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Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla
However, don't ever mistake science -- a way of knowing -- with a belief system of any kind.
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That's just it. Much of science is belief. Sure, there are lots of things that are scientifically proven. But even certain empirical data relies on the opinion of the observer as much as it does hard fact. Pick any newspaper on any day of the week, and you'll find a story of a researcher who has found new evidence (that was there all along) that completely refutes earlier
beliefs about something. Not something like "grass is green because of chlorophyll". But almost everything else that's not so cut and dried.
It's almost like scientists who are also atheists are bound and determined to find a pattern, but deny that this absence of chaos could have anything but a chaotic origin. I personally believe that it's vanity in many cases -- they want to feel like they're discovering things alllll on their own, and there's no intelligence higher than theirs in the cosmos. It would be humbling to have to admit that all of the "Eureka!" moments you had were merely moments of enlightenment that allowed you to see someone else's bigger picture.
All that aside, my main point is: some may have you believe that science is purely a game of facts, but if you stripped away the conjecture, theory, wishful thinking, and yes, pure faith, you'd be left with very little.