Science as a Belief System

    I don't think the opposite of theism can be atheism; the opposite must be a form of agnosticism much like how the polar opposite of Buddhism is not Judaism (per se) even though the two differ on many fundamental points and rely on different fundamental beliefs, or like how two passers-by are not opposites of each other since ultimately they are both human. A belief in the absence of divinity [atheism] is different to an absence of belief divinity [agnosticism], since the former starts from the point of belief.     

    Everything is reliant on a deeper more fundamental philosophical grounding; this is pretty obvious with a traditional religion, or at least the sort of binary view of them. In these cases, the belief in the divine is instrumental for the understanding of phenomena, both metaphysically and physically. The same is true, however, of any belief in science, no matter what the reason is. Indeed, one must first believe in truth in order to believe in anything, but truth is not a given. If someone were to try to prove to me the validity of E=MC² and I replied that it is false because actually everything is all just a simulation inside my brain, or in a computer, or something like that, then neither of us could disprove nor convince the other. Science is a discipline, but trust in the empirical use of the scientific method is necessary in order for it to work. 

 

    This is not quite the same as people selectively putting faith in collective things like fiat currencies either, because in those situations, it is held up by a specific body, usually a government or in the case of Bitcoin etc. an internet server. Indeed, Quadriga lost 190 million dollars with the loss of a password for a USB (after the mysterious death of the CEO) so those crypto-currencies are still based in something material in many ways. This is different from a whole belief system first off for the obvious reason that this doesn't inform one's worldview really, and also because the existence of one currency does not undermine the existence of another; although many currencies only have certain, geographically based utility, some countries accept officially or covertly multiple currencies for a variety of reasons. I believe in the Dollar, Pound, Euro, Yen, etc. for convenience, not for truth, as it would not undermine my worldview if a country scrapped its currency in place of another, which has happened dozens of times in the last two decades alone. 

 

    Instead, the belief in science is exactly as reliant in a belief in objective truth as anything else. And if we don't have truth, we don't have anything: there are no ethics; there is no history; words lose meaning. A world without truth is a dog-eat-dog existence, and yet a great many people deny the reality that utilities such as logic—which can never be an end unto itself—are merely utilities, and take it to be a universal and ultimate truth. They may even mock others for not seeing the many steps of those logical paths. 

 

    Science—which so far I've been using as a sort of shorthand for anything that relies on the scientific method, even outside of the bounds of natural sciences—is not an end unto itself. It isn't an organized religion per se, though many things aren't necessarily of organized religions despite being widely accepted as 'spiritual' like palm-reading, astrology, or even just ascribing a will to "the universe", as many colloquially do. For a variety of reasons, many people in many places reject what they view as organized religion, but science has many of the same trappings as one of those as well. Whether science is considered a belief system already, there is also faith in texts and the writer(s) thereof to be as honest and unbiased as possible, and a reliance on "experts" to do the work that anyone could theoretically do but many won't (not unlike any other religious leader and scholar). It even has its own (in some ways very similar view of truth) as a Judeo-Christian view for instance. In one side, truth is real because it is set and maintained by G-d but humans are so imperfect and limited in perspective to truly understand the whole "big picture"; in a scientific view, truth is objective and theoretically attainable, but humans are limited with the tendency for logical errors, faulty measurements, too-short lives, finite brain capacity etc. and so we can never be completely certain of its being understood properly. Ultimately, these are both assumptions about both the nature of the universe, and of the quality and value of human beings. 

    For whatever reason, people gravitate towards belief, even if it is a mostly unspoken one. Most people can trust truth and objectivity, and for the others who claim to not believe anything certainly, instead having faith in a subjective, material universal, they will have to contend with believing that truth is subjective, which is paradoxical: if something is true it is always true. I hope that everyone of any background would ask "why do I believe in the truth I believe?", and then to ask again introspectively "why do I believe in truth?". In many views including but not limited to the scientific one, the reason that truth exists is not explained.