It seems like so much of these discussions come from attempts to position 'belief in science' as faith exercise. These attempts appear to be taught in various communities as defence against the rational, and as a tool when evangelising.<p>If someone questions your beliefs, saying you have no reason to believe them, a common thing to fall back to is that you believe them on faith. There are lots of ways to argue against that from a rational point of view, such as by showing they could just as easily believe on faith an opposing view, but the believer doesn't even need to entertain those arguments if they simply say 'but your beliefs are based on faith as well'.<p>Similarly, if you can convince someone that they believe 'science' on faith, it becomes easier to stretch that to have them believe other things on faith.<p>It's not always obvious when someone is believing some thing about the world, claiming they believe it because 'science', if they believe it on faith or not. This is why I think the 'faith based science' arguments have been so successful.<p>For me the counterargument to 'belief in science is on faith, too' is fairly simple, and comes in two parts.<p>- No idea of 'science' is held sacred, and will be replaced as soon as we have reason to replace it. Science changes its ideas to fit the world. Faith ignores the world when those ideas are contradicted.<p>- No authority of 'science' is held sacred, assumed to be infallible or incomprehensible. Whenever science makes a claim it is possible to verify that claim and the assumptions the claim builds upon. Any faith based claim eventually reduces to 'because this thing/person claimed it' - often a specific person or book.
This whole debate (and the TV shows) seem peculiarly American.<p>> Yes, the conflation between atheism and science is very frustrating, and harmful to science's image.<p>In particular, this attitude seems to be prevalantly American. Being an atheist carries less of a stigma outside the US, and the correlation between scientific understanding and a tendency to irreligious beliefs is taken for granted.