Intersubjective Verifiability Versus Belief Based On Faith
The contradiction between the truths derived from intersubjective verification and beliefs based on faith or authority (e.g., many religious beliefs) forms the basis for the conflict between religion and science. There have been attempts to bring the two into congruence, and the modern, cutting edge of science, especially in physics, seems to many observers to lend itself to a melding of religious experience and intersubjective verification of beliefs. Some scientists have described religious worldviews---generally of a mystical nature---consistent with their understanding of science:
There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle . . . Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind . . . The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. The religion which is based on experience, which refuses dogmatism . . . There remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. (Albert Einstein)
Other scientists, who are committed to basing belief on intersubjective verification, have called for or predicted the development of a religion consistent with science.
A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge. (Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot)
The evolutionary epic is probably the best myth we will ever have ... The true evolutionary epic, retold as poetry, is as intrinsically ennobling as any religious epic. (Edward O. Wilson)
Responding to this apparent overlap between cutting edge science and mystical experience, in recent years, there have been overt efforts to formulate religious belief systems that are built on truth claims based upon intersubjective verifiability, e.g. Anthroposophy, Yoism.
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Famous quotes containing the words based on faith, belief, based and/or faith:
“In full view of his television audience, he preached a new religion—or a new form of Christianity—based on faith in financial miracles and in a Heaven here on earth with a water slide and luxury hotels. It was a religion of celebrity and showmanship and fun, which made a mockery of all puritanical standards and all canons of good taste. Its standard was excess, and its doctrines were tolerance and freedom from accountability.”
—New Yorker (April 23, 1990)
“Doubt is an uneasy and dissatisfied state from which we struggle to free ourselves and pass into the state of belief; while the latter is a calm and satisfactory state which we do not wish to avoid, or to change to a belief in anything else.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“The common erotic project of destroying women makes it possible for men to unite into a brotherhood; this project is the only firm and trustworthy groundwork for cooperation among males and all male bonding is based on it.”
—Andrea Dworkin (b. 1946)
“Ultimately, blind faith is the only kind.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)