Science, faith… and cheap energy

Vijay posted a blog entry earlier today relating to science and faith. While I would prefer to avoid discussing religion in my blog (ask me directly if you want know my views), this discussion is more philosophical than directly religious. And while Vijay is a great friend and I totally respect his ideas, he and I occasionally have some drastically different political/philosophical points of view.

 

I knew I had to write a rebuttal when I read his opening point, "much of science is based on faith".

 

I could not disagree more with that statement. Science, at least good science, is all about NOT having faith. The only reason science is able to progress consistently and reliably is because there is so much skepticism involved. Every new theory or new experimental results are automatically distrusted until extensively peer-reviewed and reproduced.* That methodical skepticism allows science to generally stay on the right track without being contaminated by special interests of any particular group or by plain bad ideas. It eventually provides all the necessary foundations for people to trust in that science — no faith is required.

 

Certainly skepticism should not prevent open-mindedness, and perhaps the older generation of scientists mentioned is slightly guilty of that. However, connecting open-mindedness to the concept of faith is just backwards. From ancient times up through the present, faith has always been the single greatest obstacle to general acceptance of new scientific ideas. People who have a lifetime of faith in a certain concept will continue to reject a conflicting scientific idea even after being presented with enough evidence necessary for a rational conclusion. But that belief without evidence is essentially the definition of faith, and I’m not necessarily saying it’s all bad.

 

*Yes, the developer of the new energy source covered in the original article Vijay linked to claims to have "50 independent validation reports, [and] 65 peer-reviewed journal articles." But as they are looking for investment capital, I don’t doubt their claims are somewhat exaggerated. If the science is indeed real, it will be proven and accepted in time. And if it’s everything claimed, it may have the potential to change the world quite significantly. But until then, I remain… well… skeptical as always.

Why people believe weird things

I really like the quote at the top of the confirmation bias page that I linked to in my previous entry:

"Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for nonsmart reasons."

I just realized the author of that quote is somebody I’m familiar with. Michael Shermer is America’s most well-known skeptic. I saw him a few months ago when he came to Microsoft to give a talk and promote his book. I thought most of what he had to say was interesting, though there were a few things I didn’t quite believe. (You might say I was skeptical…)

Anyway, his most popular book is Why People Believe Weird Things. While the book spends a lot of time describing what various weird (or normal depending on your perspective) things people believe, and debunking them, the most interesting part is the why. Why do people so easily discard reason and believe in something just because they want to? And how can a self-aware rational individual avoid falling into the trap?

I’m writing about this because skepticism has always been an innate philosophy of mine. I don’t tend to believe something without strong evidence backed by sound reasoning. And I think the world would be a better place if everyone had an extra dose of skepticism in their diet. I won’t delve into specific issues here, but you can ask me sometime for more of my thoughts on this topic.