Earlier quoted context omitted.
This comment is largely a variant on the usual "science is just another belief like religion". It really isn't. The far fringes of science that you need lots of eduction and tools to work with, sure, you need to take those on faith. But you don't have to "believe" them, don't have to take them on faith. Your life is not changed one iota if you personally believe in quantum mechanics or not. Meanwhile, the bulk of sci…
> You can work out science from first principles and get a long way - the difference here with religion is that in religion, the first principles are not accessible to anyone. i think that's exactly the point i made, actually.
In particular, your last sentence says that science is about mutual trust and good faith - when in fact it is much less about that than religion. You don't have to have mutual trust to do science since you can work it out all the way from first principles. Science aims to be robust enough that you don't have to trust other people. Good science has different groups repeating the same experiment multiple times, to better ensure that the effect is observable, and not based on trust or faith. Yes, at the cutting edge, you might have to use trust more when there's only one or two groups with the capacity for doing the testing, but ideally you have multiple groups specifically to avoid relying on trust and faith.
That knowledge then trickles down to applied science, where it's field-tested. A materials scientist at a widget company doesn't trust a theoretical scientist - they'll take the latter's study, make their own prototypes, and check the stuff works as suggested.
Science is not about trust and faith or defined by them; we just use them as humans to facilitate sharing knowledge on the experimental edge.