Darren New wrote:
> Argumentative religious people often seem to comment that science 
> requires faith. Argumentative non-religious people say that's nonsense, 
> since there is evidence.  I contend that there are at least two things 
> most scientists take on faith, without supporting evidence:
> 
> 1) That reality works substantially in accordance with measurements.

> 2) Humans aren't special.

3) That the world of our experience is the only one.

4) That the world of our experience has always operated precisely as we 
observe it to operate today.

Many things claimed by the non-religious worldview (such as the age of 
the earth) demand that things like the speed of light and the decay rate 
of radioactive isotopes have always had the values we measure them to 
have today.  They also demand that no major changes have been forced 
upon the world of our experience by some agency, existing outside of 
that world, at times where we have been unable to make observations.

These are no small assumptions.  We measure carbon-14 as having a 
half-life of ~5000 years, but our claim that it had the same half-life 
in King Tut's day is not based on observation, but on the assumption 
that some things about nature never change.  How do we *know* it does 
not change?  Not in the same way that we know many other things about 
nature (through observation).

In a like manner, how do we *know* that our world has operated without 
any interference from any other?  To be honest, we don't.  To know for 
sure, one way or the other, requires use to have observed nature for its 
entire duration.  Sure, we observe no such interruptions now, but that 
in no way proves that none have happened in the part nor will happen in 
the future.  Perhaps some mad scientist in the next parallel over is 
about to have an experiment go awry (or has such an experiment go awry 
at some point in the past), and its effect spill over to where we can 
see them.

Compounding the issue with #4 is the scientific concern with 
repeatability.  We don't control what happens in the next plane over, 
and therefore cannot rein them into a systematic investigation, not even 
to verify any reported observations.  Science regards the non-repeatable 
as unreliable and ultimately negligible.

This really goes with the territory.  Principle #1 above is absolutely 
vital to science; if we cannot assume that our sense reliably report to 
us the state of the world, then we cannot do science at all.  In a like 
manner, if we cannot assume certain things about the operation of nature 
to be constant (assumptions 3 and 4), then investigations into the 
origin of life, and the state of the universe at much earlier periods, 
are like a blind man trying to find his way across a strange city, 
unassisted.

It is not easy to admit that we, in conducting science, have made 
assumptions that we have no hope of proving; but this by no means 
justifies the habit of denying that the wrongness of these assumptions 
remains a possibility.  Even though admitting these assumptions will 
appear to us to hand a victory to science's enemies, we cannot do 
science if we deny unpleasant truths.

Regards,
John

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