Ok, blog posts have been slim lately because I’ve been busy as all get-out. I constantly have random thoughts that I think, with adequate time, could be expanded into a great blog post. But, today and for the foreseeable future, time is in short supply. Instead, I’m going to commit to writing at least one paragraph whenever I come up with a half-way decent concept. Perhaps later in life I will have time to expand them, or, more likely, later in life I will look back and say to myself “Well I’m glad you didn’t spend more than one paragraph’s worth on that drivel”.
So, today’s Random Thought Of The Day (RTOTD) – Belief.
It strikes me as odd when someone asks something like “Do you believe in evolution?”, as if it was an act of faith or something. If one were to look up the word belief up in the dictionary, it’s definition would sound a heck of a lot like the definition for the word faith. In fact, here are definitions for both words, directly from the dictionary;
belief –noun 1. confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof: a statement unworthy of belief.
Faith –noun 1. belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.
So it seems the words are basically interchangeable, but I doubt anyone would ever ask “Do you have faith in evolution?”. That’s because faith plays no part in validating scientific theory, only in thinking up hypotheses and testing them. In fact, if you look at the definition for belief, it clearly states “…of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof…”, which is exactly contrary to scientific rigor, which again is what the theory of evolution has undergone since Darwin first proposed the concept.
Now, if someone were to ask me “Do you think the theory of evolution has been validated enough to be considered fact?”, that really would be a proper question.
