Scientific Belief Quotes & Sayings

Just as the dignity of man is based on his freedom
to the extent that he may even say no to God
likewise, the dignity of a science is based on that unconditional freedom which guarantees its independent search for truth. And just as human freedom must include the freedom to say no, so the freedom of scientific investigation must face the risk that its results will turn out to contradict religious beliefs and convictions. Only a scientist who is ready to fight militantly for such an autonomy of thought may triumphantly live to see how the results of his research eventually fit, without contradictions, in the truths of his belief. — Viktor E. Frankl

Well, here's a scientific question: Has anybody ever seen hard evidence? What we get is theories from our earlier prophets. Now, people who think that God invented us think that the Earth can't be more than 6,000 years old. So I guess it's a question of belief. My belief system doesn't support a creator as such, as we can call God, who created us in His/Her/Its image. — Morgan Freeman

After all, we scientific workers ... like women, are the victims of fashion: at one time we wear dissociated ions, at another electrons; and we are always loth to don rational clothing; some fixed belief we must have manufactured for us: we are high or low church, of this or that degree of nonconformity, according to the school in which we are brought up-but the agnostic is always rare of us and of late years the critic has been taboo. — Henry Edward Armstrong

Belief sometimes precedes understanding; faith sometimes precedes scientific evidence. — Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

I will frankly tell you that my experience in prolonged scientific investigations convinces me that a belief in God-a God who is behind and within the chaos of vanishing points of human knowledge-adds a wonderful stimulus to the man who attempts to penetrate into the regions of the unknown. — Louis Agassiz

Like belief, doubt takes a lot of different forms, from ancient Skepticism to modern scientific empiricism, from doubt in many gods to doubt in one God, to doubt that recreates and enlivens faith and doubt that is really disbelief. — Jennifer Michael Hecht

Observation and experience can and must drastically restrict the range of admissible scientific belief, else there would be no science. But they cannot alone determine a particular body of such belief. An apparently arbitrary element, compounded of personal and historical accident, is always a formative ingredient of the beliefs espoused by a given scientific community at a given time — Thomas S. Kuhn

Certain it is that a conviction, akin to religious feeling, of the rationality or intelligibility of the world lies behind all scientific work of a higher order.... This firm belief, a belief bound up with deep feeling, in a superior mind that reveals itself in the world of experience, represents my conception of God. — Albert Einstein

The cultural forces that help politically sustain both the militaristic and the corporate function of the Deep State, however, are growing more irrational and antiscience. A military tradition that glories in force and appeals to self-sacrifice is the polar opposite of the Enlightenment heritate of rationality, the search for peace, and a belief in the common destiny of mankind. The warrior-leader, like the witch doctor, ultimately appeals to irrational emotionalism; and the cultural psychology that produces the bravest and most loyal warriors is a mind-set that is usually hostile to the sort of free inquiry of which scientific progress depends. This dynamic is observable in Afghanistan: no outside power has been able to conquer and pacify that society for millennia because of the tenacity of its warrior spirit; yet the country has one of the highest illiteracy rates on earth and is barely out of the Bronze Age in social development. p 260 — Mike Lofgren

It has not been the fashion to be scientific about religion, but it is necessary that we should be scientific; it is time that we examined ourselves as to our faith and tried to know what we believe and why, and on what we base our belief. — Charles Webster Leadbeater

We believe that it is possible for scientific work to gain some knowledge about the reality of the world, by means of which we can increase out power and in accordance with which we can arrange our life. If this belief is an illusion, then we are in the same position as you. But science has given us evidence by its numerous and important successes that it is no illusion. — Sigmund Freud

What we call "the laws of nature" merely reflect the normal way in which God sustains or governs the natural world. Perhaps the most wicked concept that has captured the minds of modern people is the belief that the universe operates by chance. That is the nadir of foolishness. Elsewhere, I have written more extensively on the scientific impossibility of assigning power to chance, because chance is simply a word that describes mathematical possibilities.* Chance is not a thing. It has no power. It cannot do anything, and therefore it cannot influence anything, yet some have taken the word chance, which has no power, and diabolically used it as a replacement for the concept of God. But the truth, as the Bible makes clear, is that nothing happens by chance and that all things are under the sovereign government of God, which is exceedingly comforting to the Christian who understands it. — R.C. Sproul

Dilbert: Evolution must be true because it is a logical conclusion of the scientific method.
Dogbert: But science is based on the irrational belief that because we cannot perceive reality all at once, things called time and cause and effect exist.
Dilbert: That's what I was taught and that's what I believe.
Dogbert: Sounds cultish. — Scott Adams

It is never a question of belief; the only scientific attitude one can take on any subject is whether it is true. The law of gravitation worked as efficiently before Newton as after him. The cosmos would be fairly chaotic if its laws could not operate without the sanction of human belief. — Paramahansa Yogananda

Professor Hawking is heralded as 'the genius of Britain,' yet he believes in the scientific impossibility that nothing created everything and that life sprang from non-life. Why should anyone believe Mr. Hawking's writings if he cannot provide evidence for his unscientific belief that out of nothing, everything came? — Kirk Cameron

I have a standing offer of $250,000 to anyone who can give any empirical evidence (scientific proof) for evolution. My $250,000 offer demonstrates that the hypothesis of evolution is nothing more than a religious belief. — Kent Hovind

Scientific criticism has no nobler task than to shatter false beliefs. — Ludwig Von Mises

Has anyone provided proof of God's inexistence? Not even close. Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here? Not even close. Have our sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life? Not even close. Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought? Close enough. Has rationalism and moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right, and what is moral? Not close enough. Has secularism in the terrible 20th century been a force for good? Not even close, to being close. Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy in the sciences? Close enough. Does anything in the sciences or their philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational? Not even in the ball park. Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt? Dead on. — David Berlinski

[Chemist Michael] Polanyi found one other necessary requirement for full initiation into science: Belief. If science has become the orthodoxy of the West, individuals are nevertheless still free to take it or leave it, in whole or in part; believers in astrology, Marxism and virgin birth abound. But no one can become a scientist unless he presumes that the scientific doctrine and method are fundamentally sound and that their ultimate premises can be unquestionably accepted. — Richard Rhodes

The belief that the animals exist because God created them - and that he created them so we can better meet our needs - is contrary to our scientific understanding of evolution and, of course, to the fossil record, which shows the existence of non-human primates and other animals millions of years before there were any human beings at all. — Peter Singer

I believe that traditional religious belief and scientific knowledge depict the universe in radically different ways. At the bedrock they are incompatible and mutually exclusive. — E. O. Wilson

In fact, the belief that neurophysiology is even relevant to the functioning of the mind is just hypothesis. Who knows if we're looking at the right aspects of the brain at all. Maybe there are other aspects of the brain that nobody has even dreamt of looking at yet. That's often happened in the history of science. When people say that the mental is the neurophysiological at a higher level, they're being radically unscientific. We know a lot about the mental from a scientific point of view. We have explanatory theories that account for a lot of things. The belief that neurophysiology is implicated in these things could be true, but we have every little evidence for it. So, it's just a kind of hope; look around and you see neurons; maybe they're implicated. — Noam Chomsky

Belief that the Earth is only several thousands years old carries a curious implication. The physical evidence for the Earth's age emerged from the same atomic discoveries that later gave the world nuclear weaponry and power plants. The scientific understanding of uranium isotopes that produce the date 4.5 billion years ago is the same understanding of uranium isotopes that led to the production and detonation of nuclear bombs. If scientists do not understand uranium decay well enough to date the Earth, there also cannot be, and can never have been, nuclear weaponry. Certainly a world and a history absent these weapons are desirable, but they are counter-factual. — Eric Roston

Expose every belief to the light of reason, discourse, facts, scientific observations; question everything, be sceptical because this is the only chance at life you will ever get. — James Randi

Explain to me again the difference between superstitious beliefs or pagan incantations, and scientific ones. Be braver - you cannot cross a chasm in two small jumps. — David Lloyd George

This belief, that science eradicates (the need for) God, is a myth many people believe today. The truth is that science, the study of the world and collection of our findings, has not and cannot disprove God. There is no scientific journal that has disproven God's existence. This is because God cannot be put in a test tube and either verified or falsified. God is a spiritual being and is outside the reach of empirical scientific research. Christians cannot prove God the existence of God with absolute certainty, nor can atheists disprove his existence with any certainty. That does not mean that we cannot look at the evidence as to whether or not God exists. — Jon Morrison

Indeed the reasoned criticism of a prevailing belief is a service to the proponents of that belief; if they are incapable of defending it, they are well advised to abandon it. This self-questioning and error-correcting aspect of the scientific method is its most striking property. — Carl Sagan

C. S. Lewis depicts another source of our misconceptions about Heaven: naturalism, the belief that the world can be understood in scientific terms, without recourse to spiritual or supernatural explanations. — Randy Alcorn

Since we're all composed of matter and energy, doesn't that scientific principle lend credibility to a belief in eternal life?' Mills replied more patiently and politely than I would have, for what the interviewer was saying, translated into English, was no more than: 'When we die, none of the atoms of our body (and none of the energy) are lost. Therefore we are immortal. — Richard Dawkins

The spiritualist or the idealist believes in a spiritual essence of force; spiritual, that is to say phantomatic, inexplicable. The man of materialist science is an unbeliever. Nowhere does a scientific justification exist either for belief or unbelief. Materialism has the advantage that it is not seeking the transcendental, the essence, the cause, the force behind phenomena nor that beyond matter. But when he misconstrues the distinction between force and matter, when he denies the existence of the whole problem, he merely slips around behind idealism. The materialist asserts the real indivisibility of matter and force and to explain their seperation, gives value solely to "an exterior reason, born of the need for systemisation of our consciousness. — Joseph Dietzgen

To embrace the belief that man is the accidental product of a random and otherwise genetically and biologically impossible Darwinian gradual evolution allegedly monitored by a quasi-fictitious natural selection, a process that supposedly started with an amoeba nobody knows how it arrived on Earth that somehow became a fish with stumps for legs that turned crocodile, a creature that following successive transmutations "evolved" into an ape that ended up as Leonardo Da Vinci is an attitude that comes in conflict with the scientific method of research and it certainly violates its standard principles. — Paul Greene

Being a scientist means that you should be able to put your faith to the test, and be willing to surrender it should evidence so require. But it does not mean we have no beliefs. In fact, the very discipline of science is based on the belief that the world is comprehensible, and even more audaciously, that it is mathematically describable. The thing about scientific beliefs is that they are not arbitrary. They're not just random opinions we plucked out of the sky; we came to them through observation and experience, and so far, these beliefs have always been vindicated. — Tasneem Zehra Husain

They were a remarkable company, each one of them a unique person, yet characterized to some extent by his particular national type. And all were distinctively "scientists" of the period. Formerly this would have implied a rather uncritical leaning towards materialism, and an affectation of cynicism; but by now it was fashionable to profess an equally uncritical belief that all natural phenomena were manifestations of the cosmic mind. In both periods, when a man passed beyond the sphere of his own serious scientific work he chose his beliefs irresponsibly, according to his taste, much as he chose his recreation or his food. — Olaf Stapledon

It is always a great honour to mention a truth which has not become widespread yet. One of these truths is that man has no soul; he has only 'body' and 'mind'. Man's unshakable belief on the soul will not change this scientific truth! No belief can be higher than the scientific truths! Man can be born, can walk and work and can think without owning a mysterious and an immaterial soul! The soullessness of the man is a great tragedy both for the man and for the religion. But Man, contrary to the religion, will come out from this tragedy with triumph. — Mehmet Murat Ildan

The Bible gives no hint that a Christian "belief system" might be isolated from the life of the Church, subjected to scientific analysis, and have its truth compared with competing "belief systems". — Peter Leithart

The claim that science can disprove God's existence is an honest ambition but it is a statement that is actually impossible to back up. This is because the task of proving something like science is unprovable by scientific methods. How do you prove an idea like "science"? What container do you use to measure it? What laws of science do you use to prove science? That's the first reason why the worldview of scientism, the belief that science proves everything, fails to work out in real life. Science cannot prove everything because it cannot even prove itself. — Jon Morrison

Dragons and Afterlife .. I don't see any difference between both of them, we didn't see neither the dragons nor afterlife, we just heard about them and both of them are superstitions with no scientific or logical evidence .. But the only reason you believe in afterlife unlike dragons is that you've been taught to believe in it from your birthday. now if they taught you to believe in dragons and if it were mentioned in your Bible or your holy book you would have believed in it .. herein lies the danger of religions, you can believe something exists without any evidence .. and that's why you should only follow science and let go of your religious teachings — Sherif Gaber

It is evident that a man with a scientific outlook on life cannot let himself be intimidated by texts of Scripture or by the teaching of the Church. He will not be content to say "such-and-such an act is sinful, and that ends the matter." He will inquire whether it does any harm or whether, on the contrary, the belief that it is sinful does harm. And he will find that, especially in what concerns sex, our current morality contains a very great deal of which the origin is purely superstitious. He will find also that this superstition, like that of the Aztecs, involves needless cruelty, and would be swept away if people were actuated by kindly feelings towards their neighbors. But the defenders of traditional morality are seldom people with warm hearts ... One is tempted to think that they value morals as affording a legitimate outlet for their desire to inflict pain; the sinner is fair game, and therefore away with tolerance! — Bertrand Russell

It is rather ironical that in the sixteenth century some people resisted advances in science because they seemed to threaten belief in God; whereas in the twentieth century scientific ideas of a beginning have been resisted because they threatened to increase the plausibility of belief in God. — John C. Lennox

To every Old World belief, habit, or tradition, there was and still is a technological alternative. To prayer, the alternative is penicillin; to family roots, the alternative is mobility; to reading, the alternative is television; to restraint, the alternative is immediate gratification; to sin, the alternative is psychotherapy; to political ideology, the alternative is popular appeal established through scientific polling. There is even an alternative to the painful riddle of death, as Freud called it. The riddle may be postponed through longer life, and then perhaps solved altogether by cryogenics. — Neil Postman

The belief that personality is mysterious and irreducible has no scientific warrant, and is accepted chiefly because it is flattering to our human self esteem. — Bertrand Russell

In
the scientific community, the adjective 'theological' is some-
times used pejoratively to refer to a vague or ill-formulated
belief. I believe this usage to be very far from the truth. It sad-
dens me that some of my colleagues remain unaware of the
truth-seeking intent and rational scrupulosity that character-
ise theological discourse at its best. — John Polkinghorne

Love of science - unbounded patience in long reflecting over any subject - industry in observing and collecting facts - and a fair share of invention as well as of common sense. With such moderate abilities as I possess, it is truly surprising that I should have influenced to a considerable extent the belief of scientific men on some important points. — Charles Darwin

By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox. — Galileo Galilei

Blue believes the harmony to be motivated by self-interest. There is a resurgence of faith these days, a growing belief in organized religion, grace, damnation, heaven and hell. People treat each other kindly now, thinks Blue, because they hope to escape God's wrath. Blue does not believe in damnation and has trouble empathizing with those who do. In her fifty-two years, she has found no hard evidence, no scientific proof to convince her of God's existence. She considers herself an atheist. — Nick Sagan

Fundamental assumptions in general and scientific assumptions in particular are so hard to overturn because they are based on belief. Beliefs are so hard to overcome because they are irrational and therefore do not yield to logical argument. — Thomas Campbell

My skepticism is not based on religious belief, or on a belief in any definite alternative. It is just a belief that the available scientific evidence, in spite of the consensus of scientific opinion, does not in this matter rationally require us to subordinate the incredulity of common sense. That is especially true with regard to the origin of life. — Thomas Nagel

Science has long been in the values business. Despite a widespread belief to the contrary, scientific validity is not the result of scientists abstaining from making value judgments; rather, scientific validity is the result of scientists making their best effort to value priinciples of reasoning that link their beliefs to reality, through reliable chains of evidence and argument. — Sam Harris

It will sometimes strike a scientific man that the philosophers have been less intent on finding out what the facts are, than on inquiring what belief is most in harmony with their system. — Charles Sanders Peirce

As a case study of perceived miracles, let's examine the belief in thunder gods within certain cultures. Throughout history, there have been many thunder gods, spread out across multiple continents and civilizations (1). In most cases, the god created thunderstorms directly through his actions, whether this meant Zeus throwing lightning bolts or the beating of a thunderbird's wings. Today, when the scientific causes of thunder are well-known, such myths seem absurd and antiquated. At the time, though, believers likely felt that thunder was a miraculous event requiring such divine explanation. — Armin Navabi

In Islamic belief, knowledge is two-fold. There is that revealed through the Holy Prophet (s.a.s.) and that which man discovers by virtue of his own intellect. Nor do these two involve any contradiction, provided man remembers that his own mind is itself the creation of God. Without this humility, no balance is possible. With it, there are no barriers. Indeed, one strength of Islam has always lain in its belief that creation is not static but continuous, that through scientific and other endeavours, God has opened and continues to open new windows for us to see the marvels of His creation — Aga Khan IV

If such external influences are intrinsic to religion, then logic and scientific thought dictate that there must be a mechanism by which this influence is transmitted. A religious or spiritual belief that involves an invisible undetectable force that nonetheless influences human actions and behavior or that of the world itself produces a situation in which a believer has no choice but to have faith and abandon logic
or simply not care. — Lisa Randall

Human nature presents human minds with a puzzle which they have not yet solved and may never succeed in solving, for all that we can tell. The dichotomy of a human being into 'soul' and 'body' is not a datum of experience. No one has ever been, or ever met, a living human soul without a body ... Someone who accepts - as I myself do, taking it on trust - the present-day scientific account of the Universe may find it impossible to believe that a living creature, once dead, can come to life again; but, if he did entertain this belief, he would be thinking more 'scientifically' if he thought in the Christian terms of a psychosomatic resurrection than if he thought in the shamanistic terms of a disembodied spirit. — Arnold Joseph Toynbee

Secular humanism does not have the essential attributes of a religion: belief in a deity, the wish for some sort of afterlife, sacred dogma or texts, or an absolutist moral creed. Instead, it expresses a philosophical and ethical point of view, and it draws upon the scientific method in formulationg its naturalistic view of the nature. — Paul Kurtz

Those who ignore the destructive potential of new technologies can do so only because they ignore history . Pogroms are as old as Christendom , but without railways, the telegraph and poison gas there could have been no Holocaust. (..) Scientific fundamentalism claim that science is the disinterested pursuit of the truth. But to represent science in this way is to disregard the human needs science serves. Among us science serves two needs: for hope and censorship. Today only science supports the myth of progress. If people cling to the hope of progress, it is not so much from genuine belief as from fear of what may come if they give it up. — John Gray

Doesn't matter whether the cultural hero-system is frankly magical, religious, and primitive or secular, scientific, and civilized. It is still a mythical hero-system in which people serve in order to earn a feeling of primary value, of cosmic specialness, of ultimate usefulness to creation, of unshakable meaning. They earn this feeling by carving out a place in nature, by building an edifice that reflects human value: a temple, a cathedral, a totem pole, a skyscraper, a family that spans three generations. The hope and belief is that the things that man creates in society are of lasting worth and meaning, that they outlive or outshine death and decay, that man and his products count. — Ernest Becker

Professor Dawkins himself stated that "Religion is about turning untested belief, into unshakable truth through the power of institutions, and the passage of time." This is exactly what is happening with his meme conjecture. He is taking an untestable idea, by scientific standards, and through media and literature and a popular cult following, creating it into a social norm of truth where others believe his idea and propagate it as an unshakeable truth. This also is occurring faster because of computer technology in time. But nonetheless, it is an occurrence within a passage of time. — Idav Kelly

Leonardo believed his research had the
potential to convert millions to a more spiritual life. Last year he categorically proved the existence of
an energy force that unites us all. He actually demonstrated that we are all physically connected ... that
the molecules in your body are intertwined with the molecules in mine ... that there is a single force
moving within all of us." Langdon felt disconcerted. And the power of God shall unite us all. "Mr. Vetra actually found a way
to demonstrate that particles are connected?"
"Conclusive evidence. A recent Scientific American article hailed New Physics as a surer path to God
than religion itself. — Dan Brown

Despite my admiration for scientific knowledge, I am not an adherent of scientism. For scientism dogmatically asserts the authority of scientific knowledge; whereas I do not believe in any authority and have always resisted dogmatism; and I continue to resist it, especially in science. I am opposed to the thesis that the scientist must believe in his theory. As far as I am concerned "I do not believe in belief," as E. M. Forster says; and I especially do not believe in belief in science. I believe at most that belief has a place in ethics, and even here only in a few instances. I believe, for example, that objective truth is a value - that is, an ethical value, perhaps the greatest value there is - and that cruelty is the greatest evil. — Karl R. Popper

Global warming hysterics generally have limited scientific knowledge, and of geology and meteorology in particular. Their belief is not science; it's more akin to religion. The main epicenter of hysteria is not the scientific community but seems to be Hollywood. — Doug Casey

That the great majority of those who leave school should have some idea of the kind of evidence required to substantiate given types of belief does not seem unreasonable. Nor is it absurd to expect that they should go forth with a lively interest in the ways in which knowledge is improved and a marked distaste for all conclusions reached in disharmony with the methods of scientific inquiry. — John Dewey

Science and religion both make claims about the fundamental workings of the universe. Although these claims are not a priori incompatible (we could imagine being brought to religious belief through scientific investigation), I will argue that in practice they diverge. If we believe that the methods of science can be used to discriminate between fundamental pictures of reality, we are led to a strictly materialist conception of the universe. While the details of modern cosmology are not a necessary part of this argument, they provide interesting clues as to how an ultimate picture may be constructed. — Sean Carroll

Skill teachers are made scarce by the belief in the value of
licenses. Certification constitutes a form of market manipulation and is plausible only to a schooled mind.
Most teachers of arts and trades are less skillful, less inventive, and less communicative than the best craftsmen
and tradesmen. Most high-school teachers of Spanish or French do not speak the language as correctly as their
pupils might after half a year of competent drills. Experimentsconducted by Angel Quintero in Puerto Rico
suggest that many young teen-agers, if given the proper incentives, programs, and access to tools, are better than
most schoolteachers at introducing their peers to the scientific exploration of plants, stars, and matter, and to the
discovery of how and why a motor or a radio functions. — Ivan Illich

For those scientists who take it seriously, Darwinian evolution has functioned more as a philosophical belief system than as a testable scientific hypothesis. This quasi-religious function of the theory is, I think, what lies behind many of the extreme statements that you have doubtless encountered from some scientists opposing any critical analysis of neo-Darwinism in the classroom. It is also why many scientists make public statements about the theory that they would not defend privately to other scientists like me. — James A. Shapiro

The role and weight to be accorded medical testimony in Administrative hearings before the Post Office Department was established ... These decisions enunciate a rule that informed medical consensus and the 'universality of scientific belief' may be established through the testimony of a (one, single - Ed.) medical doctor. — J. Edward Day

[T]he degree of confirmation assigned to any given hypothesis is sensitive to properties of the entire belief system ... simplicity, plausibility, and conservatism are properties that theories have in virtue of their relation to the whole structure of scientific beliefs taken collectively. A measure of conservatism or simplicity would be a metric over global properties of belief systems. — Jerry Fodor

There is a widespread belief about quantum mechanics, as also about relativity, that it is something that one is entitled to ignore for most ordinary philosophical and scientific purposes, since it only seriously applies at the micro level of reality; where 'micro' means something far smaller than would show up in any conventional microscope. What sits on top of this micro level, so the assumption runs, is a sufficiently good approximation of the old classical Newtonian picture to justify our continuing, as philosophers, to think about the world in essentially classical terms. I believe this to be a fundamental mistake. What I shall be arguing...is that the world is quantum-mechanical through and through; and that the classical picture of reality is, even at the microscopic level, deeply inadequate. — Stephen T. DeBerry

A defense [of religion] is needed because none has been forthcoming. The discussion has been ceded to men who regard religious belief with frivolous contempt. Their books have in recent years poured from every press, and although differing widely in their style, they are identical in their message: Because scientific theories are true, religious beliefs must be false. — David Berlinski

Properly conducted scientific studies ... give us a pretty good idea of when something is likely to be correct. To me, pretty good is a linguistic statistic that falls somewhere in between more likely than not and beyond a reasonable doubt, et avoides the pitfalls arising from the belief in complete objectivity. — Robert A. Burton

They believed that prediction was just a function of keeping track of things. If you knew enough, you could predict anything. That's been cherished scientific belief since Newton.'
And?'
Chaos theory throws it right out the window. — Michael Crichton

Neither logic nor scientific evidence supports such a belief. Although spinal manipulation can relieve certain types of back pain, neck pain, and other musculoskeletal symptoms, there is no scientific evidence that it can restore or maintain health. As a result of expressing my opinion on this subject, I have been called a chiropractic heretic. — Samuel Homola

Here is Thomas Kuhn, the philosopher of science, describing the way scientists react when their pet theories are unraveling: "What scientists never do when confronted by even severe and prolonged anomalies," Kuhn wrote, " ... . [is] renounce the paradigm that led them into crisis." Instead, he concluded, "A scientific theory is declared invalid only if an alternate candidate is available to take its place." That is, scientific theories very seldom collapse under the weight of their own inadequacy. They topple only when a new and seemingly better belief turns up to replace it. — Kathryn Schulz

The confidence in the unlimited power of science is only too often based on a false belief that the scientific method consists in the application of a ready-made technique, or in imitating the form rather than the substance of scientific procedure, as if one needed only to follow some cooking recipes to solve all social problems. It sometimes almost seems as if the techniques of science were more easily learnt than the thinking that shows us what the problems are and how to approach them. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence, and they get results. Myths and faiths are not and do not. — Richard Dawkins

I proceed with the proper subject of this discourse; namely, the further changes in scientific belief, which have occurred within my own recollection, even since the time when I first aspired to authorship, now forty- five years ago. — Asa Gray

As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries-not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer. For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conception only as cultural posits. The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience. — Willard Van Orman Quine

For these creatures(humans) are for the most part malevolent and murderous by nature, able to tolerate others only insofar as they resemble themselves, capable of slaughtering each other because of a slight difference in skin colour or appearance. Also, they cannot tolerate those who do not think as they do. Although they know perfectly well, theoretically, that the surface of the inhabited globe is divided into thousands of areas each with it system of religious or scientific belief, and although they know that it is entirely by chance that any individual among them was born into this area or that area, this or that area of belief, this theoretical knowledge does not prevent them from hating foreigners in their own particular small area, and if not harming them, isolating them in every way possible. — Doris Lessing

Honey increases sperm count."
"Oh, you're so full of it. There's no scientific evidence to support that ridiculous statement."
"It's an auld Scottish belief. — Vonnie Davis

As I see it the world is undoubtedly in need of a new religion, and that religion must be founded on humanist principles. When I say religion, I do not mean merely a theology involving belief in a supernatural god or gods; nor do I mean merely a system of ethics, however exalted; nor only scientific knowledge, however extensive; nor just a practical social morality, however admirable or efficient. I mean an organized system of ideas and emotions which relate man to his destiny, beyond and above the practical affairs of every day, transcending the present and the existing systems of law and social structure. The prerequisite today is that any such religion shall appeal potentially to all mankind; and that its intellectual and rational sides shall not be incompatible with scientific knowledge but on the contrary based on it. — Julian Huxley

Science and religion ... are friends, not foes, in the common quest for knowledge. Some people may find this surprising, for there's a feeling throughout our society that religious belief is outmoded, or downright impossible, in a scientific age. I don't agree. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that if people in this so-called 'scientific age' knew a bit more about science than many of them actually do, they'd find it easier to share my views. — John Polkinghorne

One of the most interesting histories of what comes of rejecting science we may see in Islam, which in the beginning received, accepted, and even developed the classical legacy. For some five or six rich centuries there is an impressive Islamic record of scientific thought, experiment, and research, particularly in medicine. But then, alas! the authority of the general community, the Sunna, the consensus - which Mohammed the Prophet had declared would always be right - cracked down. The Word of God in the Koran was the only source and vehicle of truth. Scientific thought led to 'loss of belief in the origin of the world and in the Creator.' And so it was that, just when the light of Greek learning was beginning to be carried from Islam to Europe - from circa 1100 onward - Islamic science and medicine came to a standstill and went dead ... — Joseph Campbell

The Cubists' belief in progress was by no means complacent. They saw the new products, the new inventions, the new forms of energy, as weapons with which to demolish the old order. Yet at the same time their interest was profound and not simply declamatory. In this they differed fundamentally from the Futurists. The Futurists saw the machine as a savage god with which they identified themselves. Ideologically they were precursors of fascism: artistically they produced a vulgar form of animated naturalism, which was itself only a gloss on what had already been done in films. 35 Carlo Carra. The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli. 1911 The Cubists felt their way, picture by picture, towards a new synthesis which, in terms of painting, was the philosophical equivalent of the revolution that was taking place in scientific thinking: a revolution which was also dependent on the new materials and the new means of production. — John Berger

The scientific-religious conflict ultimately is a conflict between allegiance to this method and allegiance to even an irreducible minimum of belief so fixed in advance that it can never be modified. — John Dewey

We are asked by science to believe that the entire universe sprang from nothingness, and at a single point and for no discernible reason. This notion is the limit case for credulity. In other words, if you can believe this, you can believe anything. — Terence McKenna

The scientific and scholarly community is marked by the belief that the truth is to be found in all; none can claim it as their monopoly. — John Charles Polanyi

It is necessary to guard ourselves from thinking that the practice of the scientific method enlarges the powers of the human mind. Nothing is more flatly contradicted by experience than the belief that a man distinguished in one or even more departments of science, is more likely to think sensibly about ordinary affairs than anyone else. — Wilfred Trotter

These are two different belief systems. There is no reason in the world that the religious have to explain their faith on a scientific basis. It makes no sense. What is needed between science and religion is not a debate but a conversation, each one saying: you're here to stay, and I'm here to stay, so let's find out how our relationship can be of greatest benefit to this world. — Sherwin B. Nuland

God, once imagined to be an omnipresent force throughout the whole world of nature and man. has been increasingly tending to seem omniabsent. Everywhere, intelligent and educated people rely more and more on purely secular and scientific techniques for the solution of their problems. As science advances, belief in divine miracles and the efficacy of prayer becomes fainter and fainter. — Corliss Lamont

Religious faith in the case of the Hindus has never been allowed to run counter to scientific laws, moreover the former is never made a condition for the knowledge they teach, but there are always scrupulously careful to take into consideration the possibility that by reason both the agnostic and atheist may attain truth in their own way. Such tolerance may be surprising to religious believers in the West, but it is an integral part of Vedantic belief. — Romain Rolland

Truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with the ideal limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief, which concordance the abstract statement may possess by virtue of the confession of its inaccuracy and one-sidedness, and this confession is an essential ingredient of truth. — Charles Sanders Peirce

The orthodox environmental theories [of heredity] have been accepted not because they have stood up under proper scientific investigations, but because they harmonize so well with our democratic belief in human equality. — Arthur Jensen

It is probably true that almost all atheists stand for the values of reason and freethought. I will attempt to put these values in more substantial terms. There is the belief that inquiry and doubt are essential checks against deception, self deception, and error. There is the belief that logic and the scientific method is the only way the world can arrive at an agreement on the truth about anything. — Richard Carrier

I maintain that the human mystery is incredibly demeaned by scientific reductionism, with its claim in promissory materialism to account eventually for all of the spiritual world in terms of patterns of neuronal activity. This belief must be classed as a superstition ... we have to recognize that we are spiritual beings with souls existing in a spiritual world as well as material beings with bodies and brains existing in a material world. — John C. Eccles

I have a firm belief in such things as, you know, the water, the Earth, the trees and sky. And I'm wondering, it is increasingly difficult to find those elements in nature, because it's nature I believe in rather than some spiritual thing.
Interviewer: You're not a religious man?
No. And I do suppose that science has taken, to a large extent and for a number of people, has taken the place of religion.
Interviewer: What do you mean by that?
That one can have more belief in scientific cures or scientific miracles than you do in God miracles. It's inevitable that we will eventually diffuse into nothingness ... — Bill Blass

One of the things that always fascinated me about the Renaissance was that it was a time both of great scientific discovery and also of superstition and belief in magic. And so it was a period in which Galileo invented the telescope, but also a time when hundreds were burned at the stake because people thought they were witches. — Marie Rutkoski

For more than four hundred years we nurtured the belief (should that, perhaps, be faith?) that evidence-based investigation meeting scientific standards of rigor would reveal the true mechanism of nature. and yet when the mechanisms of nature were revealed to be quantum mechanisms, the worlds of science and philosophy were set on a collision course. instead of truth and comprehension, we got deeply unsettling questions about what we can ever hope to know about the world. — Jim Baggott

There are two objectionable types of believers: those who believe the incredible, and those who believe that "belief" must be discarded and replaced by "the scientific method. — Max Born

Orthodox Marxism, therefore, does not imply the uncritical acceptance of the results of Marx's investigations. It is not the 'belief' in this or that thesis, nor the exegesis of a 'sacred' book. On the contrary, orthodoxy refers exclusively to method. It is the scientific conviction that dialectical materialism is the road to truth and that its methods can be developed, expanded and deepened only along the lines laid down by its founders. It is the conviction, moreover, that all attempts to surpass or 'improve' it have led and must lead to over-simplification, triviality and eclecticism. — Gyorgy Lukacs

The knowledge of God, the belief in God, is what I call an a-rational process. It's not rational - it doesn't proceed by scientific investigation - but it's not irrational because it doesn't contradict my reasoning process. It goes beyond it. — George Coyne

The facts of science are real enough, and so are the techniques that scientists use, and so are the technologies based on them. But the belief system that governs conventional scientific thinking is an act of faith. — Rupert Sheldrake