[MD] Dawkins a Materialist

[david buchanan]

David M said:
I certainly take a lot of science on faith & trust because I just don't get 
down to the lab like I used to.

dmb says:
Sigh. This is the sort of nonsense I was complaining about when I said my 
detractors seem to be amaking the bogus assumption that faith-based beleifs 
include any view that is held in the absence of absolute certainty. I mean, 
we can trust the sceintific process without resorting to faith. We can 
accept the conclusions of science and believe them with resorting to faith. 
We can see that science works, that it produces useful knowlege, that it is 
valuable and gets things done. We have lots and lots of REASONS to trust 
science. Nobody is saying that scientific knowledge is absolute, perfect, 
above criticism, beyond improvement or anything like that, but there is a 
mountain of evidence that has been building for hundreds of years. Reason, 
experience and evidence is the basis of our trust, not faith. We certainly 
don't have to personally observe every experiment or read every article to 
think that science works, to believe its assertions or to put trust in the 
process.

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