If you don’t know who Kent Hovind is, count yourself lucky. Think: ‘Ken Ham’, the schmuck who built the Noah’s Ark theme park in Kentucky for ‘True Believers’. That’ll bring you into the ball park.
Mr Hovind is a Creationist and a Bible literalist. He’s a promulgator of ‘Intelligent Design’.(Now, there’s an oxymoron worth its salt.)
Mr Hovind has been on a very extended quest to debate noted atheist, Aron Ra, on the verisimilitude of the Theory of Evolution. In one YouTube posting, Kent decided to build his straw man out of the words of non-scientists found in a Google search. Kent chose some quotes in which the word ‘believe’ was used colloquially, informally. (e.g. ‘Science believes that the universe started from a singularity.’)
From there, Kent set his straw man on fire with the errant declaration that ‘Science is a belief. Ergo: science is a religion’. This is one of his primary assertions; science is faith-based because – get this! – since the concepts of black holes, the Big Bang, cosmogony, evolution, abiogenesis, etc. are not completely understood, then they are therefore accepted as articles of faith and are ‘believed’ by scientists. And this is where the technical connotation of the ‘B’ word is smuggled in by the ‘man of Faith’. That is; these theories are ‘believed’ (i.e. taken on Faith) and therefore are indicative of religion.
‘Science is a religion!’, he proclaimed.
Q.E.D.
Balderdash.
Science is NOT a belief system. Science is the exact opposite of a believe system as science is based on evidence. Are there dogmas in science? NO, there aren’t. There are theories which are accepted and tested and re-tested. To reiterate, a theory in science is the highest grade of veracity; a theory is not just a good guess or a passing thought. There are conjectures, proposals and hypotheses which are considered, examined and challenged before the notion of scientific theory is attached to a hypothesis. A scientific hypothesis must first be demonstrated and must give repeatable results which provide a dependable, foreseeable outcome. From that point, the hypothesis is checked, cross-checked and peer-reviewed. In a nutshell, peer review is the concerted attempt to disprove and debunk a hypothesis by competent experts.
That’s the difference between science and religion; the theories and hypotheses of science are meant to be rigorously challenged by experts whereas the tenets of Faith are not to be challenged by the slightest whisper. In fact, challenging articles of faith is forbidden and anathematized.
Think ‘The Spanish Inquisition’.
To re-emphasize: science is not a faith-based system. Nothing proposed by scientific method is ‘sacred’. Even the most established, accepted theories are subject to change as verifiable evidence is presented supporting that change. Consider the Theory of Gravity. Just recently, evidence of ‘gravity waves’ were observed and verified. The theory was amended to include the new data and findings.
Dogmas, on the other hand, are not amended. Changes to dogma are branded as heresy. They are stamped out. Or a new sect of the religion is formed incorporating the heresy as dogma. Try challenging the dogma of ‘Virgin Birth’ or the ‘Resurrection’, for example, and watch heads explode amongst the ‘Faithful’. Contrarily, challenge ‘The Big Bang’ and prepare to be engaged in weighty conversation. Is the ensuing discussion passionate? Of course, it is, but it is not considered blasphemous or heretical to question science. If one were to challenge the Creation Myth, or Virgin Birth or the Resurrection of Jesus, fur would fly. Such dogmatic matters must be taken on faith. One must simply ‘believe’ (in the technical connotation) in the articles of ‘Faith’. Facts and evidence don’t – and must not - enter into it.
In matters of ‘Faith’, the word, ‘belief’, becomes a mighty touchstone which professes the acceptance of religious tenets. That acceptance, is based on an emotional commitment rather than the logical acceptance of evidence. The word ‘belief’ takes on a more technical definition specific to the matter of ‘faith’, much as the word ‘theory’ is a technical term when used in discussions about science. However, ‘belief’ in the technical sense requires a deep emotional commitment. This emotional commitment is very often based on what is known as a personal revelation, sometimes called a vision. It is this ‘revelation’ that is the foundation of ‘belief’ in the technical sense.
A severe confusion - a cognitive disconnect - arises when a person of faith asks ‘Do you believe in science?’ (or evolution, or the Big Bang Theory). The person of faith would understand the word in the formal, more emotionally anchored connotation rather than in the informal, more colloquial meaning. Scientific theories do not require faith, nor do they require an emotional component; they do not require ‘belief’. Thus, a secularist would answer in the affirmative, as, intellectually, he has been convinced by a preponderance of evidence. Whether or not you ‘believe’ in gravity, you’ll fall.
It has been claimed that one does not choose one’s belief. This would be true if one thinks of ‘belief’ in the sense of ‘being convinced’. One either is or isn’t convinced of a proposition. If more evidence is required before this point of conviction is met, then one isn’t convinced. One does not accept the proposition as true or supportable. In an informal usage of the word ‘belief’ yet mean convinced.
However, in a discussion about religion, the word’s connotation changes with the more formal context; ‘I believe in the Bible’ indicates that that book is a basis for a deeply held religious tenet. There is a distinct emotional component which does not exist in the informal connotation of the word. One is convinced that the Bible must be considered as fact. This conviction is anchored in emotion. In the formal context, ‘belief’ indicates an emotional commitment to the proposition. (In the context of ‘faith’, the word ‘belief’ might very well be devoid of intellectual underpinning except as a secondary rationalization of the emotion.)
It is a choice in the intellectual understanding of believe whether or not one ‘believes’ in the Bible but if one commits to holding on to the emotional anchor supplied by the more formal, technical connotation there is no choice. The ‘Believer’ asserts that ‘Faith’ is written on his heart by ‘god’. Through revelation, as a blessing, belief is bestowed on the ‘Believer'.
This is, perhaps, the primary argument produced as ‘proof’ or evidence of a ‘higher power’, a ‘creator’ or an almighty ‘god’. It is a fact that many ‘Believers’ assert to experiencing a prodigious religious experience which they purport to be a direct revelation from ‘god’ or the ‘Holy Spirit’.
Paul/Saul’s epiphany on the road to Damascus is a prime example of this assertion. Roman Catholics cite the children at Fatima or Bernadette of Lourdes as revelations which prove ‘god’, the Trinity or the continued existence and power of the Blessed Virgin. More mundane revelation comes in the form of adherents ‘speaking in tongues’ or being ‘possessed by the Holy Spirit’ or immunity to poisonous snake bite as evidence of godly revelation and protection.
As these are all personal, intimate experiences, there can be little to offer to disprove the claims that the experiences happened. There can be little to disprove that the hallucinations of schizophrenics or psychedelic adventurers happened either, but few take such hallucinations as being ‘divine’ or revelatory of deeper truth.
On the other hand, when a snake-handler dies of a snake’s venom, it’s rationalized; the victim didn’t ‘Believe’ hard enough.
To be clear, none of these internal experiences should be considered as evidence, no matter how epiphanous or revelatory the claim may be. The verisimilitude of peyote eaters or magic mushroom eaters as proof of another dimension would then, by necessity, be lumped in with the stories of being ‘filled with the Holy Spirit’. This cannot be done without substantial bolstering evidence that a ‘spiritual realm’ exists. That would be appealing to a mystery to solve a mystery. That is special pleading writ large and should be discounted by a rational skeptical observer.
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