1.61803 writes:
My opinion is that the indigenous people of Rain god forest have faith. A scientist would be hard pressed to show through rigorous scientific research that frog gods do not exist.
I see several issues arising in this discussion. One involves the "is-ought problem." Another involves the difference between religion as a sourse of values and religion as an explanation of facts about the world.
Some people derive their moral values from their religious tradition. Science has something to say about how those values arise, how they are transmitted, what effects they have on society. But science cannot tell people what their values
ought to be.
Your frog-god worshippers are not just looking to their god for values. They are using their god as an explanation of a fact about the world. While science cannot prove the frog god does not exist, it
can show that the frog god is superfluous to a well-confirmed theory about the cause of changes in the frog population.
In fact, science has a distinct advantage over religion in the matter of predicting frog population changes. That is because, during a drought, science would suggest that people who want more frogs should dig irrigation ditches. I would venture to guess that irrigation ditches would be more likley to boost the frog population than praying to the frog god would.
It is true that faith exists in the absence of evidence -- even in the face of evidence to the contrary. But as Straggler has explained, science can productively study the phenomenon of faith. And ditch-digging heretics will probably explain that science has greater practical value when one wants to affect facts about the word, even though some of the ditch diggers many continue to pray to the frog god.
Edited by Stephen Push, : No reason given.