Rebuttal originating from the wisdom of Stunaep
Wait, you want to say, you never haveth faith in anything?
Depends on what you assume faith to mean (it has several meanings)
faith n.
1. Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.
2. Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence. See Synonyms at belief. See Synonyms at trust.
3. Loyalty to a person or thing; allegiance: keeping faith with one's supporters.
4. often Faith Christianity. The theological virtue defined as secure belief in God and a trusting acceptance of God's will.
5. The body of dogma of a religion: the Muslim faith.
6. A set of principles or beliefs.
Meaning 1 could be applied to an atheist if it didn't use the word belief. Meaning 3 is perfectly fine but wasn't the meaning being used here.
The problem is that an atheist can never say he has faith in anything without a theist coming along and saying that it means he's setting up science as a religion. The same is true with the word believe because if you say you believe science has the correct answer a theist will again come along and say the same thing.
For these reasons I too was also insulted by Liberator's comments that I have faith in science. I certainly do not.
I am convinced that science is correct because I understand how the scientific method works. I understand that science makes no assumptions that it isn't willing to cast aside if new evidence comes to light that suggests the assumption may have been incorrect. Furthermore assumptions are only made in the first place if there is evidence that supports them.
Faith is a completely different matter. You start out with an assumption and then fit evidence around it. If the evidence doesn't fit you throw it away or come up with a half-hearted explaination that makes it fit but at no time do you ever question that your central assumption might be incorrect.
So when someone says that I have faith in science that's a pretty big insult. It's saying that I'm fooling myself into believing a view of the world because I'm not prepared to examine my convictions.
I don't disbelieve in God because I've never examined the bible or scripture. I disbelieve in God because I personally have examined the evidence in a scientific fashion and have found there to be no more proof of the existance of God than there is of Buddha or Krishna or any other diety you care to mention. In fact most if not all of the religions in the world have made claims that science actually disproves in one way or another. I've challenged the assumptions involved in religion and found them either to be false (The bible is 100% correct) or based on no evidence at all (there needs to be a god for the universe to exist).
