> Science *is*, in many ways, a belief system.
>
> It's a complex belief system, as it has logic at its heart and so requires everything to explain everything else. Instead of attributing that brilliant flash of light and roaring from the sky to some angry thunder god, it attributes it to the interaction of charges and so on. Neither explanation is inherently more correct than the other, the only difference is in the details and the complexity of the situation. We know all sorts of crazy stuff about charged particles now and can utilise them in exciting ways. Science allows us to take A and B and deduce C, something which other belief systems lack. But how does the universe work? No one knows. We can explain bits of it in various ways, but it's all just an interpretation.
>
> The thing to remember about science is that it changes. Quantum physics is a stupid and ridiculous-- oh, what? It kind of works? Damn. Science is always coming up with new ways of explaining things, ways that kick out the old knowledge or add more rules to the book. At one time science said we should drill holes in the head to release evil beings. Nonsense. We should ingest living organisms to kill the beings within us making us ill. Nonsense.

To quote your own post right back at you, "the thing to remember about science is that it changes". See, that's what sets it apart from every other belief system ever, and what means it isn't something which can be believed or disbelieved. The whole heart of the scientific method is that as new information comes to hand and is shown to supersede what you previously thought, you MUST CHANGE the rules.

I think when most people talk about "believing" in science, what they really mean is believing in technology and other products of science. People can believe or disbelieve that these things are good, bad, indifferent, will save us all, will destroy us all, or whatever the heck else they want to believe in. Scientific thinking, however, is something which I do not think is open to personal opinion, and it needs to be taught in schools. Badly.

Brunnen-"uh, I mean, it badly needs to be taught well"G