stoves can be hot; it is not like picking up stereotypes or customs or social rules. Instead, these narratives are acquired through the testimony of others, from parents or peers or religious authorities. Accepting them requires a leap of faith, but not a theological leap of faith. Rather, a leap in the mundane sense that you must trust the people who are testifying to their truth.

Many religious narratives are believed without even being understood. People will often assert religious claims with confidence—there exists a God, he listens to my prayers, I will go to Heaven when I die—but with little understanding, or even interest, in the details. The sociologist Alan Wolfe observes that “evangelical believers are sometimes hard pressed to explain exactly what, doctrinally speaking, their faith is,” and goes on to note that “These are people who believe, often passionately, in God, even if they cannot tell others all that much about the God in which they believe.”

People defer to authorities not just to the truth of the religious beliefs, but their meaning as well. In this article, the philosopher Neil Van Leeuwen calls these sorts of mental states “credences,” and he notes that they have a moral component. We believe that we should accept them, and that others—at least those who belong to our family and community—should accept them as well.

None of this is special to religion. Researchers have studied those who have strong opinions about political issues and found that they often literally don’t know what they are talking about. Many people who take positions on cap and trade, for instance, have no idea what cap and trade is. Similarly, many of those who will insist that America spends too much, or too little, on foreign aid, often don’t know how much actually is spent, as either an absolute amount or proportion of GDP. These political positions are also credences, and one who holds them is just like someone who insists that the Ten Commandments should be the bedrock of morality, but can’t list more than three or four of them.

Many scientific views endorsed by non-specialists are credences as well. Some people reading this will say they believe in natural selection, but not all will be able to explain how natural selection works. (As an example, how does this theory explain the evolution of the eye?) It turns out that those who assert the truth of natural selection are often unable to define it, or, worse, have it confused with some long-rejected pre-Darwinian notion that animals naturally improve over time.

There are exceptions, of course. There are those who can talk your ear off about cap and trade, and can delve into the minutiae of selfish gene theory and group selection. And there are people of faith who can justify their views with powerful arguments.

But much of what’s in our heads are credences, not beliefs we can justify—and there’s nothing wrong with this. Life is too brief; there is too much to know and not enough time. We need epistemological shortcuts.

Given my day job, I know something about psychology and associated sciences, but if you press me on the details of climate change, or the evidence about vaccines and autism, I’m at a loss. I believe that global warming is a serious problem and that vaccines do not cause autism, but this is not because I have studied these issues myself.

It is because I trust the scientists.

Most of those who insist that the Earth is 6000 years old and that global warming is a liberal fraud and that vaccines destroy children’s brains would also be at a loss to defend these views. Like me, they defer, just to different authorities.

This equivalence might lead to a relativist conclusion—you have your faith; I have mine. You believe weird things on faith (virgin birth, winged horse); I believe weird things on faith (invisible particles, Big Bang), and neither of us fully understands what we’re really talking about. But there is a critical difference. Some sorts of deference are better than others.

It’s better to get a cancer diagnosis from a radiologist than from a Ouija Board. It’s better to learn about the age of the universe from an astrophysicist than from a Rabbi. The New England Journal of Medicine is a more reliable source about vaccines than the actress Jenny McCarthy. These preferences are not ideological. We’re not talking about Fox News versus The Nation. They are rational, because the methods of science are demonstrably superior at getting at truths about the natural world.

I don’t want to fetishize science. Sociologists and philosophers deserve a lot of credit in reminding us that scientific practice is permeated by groupthink, bias, and financial, political, and personal motivations. The physicist Richard Feynman once wrote that the essence of science was “bending over backwards to prove ourselves wrong.” But he was talking about the collective cultural activity of science, not scientists as individuals, most of whom prefer to be proven right, and who are highly biased to see the evidence in whatever light most favors their preferred theory.

But science as an institution behaves differently than particular scientists. Science establishes conditions where rational argument is able to flourish, where ideas can be tested against the world, and where individuals can work together to surpass their individual limitations. Science is not just one “faith community” among many. It has earned its epistemological stripes. And when the stakes are high, as they are with climate change and vaccines, we should appreciate its special status.

AlexOland

@ethang5

"If a scientist claims to  understand a concept that turns out to be false, he could not have possibly understood it if the concept is supposed to explain a phenomena in reality."

 I do not think you understand what science is. The way you come up with an "idea" in science is this:
1- You guess how the universe might be working and make a model. 2- You try to reason out what would happen and what wouldn't happen if said model was true. 3- You make experiments.

 If the results of the experiment are the same as the idea predicted, then we say that this scientific idea is "true". And the model which this idea presents is "correct". What scientists do, is understand these models. Something does not need to be completely real for you to understand it. The rules of tetris for example, is entirely fictional. But we can understand those rules perfectly.

  Scientists do not understand reality directly. Human perception does not allow direct observation. A scientist can only understand the universe partially. But, the thing is, science is never completely wrong. 

 The best way to realize this concept is to just look at the development of the atomic theory: 1- They are little, indivisable balls. 2- They are little + charged balls. 3- They are little balls with + and - charges randomly spread all around them. (Raisin pudding) 4- They are little balls with a + at the center and have -es around them. 5- The -es must be spinning around the nucleus. 6- The -es actually exist as possibility clouds. 7- There also needs to be a chargeless particle... 

 I think this much is enough to explain my case. Realize how on each step the idea of an atom is not entirely "wrong" but rather incomplete? None of the ideas there might be representing our reality perfectly but they are all partially true. And that "partial truth" is slowly increasing.

 It is impossible for Newton's laws to be completely wrong. Because they are based upon proper observations. For example, his second law F = ma might not be true in the technical sense but that does not mean it doesn't hold any reality to it. The law states a relationship between force, mass and acceleration. And when we observe reality, we DO see this relationship. A law never turns out to be completely false. A) It turns out that it is incomplete  B.) The law becomes generalized into something else(meaning it wasn't actually a "law"). But in both situations, the relationship that the law states exists. 

 If there ever comes a time in which some well-constructed scientific idea turns out to be entirely false, then it is not only science that is doomed; our hope of being able to understand reality, even in the slightest, is gone as well. We understand the universe because it is consistent. If this consistency is destroyed, none of our understandings will function. But it seems that, at least for now, the universe is pretty damn consistent. And as long as this consistency exists, it would be idiotic to think that we will not gain anything by studying it. 

ethang5

@AlexOland

>I do not think you understand what science is.

Really? Both my science professor and my scientist wife would be surprised to hear that.

I saw no reason for your wall-o-text other than to convince you that you know science. You aren't even talking about the same thing as I am.

I've seen no one in this thread against science, but you atheists are defending science as if someone assaulted it. Why can't you get past the silly caricature of the religious you have in your mind?

The OP said, "Religion is meant to be believed, science is meant to be understood."

He did not mean just concepts, but concepts that correctly explain reality. Until I understand how gasses cool when under negative pressure, I cannot say I understand the phenomena of refrigeration  whatever concept I understand.

>Human perception does not allow direct observation.

Off topic unless you're doing the "Look at me, I know science" dance.

The fact is., the OP's comment,

"Scientists don't believe in something like the science of evolution, they understand it."

Is tautology. Scientist certainly do not understand how evolution explains the real world, they only believe it does.

Of course there are things scientists understand, but not everything, and a thing can be understood and believed simultaneously.

The distinction the OP makes is imaginary. It is the same old tired atheist attempt to co-opt science and imply that science is the realm of atheism.

Plaff is doing it, you're doing it, (you just happen to be more cultured than he)

>Some say that science and religion are both belief systems.

They both are, and this thread shows that clearly. The difference is that theists admit their belief system.

ZeusAres42

As I said before, science and religion both share a mixture of beliefs and understanding and an understanding of why they may believe some of the things they understand. It's not beliefs and understandings (or misunderstandings for that matter) where the differences lyes; it's what those beliefs are based upon which is where they lye.

Now, in order to answer the question about the difference between religion and science one first needs acknowledge that there are two different kinds of religions collectively; Theistic and Non-Theistic and that there is a multitude of different branches of sciences. And a number of religions will share a mixture of differences as well as similarities with several different branches of sciences.