That person literally confused science with religion. The whole point of science is to question, as oppose to religion where the answers are given.
That's sophistry shrouded as science, because it's looking to push an agenda and therefore it tries to fit results to a hypothesis, instead of testing the hypothesis with the results.
For any given phenomenon, I don't care what, it is only true to the extent that you can test it in every possible way and still obtain the same results. Anyone who blocks this questioning and testing, is practicing dogma and guarding a belief, instead of doing actual science.
There are questions that have answers that are beyond the scientific method (e.g. does grandma love you?). They are fascinating to contemplate :)
Religion and science do overlap, but their underlying frameworks are like yin and yang. One is about faith, and the other is about doubt.
Without doubt, there is no need to test something, as you already have the answer. Religion is about having faith, and faith is about not doubting. They do overlap, and the overlap is not perfectly clear, so I can see how some can get confused and think there is science that you cannot doubt, but this is false.
As far as gramma loving you, I think you can doubt that... and you can test it, right? You can test people's love, and you can collect results over time and then derive conclusions. Maybe the nature of love itself is untestable, and therefore has no framework on which to be doubted, so the nature of love itself might be of a religious nature and it then becomes about faith.
Here you are giving a definition of "faith" which many religious people would disagree with. Faith is compatible with doubt, and I don't think "absence of doubt" is a very good definition of "faith".
You can't doubt everything. At some point you have to just accept that some doubts are not worth entertaining, at least not for you. Philosophers produce all kinds of doubts–e.g. doubting whether other minds exist, doubting that I am just a brain in a vat (or a Boltzmann brain), or that this universe is actually a computer simulation, or that we are being actively deceived by superintelligent aliens who find deception entertaining (I actually read that example in a philosophy book recently, although obviously it is just a slight updating of Descartes' malin génie). Scientists choose to ignore doubts that philosophers entertain, all the time. Scientists also choose to ignore doubts about theories that are outside their area of professional expertise – maybe some mainstream theory in astrophysics is completely wrong, and the fringe voices saying it is wrong are actually right, but if you are a biologist, that's completely outside your field of expertise, so it isn't worth your while to even consider the question.
And it is totally possible to believe in a religion yet still experience periods of doubt about whether its doctrines are true. Many religious leaders will say that's not a sin at all, just one of the trials of this life. (Of course, are others who say doubting is a sin – I think that's a pretty sure sign that one is in a harmful group and one ought to get out.) But, on the other hand, if someone doesn't experience doubt about some religious idea in which they believe, and they choose to disregard those doubts when expressed by others, how is what they are doing fundamentally different from the doubt-ignoring scientists I mentioned above?
Right, I didn't say all scientists do is doubt. Science can always be doubted, and more importantly, if some concept or idea makes itself immune to doubt, it is not science. Example: doubting Newton's laws of gravity may have seemed to be a worthless effort (because you can test it and get the same results), however Einstein has proven otherwise, and there's no reason to think General Relativity is beyond doubt. Anyone can doubt anything in science, but of course you have to back it up with something that is testable and then prove it.
> And it is totally possible to believe in a religion yet still experience periods of doubt about whether its doctrines are true
Yes it's possible to doubt a religion, but to that extent, you are not part of it. Christians cannot be doubting Jesus as the Son of God, unless you're not a Christian. Same goes with Islam and Mohammad. You can create your own branch of a religion, and set your own rules, but the core of each religion is based on faith, which means you can't question it, you have to follow. That's the point of religion, to believe.
I think you're using "doubt" to mean not being sure of the meaning of something, which is different than doubting the validity or the veracity of something. So I can doubt the meaning of a Bible passage, but I cannot doubt the existence of God, unless I'm not part of that religion.
Science must allow doubt in regards to its own validity, because it validates itself through tests which must yield the same result. Religion/faith must NOT allow doubt in its teachings because doing so would mean it is not true (because there is no way to test it).
Not all Christians would agree with you there. Here is an article on the topic of doubt from a Catholic viewpoint – https://www.wordonfire.org/resources/blog/is-it-a-sin-to-dou... – it definitely presents the Catholic point of view as being that it is possible to doubt God's existence yet still be a Christian.
And Pope Francis has said some rather positive things about doubt as well – https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2016/11/pope-francis-says-doubt-... – which don't seem compatible with your idea that you can't doubt Christianity's doctrines if you are a Christian
> I think you're using "doubt" to mean not being sure of the meaning of something, which is different than doubting the validity or the veracity of something. So I can doubt the meaning of a Bible passage, but I cannot doubt the existence of God, unless I'm not part of that religion.
No, I mean doubt in the sense of seriously grappling with the possibility that it might not be true. Which is definitely one of the senses in which the first article I cited understands the term. When the then-Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Emeritus) said "Both the believer and the unbeliever share, each in his own way, doubt and belief if they do not hide from themselves and from the truth of their being. Neither can quite escape either doubt or belief; for the one, faith is present against doubt; for the other, through doubt and in the form of doubt", he wasn't talking about doubt in the sense of "not being sure of the meaning of something", he was talking about doubt in the sense of "doubting the validity or the veracity of something"
> Religion/faith must NOT allow doubt in its teachings because doing so would mean it is not true (because there is no way to test it).
Philosophers of religion have a decades-old rejoinder to the claim that religion is untestable – there is an easy test to perform, all you have to die. According to many competing religious accounts, you find out which (if any) religion is true soon after death. Whereas, if none of them are true, you may find out nothing at all, for there will no longer be any you to find anything out. And death is an experiment we are all destined to perform, sooner or later, whether we wish to or not.
It reminds me of the QM measurement problem: “The act of observing disturbs the observed”
The nature of the universe is one in which some information transfers always effects the entropy state of the entire system.
Actually, quantum immortality theory is interesting as a non-religious afterlife claim. And Hugh Everett, the originator of the many worlds interpretation, apparently privately believed (had faith?) in quantum immortality, and privately discussed quantum suicide, although he never published on either of those topics.
To clarify, it's ok we're now discussing the semantics of doubt, it is relevant to the bigger discussion. Both links are talking about doubt as something to at least not lean into, from the perspective of religion and faith. Doubt is there, and you can even appreciate it, but the appreciation of it is to strengthen your faith.
> "So, doubt in the absolute sense is bad. But doubt in the form of a temptation is—like any temptation we experience passively—not a sin."
So the first article is definitely talking about doubt in the sense of "not being sure of the meaning of something". I didn't say there is absolutely no doubt in religion, my point was it is not the goal of religion to be doubting. It is not part of its CORE, it is not "absolute doubt". You can have absolute doubt in science without problem (of course you just have to prove it).
This same point arises in the second article:
> "The key, he said, is to see those doubts as a call to deepen one’s faith either through study or through seeking the guidance of another believer."
Absolute doubt will not deepen your faith... "doubting the validity or the veracity of something" will not deepen your faith. The pope is clear here, he is seeing the glass half-full of doubt. He means doubting as in not being sure, not as in trying to prove it wrong. He even adds another warning:
> "When faith is seen mainly as “an abstract theory,” he said, “doubts multiply.”
Abstract theory is basically science. He is making my point. Science is about multiplying doubt, faith is about reducing it. Both articles are saying this from my understanding.
> there is an easy test to perform, all you have to die
How is that a test? Again, a bit of semantics here, "test" I refer to as something being done by science--a scientific experiment/test. You can't just call anything a test, especially if you have no access to the results! Death is not a test for the living, and science deals with the world of the living. Call it "religious test" if you want, but I was using the word to mean checking something, for which being alive is absolutely necessary.
The first article quotes Ratzinger as saying "Both the believer and the unbeliever share, each in his own way, doubt and belief..."
If by "doubt" Ratzinger means "not being sure of the meaning of something", what is it that the unbeliever is unsure of the meaning of?
Immediately before that quote, it speaks of the unbeliever wondering that "Perhaps it is true". That is doubt about the correctness of one's belief positions, not doubt about what something means. But if that is what Ratzinger means by "doubt" with respect to the unbeliever, he must mean the same thing for the believer, or else his claim that they share "doubt" doesn't make any sense.
> You can have absolute doubt in science without problem
I don't agree. Philosophers have absolute doubt, scientists do not. Take a proposition such as "Human reason is generally reliable". Philosophers will doubt that proposition, and ask how the doubt may be answered; it is not within the scope of physics or chemistry to doubt that proposition, only to assume its truth, to have faith in it–for without that faith, physics and chemistry are impossible. If an individual physicist or chemist approaches that proposition with doubt instead of faith, they are no longer doing physics or chemistry, they are now doing philosophy. To doubt the most fundamental assumptions of science is beyond the scope of the scientific enterprise. Philosophers are allowed to doubt anything and everything, and still be working within the confines of their discipline. The same does not hold for the natural sciences.
> Absolute doubt will not deepen your faith... "doubting the validity or the veracity of something" will not deepen your faith.
I don't think you are understanding Pope Francis correctly. Let us consider doubting the existence of God. Are you saying doubting God's existence could not deepen the faith of a religious believer? A quite traditional Catholic response to doubts about the existence of God, is to go read the tradition of philosophical theology which attempts to prove God's existence. (Everything from St. Thomas' "Five Ways" through to recent works such as Edward Feser's Five Proofs.) So, from a Catholic viewpoint, doubting God's existence could actually lead to becoming educated in the Catholic tradition of arguments for God's existence, and I believe the Pope would consider such an education to be a way to "deepen your faith".
> Abstract theory is basically science.
I think what Pope Francis is actually talking about here, is an overemphasis on the intellectual side of religion (such as philosophical arguments for God's existence) while ignoring other aspects of it (experiential, mystical, social, communal, ethical, liturgical, ritual, sacramental, prayerful, etc) – religion as an abstract theory as opposed to a lived practice. I don't think he is saying people shouldn't study the intellectual side of Catholicism, I think he is warning that a sole focus on that to the exclusion of living it is not going to answer their doubts. While the natural sciences often involve "abstract theory", not all abstract theories belong to the natural sciences – abstract theories are also found in mathematics, in philosophy, in the humanities, and yes also in religion and theology. The particular abstract theories he is talking about here are, I think, the philosophical and theological ones rather than those of the natural sciences.
And I think there is some truth in what he says. Whatever one believes in (whether a religion or a non-religious worldview), a lot of the confidence one has in one's beliefs is not purely due to abstract arguments, it is also due to other factors such as social reinforcement, pragmatic experience (do the beliefs produce positive results when you try to live by them?), etc. Purely focusing on abstract intellectual arguments may not resolve doubts to the same extent as also paying attention to those other factors.
> How is that a test? Again, a bit of semantics here, "test" I refer to as something being done by science--a scientific experiment/test.
Well, not all tests are "scientific"-not all tests form part of the natural sciences. If I want to test whether my wife is happy, I could ask her, observe her facial expressions, listen to her tone of voice, etc. That's a test, but I wouldn't claim it is a "scientific" one. Scientific tests are a subset of all tests, and involve various forms of methodological rigour which tests-in-general often lack. Psychologists have rigorous methodologies with which they attempt to measure human happiness, but I make no claim to be practising the science of psychology when I inquire after my wife's feelings. Similarly, not all "experiments" are "scientific experiments" – when cooking, one sometimes tries varying the recipe, and one might call such a variation an "experiment", but – unless you are doing food science – it lacks the rigour to be properly called "scientific".
You said that a difference between religion and science is that science is testable, religion is not. I don't see how restricting "testability" to "scientific testability" makes sense in the context of that claim. It turns the claim into "Scientific claims can be tested by science, but religious claims can't be tested by science". I wouldn't disagree, but if there are ways of testing things outside of science, religious claims may still be testable. If each discipline's claims can only be tested by its own respective methods – well, that seems a rather obvious statement: you could say the same thing about different natural sciences. The methodologies which palaeontologists use to test theories are rather different from those used by particle physicists.
(btw, I commented in a different thread, under the same parent comment if you want details, but I'm not saying religions are free of doubt, I'm saying the core of a religion is faith, and absolute certainty of some kind).
You'll have to explain what you mean by "the core of Islam allows doubt", what "core" are you referring to here? We take our religion from the Quran and Hadith, and I have quoted just two Hadiths that I recall off the top of my head regarding the issue of doubt, and how it is not sinful, nor automatically looked down upon. Here's one quotation from the Quran: https://quran.com/33/10
> so I'll ask this, are you saying that it's ok for Muslims to doubt Mohammad as the prophet?
You'll have to explain exactly what you mean by doubt. A Muslim accepts that Muhammad Peace be upon him is God's final messenger. If doubts happen to cross said Muslim's mind, he's still a Muslim as per the Hadith. This is different from what I feel you're implying in that the person actively tries to take down the Islamic narrative in a way that the enemies of Islam do.
The logic is this way: someone accepts Islam because he did his due diligence and was convinced. It's not logical to start doubting everything again from scratch - it means he did not build up a proper foundation to begin with.
You are proving my point with this statement: > "The Quran is the literal word of God"
Science cannot make such statements of certainty, but religion can and does. To the extent that religion has doubt, as you say, it just means you're still learning or something like that. Science allows restructuring its own foundation and has done so again and again.
I alluded to that toward the end of my reply. A non-Muslim may start off with that presumption until he is convinced that Islam is the truth, at which point he accepts it. Once the foundation is set, it does not make sense to keep that doubt or skepticism around any longer. Why accept the religion otherwise?
> Science cannot make such statements of certainty
God is outside the realms of time and space, which are the domains of science. It is a non-question to attempt to answer philosophical and religious questions through (experimental) science.
Furthermore, it's a fallacy to break up the world into "science" and "religion". Which religion are you talking about?
> Science allows restructuring its own foundation
I don't see how that has anything to do with the subject matter, or that it is indicative that science is somehow the absolute truth, or even leads to it.
The foundations of Islam are the Quran and Hadith. Islam has immutable and axiomatic principles (e.g. God is one, Muslims have to pray 5 times a day, the Hijri year is 12 months and follows a lunar system, etc.), some other aspects are open to interpretation (contingent on having a proper scholarly background of course - a layperson cannot interpret as he/she wishes), while other aspects are left open for society to decide as per its needs and evolution of time. I read that Muslim scholars hundreds of years ago derived rulings for how to pray if we were to fly one day - they were that forward thinking, and today we have airplanes.
Yes, I agree.
> Furthermore, it's a fallacy to break up the world into "science" and "religion". Which religion are you talking about?
I'm not attempting to "break up the whole world". I'm simply taking science and comparing it with religion. Which religion? Well I can't go through every single one in a comment section like this. I'm attempting to use examples like Islam, Christianity, etc., etc. is that not clear enough? Are you saying you can't group religions based on the fact that they require faith?
> Islam has immutable and axiomatic principles
Alright... there you go. Can you doubt those principles? That is my main point!
> science is somehow the absolute truth, or even leads to it
I'm saying the exact opposite. I'm saying many religions like Islam and Christianity (sure I'm qualifying it now, but please consider I have to contrive my arguments for brevity) do claim to have the absolute truth in their immutable principles. Again, that is my point, science does not claim absolute truth!!
You just grouped Islam with Christianity with "etc." :) That's still a continuation of the fallacy. You admitted earlier that you have not looked at the Quran, and that you mixed it up with Hadiths that I quoted. Do you agree that you do not have the necessary or even sufficient background to make claims about Islam in that case? I don't mean it in a disparaging way, and I absolutely encourage you to learn more about both, and about Islam.
> Alright... there you go. Can you doubt those principles? That is my main point!
I explained in my post, that a non-Muslim can look at those principles with an interrogative or even doubtful manner. Once he accepts them (and subsequently accepts Islam), it doesn't make sense to doubt them once more does it? Islam does not prohibit asking questions, it tells us to consult with people of knowledge when we do have questions about things we don't understand.
> Again, that is my point, science does not claim absolute truth!!
We don't claim that we know everything in Islam, the Quran states[1][2]
> and say, "My Lord, increase me in knowledge."
> and you ˹O humanity˺ have been given but little knowledge.”
Absolute and full knowledge is an attribute of God. Only He has it, and not anyone or anything else in this world. Islam tells us that our knowledge is limited, yet it pushes us to acquire more. The Islam Golden Age was a direct result of this understanding of Islam. The Islamic empire at the time became a central hub of science and knowledge, at the forefront of scientific endeavor. My point is that the false dichotomy that some people try to claim between "science and religion" totally depends on which religion is being discussed.
> We don't claim that we know everything in Islam
Did I say this? Who said religions claim to know everything? Not me.
> Once he accepts them (and subsequently accepts Islam), it doesn't make sense to doubt them once more does it?
You are dancing around my point. "Once he accepts them" = not doubting.
Please read my arguments carefully. They are subtle, and it seems you think I am attacking religion, when I'm not.
> My point is that the false dichotomy that some people try to claim between "science and religion" totally depends on which religion is being discussed.
My argument does not depend on a specific religion, they all share things in common. If you deny that they all share SOME things in common, then I don't know what to tell you. Why are they called "religions" if they are so different? Why do they share the same label since before both of us were born.
I agree, and I tried to make the distinction between that and the science that produces results. Whether science also requires faith, would be a lengthy tangent. I don't necessarily disagree with that, it would depend on pinning down what exactly we mean by faith, which I think was beyond this thread. Good discussion though.