More about Science...

Sarah wrote a post regarding science, and how it works, .... And I like her example.

The difference, as I understood it from a class I'm gonna recommend (Rationality and Religious Belief) between scientific belief and religious belief is that scientific belief (Yes! since nothing is *provable* per se, just made really really likely, there's a tiny amount of belief there) is revisable. If data happened by, and folks analyzed it, and it said that the state of things is not X but Y, and this conclusion was arrived at by a lot of reputable folks, any decent scientist would accept the state of affairs was indeed Y, and that their idea that things were X was based on incorrect assumptions. Furthermore, their belief that things are Y would not be set in stone but subject to future revisions in this way.

There is nothing that would change a religious belief in that way. Religious beliefs "God exists", "God can forgive sins", "after the last judgment you will be rewarded or punished eternally","The material world only appears to exist", regard things that cannot be observed. IF a religious belief is true, the world will look exactly the same as IF it is not. Though some things may challenge religious belief, (the fact that really awful things happen in the world is a problem for belief in a loving, omnipotent God) nothing will rationally shake away a religious belief, and in practice, it takes quite a bit to "irrationaly" or "emotionally" shake a religious belief off a person. You don't see people having crises of faith because they come across new data, and the acceptance of a new worldview will never go over as smoothly as new discoveries in a scientific field.

The important difference is that the empirical explanations of the world take into account their own limited character, and contain mechanisms for revising themselves. Religious dogma don't have such a thing -- there is no clause in the catechism saying "if more than 6 million people tragically die as a result of moral evil, God is loving but not omnipotent." or "Christ is Lord, unless someone close to you commits suicide" : When religious beliefs are involved, a 'change of gears' cannot be smooth.