First, so I’m not misunderstood: Science does of course exist and it is not religion. But:
- Not all published science is, in fact, science. The Replication Crisis is a real problem, meaning that a significant portion of published science is actually incorrect.
- Only a very tiny portion of the population reads scientific papers and has the ability to understand them. That includes scientists and other well-educated people who don’t have any expertise on the specific field. Being a renown physicist doesn’t mean you know anything about psychology.
- Scientific papers are filtered through science journalists who might or might not have any expertise in the field and might or might not understand the papers they write about. They then publish what they understood in a more accessible format (e.g. popular science magazines).
- This is then read by minimum wage journalists with no understanding of any of the science, and they publish their misunderstandings in newspapers and other non-scientific publications.
- This is then read by the general public who usually lack the skills and/or the resources to fact-check anything at all.
- These members of the general public then take what they understood as fact and base their world view on it. At this point it hardly matters whether their source of incorrect information is the stack of Chinese whispers I wrote about above, or if it’s just straight-up made up by some religious leader.
There’s thousands of little (or big) misunderstandings in non-science that people believe and have faith in, that forms people’s world views and even their political views. And people often defend their misconceptions, like they would defend some religious views.
(Again, just to make sure I’m not misunderstood: I am no exception to this either. I got my field where I have a lot of knowledge, but for most fields I blindly trust some experts, because I have no way to verify stuff. I, too, for example, put my faith in doctors to heal my illnesses, even though I have no way to verify whether anything they say is true or not.)
So then does trust == faith?
Of course it’s not possible to understand absolutely everything, even as a well-informed scientist or academic. You say ‘blindly trusting’, but may be that’s quite the right way to put it, since, presumably, you have determined that those experts know better than you do, i.e. it’s not ‘blind’ in some sense. Whereas a religious person may blindly have faith that there is a God and a higher purpose (or whatever).
That said, to counter my own point, I’m sure there are plenty of religious people who determine that their religious leaders or experts are worthy of trusting because of a perceived higher spiritual connection, social status, or similar.
I think it all comes back to being able to think critically. In my mind at least, the word ‘trust’ implies some sort of rational thought process, whereas ‘faith’ has a bit more of an emotional connotation. But in reality it’s probably more of a heavily-overlapping Venn diagram (assuming there’s a distinction at all).
Trust and faith are two extremely similar terms. So close that in some languages they are the same word (e.g. in German the word for religious faith, “Gottvertrauen” literally translates to “trust in God”).
Tbh, most religious people have a more solid base to trust in some religious leaders than most people have for trusting in scientific experts. Compared to the experts, they at least know who the religious leaders are and have heard them talk.
I don’t know who came up with the latest discoveries any scientific field, nor have I ever heard them speak, but I have faith that if I e.g. go to my doctor they will base my therapy and medication on a good scientific basis, even though I have no proof of that and no ability to verify anything they prescribe me. That’s just as much blind trust as anyone who has seen a handful people getting better after some prayer sessions and thus trusts in their church for healing.
So in the end, I don’t even know the identities of those experts I put my trust in. I know nothing about their skills, qualifications, abilities or even their research, and still I place my life in their hands every day, trusting that the food/vehicle/builting/medicine/… safety standards they came up with are keeping me safe. Trusting that they know what they are doing, even though we live in a world where Contagan, Boeing, Tesla, Exxon, Lehman Brothers, Meta and consorts exist and operate.