Comment by serf

I think the phrase 'believe in science' is weird; it's nearly as problematic as "I have faith in science".

It can be, but generally the concept of 'belief' isn't attributed to ground truths; it's just 'the truth', you rarely hear the phrase "I believe 2 and 2 is 4." , it's just '2 and 2 is 4.' -- I think that's important.

In fact, a lot of people insert the word 'believe' to insert a concept of self-doubt. "What was our last test results passing rate?" "I believe it was around 95 percent.."

But semantics aside here's the real question : Why do you have some kind of notion that you should 'believe' anything without being able to understand it? Just trust in the world and those around you?

We haven't figured origin yet, so let's get off that, but when a scientist of some sort makes a discovery, they release evidence and methods , and you decide to believe the conclusions without an understanding of the work -- well that's just a display of faith. Faith in the scientist themselves, the system they work within, and the society you're in.

Which leads me to say this : If you make an effort to begin to understand the frameworks and systems which lead to scientific conclusions you can largely remove the faith and belief elements up until you hit the very highest spectrums of each field where speculation comes back into play.

tl;dr : if you 'cant understand a shit', you don't put any leg-work in and make an effort to speak the language, you'll probably end back up in beliefs rather than an ever increasing codex of knowledge -- regardless of the field. That's okay -- but it doesn't offer the same benefits as knowledge -- it just lets one say things like "I don't believe in any theory..."