No, Charlie. Science is never about having faith that something is true. Science is about predictability. If one can predict on the basis of known fact that something else will happen and can measure the rightness or wrongness of that hypothesis, then it can be assumed as fact until disproved.

Science is always willing to say "I don't know yet, but I am trying to find out." Science is constantly disproving as well as trying to prove.

Some things we do know. Some things we don't and we say so. That is what science is. NOT faith.

Cross-posted with Gail.

Kind of like the Weather Man?

That is the kind of statement that results in a loss of respect for your views.

I am sorry to be obliged to disagree with you, but the fact is that you just throw out statements with no substance, and no reference that would support them. And you throw them out like a blanket. That makes it impossible to really take your intentions seriously. You aren't out to discuss, you are out to bamboozle.

You present conjecture as fact. For me, you can believe anything you want to. That is what freedom of religion is all about. But don't insist that it is "truth". It is conjuncture, it is speculation, it is faith.

I highly recommend checking out what the evangelical Christian climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe has to say about faith, conservative politics, and science in this television interview from last September.

Twenty-two minutes of excellent points, in my opinion.

I found out about her because Rush Limbaugh launched a really nasty intimidation campaign against her. Thanks, Rush!

What you say is right enough, Janice.

What scientists do is another matter. Mortal men (and women) and therefore inclined to cheat and lie and all the rest of it. Like priests. Like teachers. Like poets.

Who would deny the climate?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1Sa52DpMCs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJhbQIlu4mk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Klgp_qDiRhQ

John, you are an affable curmudgeon and fine poet but sweeping generalizations such as that scientists are inclined to lie and cheat, do you a disservice.

Charlie, the only "trap" I can see is the one in which you are locked. It's called a closed mind, and leads you to make all kinds of absurd statements based on nothing whatsoever, and to refuse to answer any points that you find inconvenient.

I won't waste my time taking apart your latest diatribe line by line. Let's just take one example:

Well, no, there wasn't. To begin with, there was a lot of hydrogen and methane and water vapor. Later on, nitrogen and carbon dioxide were added, and the water vapor condensed to form the oceans. But guess what? For 4 billion years - no free oxygen! It was only when primitive algae came along about a billion years ago that large quantities of oxygen were created as a consequence of photosynthesis. And it was only about 600 million years ago that enough oxygen had been released to create the ozone layer, without which life on land could not exist.

Of course, you don't believe any of this, although you have no counter-arguments of any kind. I just hope that if a time machine is ever invented, you don't go for a jaunt a few billion years ago without taking an oxygen tank and mask.

Scientists change their minds as new and better evidence comes along (although as John points out sometimes individual egos can get in the way of this-scientists are only human-Prof Fred Hoyle's dogged insistence that Archaeopteryx was a fake springs to mind) and so theories and models of how the universe works are constantly being refined, improved and sometimes replaced. Faith, of course, doesn't work like this at all.

After millennia of inquiry by some of the most intelligent people ever to draw breath there remain many holes in our understanding of nature. These holes are shrinking all the time, but whether or not they can eventually be closed is moot. The reason that they remain, and that scientists often disagree about why this is and what can be done about it, is entirely attributable to the limitations of the human brain. This does not weaken a the case for a purely physical explanation of creation one iota.

Janice, my comment can be put this way: Men and women are inclined to lie and cheat. Scientists are men and women. Therefore scientists are inclined to lie and cheat. t is, I would have thought, unarguable. You keep attributing statements to me that I have not made.

You seem to think we should have faith in scientists. Faith?