Quote from vhehn:
skep·tic also scep·tic (skĕp'tĭk)
n.
One who instinctively or habitually doubts, questions, or disagrees with assertions or generally accepted conclusions.
One inclined to skepticism in religious matters.
I wear the skeptic badge proudly. Faith is a firm, stoic, and sacred conviction which is both adopted and maintained independent of physical evidence or logical proof. It is also an assumption of absolute accuracy and inerrent authority which must never be questioned. Science, on the other hand, is a matter of skeptical inquiry, in which nothing is sacred, and where even authority opinion is suspect. Its an objective method of measurably or verifiably improving our understanding of physical nature in practical application, or mathematics, or through experimentation and observation, and proposing falsifiable hypotheses explaining the facts in a theoretical framework to be subjected to a perpetual battery of critical analysis in peer review. Science parallels the rationalist perspective in that 'belief' should be tentative, conditional, and restricted only to that which is directly- supportable by logic or evidence; that, while many things may be considered possible, nothing should be positively believed unless positively indicated via the scientific method, and all assumptions must be questioned. In short, scientific methodology is the antithesis of faith, opposites in every respect.
I have a BS in biology & MS in Computer engineering. I spend major amounts of time staying current in most of the latest scientific research. I am quite confident my present amount of knowledge of science would bury yours.
I am no detester of science, but much of their pursuits are little more than faith.
A great example is cosmology. We now exist in 11-dimensional space, possibly involving strings/superstrings, which other scientists are now starting to ridicule, because it is elegant and yet conveniently unprovable.
I reassert my previous definition of skeptic. You appeal to science as if it a great bastion of truth, You seem to have little grasp about how fragmentary and incomplete the science paradigm remains. How much argued many of the
Science has done great things, but it remains in diapers in many fields. We are baffled in many areas of medicine, cancer cure rates are stubbornly high, we struggle to find alternative fuels, nutritional studies constantly contradict each other on many basics even like vitamin E, cosmology now consists of the unprovables, we struggle to understand the human mind or even gravity and an undending list of other areas. We make progress, but our knowledge is far less than you confidently espouse.
I have posted previously, and the skeptics do not impress me. Almost all replies are posts from other sources; usually quite predictable ones. They claim pride in skepticism, when all they do mostly is question or ridicule, rather than add to the general knowledge.
When it comes to the concept of God or infinite things, they cannot admit they have little ability to understand inifinite things; none of us has. But it doesn't stop the behavior (like 2 year olds) from saying, "NO!!!! It has become an instinct.
Again, I am unimpressed. And I again suspect the answers will remain at this level. So far, they remain on target...
But I will leave you to your smugness. Time draws much shorter than we all know.