Scientists asked: "What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?"

[Jenna Stannis]

I love going back and browsing through this interesting collection of ideas from some of the world's preeminent thinkers.

What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?
http://www.edge.org/q2005/q05_print.html
The 2005 Edge Question has generated many eye-opening responses from a "who's who" of third culture scientists and science-minded thinkers... [T]here's a focus on consciousness, on knowing, on ideas of truth and proof. If pushed to generalize, I would say it is a commentary on how we are dealing with the idea of certainty.

[justpat]

  That my God does exist not just for me but for all humanity. 

[Jenna Stannis]

  That my God does exist not just for me but for all humanity.

Is there anything in the article I posted that resonates with you?

[Anatta]

Kia Ora JS,

"What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?"

"Everything & Nothing" 

Metta Zenda

[LordKAT]

All people have a trace of good, even when it is dastardly hard to find.

[Jenna Stannis]

I thought Randolph Nesse's entry was quite interesting:

http://www.edge.org/q2005/q05_print.html#nesse
I can't prove it, but I am pretty sure that people gain a selective advantage from believing in things they can't prove. I am dead serious about this. People who are sometimes consumed by false beliefs do better than those who insist on evidence before they believe and act...

[Kaelin]

Your sex and gender are not grounds for thinking of you or treating you differently, nor should I expect different abilities, interests, or expressions from you as a result.  And by "you," I mean "anyone," *you* personally, myself, and anyone in the whole universe currently living, previously living, or eventually living.

Too much power is held by economic elites.

Children are entitled to an ad-free childhood.  "Cold" solicitation (seller-initiated sales contact) and advertising not attached to a consenting consumer should be prohibited (TV/website ads remain legal for the duration the person continues to use said service, but junk mail without an ongoing consenting relationship does not).

Children are entitled to determine their own religious beliefs.  A parent's obligation is to support a child's development to realize themselves rather than to make the child some offshoot of said parent (the parent's dreams, their successes, their failures, whatever).

"How are you?" is a terrible greeting.  The worse someone already feels, the bigger the lie they have to tell for a socially-acceptable response.

People should be respected for letting their hair down and not taking themselves too seriously.  This is especially true and should be a point of emphasis for anyone in a relatively-vulnerable state.  We should use the energy from this freedom and acceptance to sharpen our commitment to the work that we do in our lives.

(These aren't "provable" items in that there is great subjectivity involved, but they're important to me now.)

[peky]

I love going back and browsing through this interesting collection of ideas from some of the world's preeminent thinkers.

What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?
http://www.edge.org/q2005/q05_print.html
The 2005 Edge Question has generated many eye-opening responses from a "who's who" of third culture scientists and science-minded thinkers... [T]here's a focus on consciousness, on knowing, on ideas of truth and proof. If pushed to generalize, I would say it is a commentary on how we are dealing with the idea of certainty.

Nice catch JS, thanks!!!

Note that not all the people interviewed are scientist!

More noteworthy to us is the response of Dr. Leon Lederman who refers to G-d as "her" 

You have to love the physicists!

LEON LEDERMAN
Physicist and Nobel Laureate; Director Emeritus, Fermilab; Coauthor, The God Particle

My friend, the theoretical physicist, believed so strongly in String Theory, "It must be true!" He was called to testify in a lawsuit, which contested the claims of String Theory against Quantum Loop Gravity. The lawyer was skeptical. "What makes you such an authority?" he asked. "Oh, I am without question the world's most outstanding theoretical physicist", was the startling reply. It was enough to convince the lawyer to change the subject. However, when the witness came off the stand, he was surrounded by protesting colleagues.

"How could you make such an outrageous claim?" they asked. The theoretical physicist defended, "Fellows, you just don't understand; I was under oath."

To believe without knowing it cannot be proved (yet) is the essence of physics. Guys like Einstein, Dirac, Poincaré, etc. extolled the beauty of concepts, in a bizarre sense, placing truth at a lower level of importance. There are enough examples that I resonated with the arrogance of my theoretical masters who were in effect saying that God, a.k.a. the Master, Der Alte, may have, in her fashioning of the universe, made some errors in favoring of a convenient truth over a breathtakingly wondrous mathematics. This inelegant lack of confidence has heretofore always proved hasty. Thus, when the long respected law of mirror symmetry was violated by weakly interacting but exotic particles, our pain at the loss of simplicity and harmony was greatly alleviated by the discovery of the failure of particle-antiparticle symmetry. The connection was exciting because the simultaneous reflection in a mirror and change of particles to antiparticles seemed to restore a new and more powerful symmetry—"CP" symmetry now gave us a connection of space (mirror reflection) and electric charge. How silly of us to have lost confidence in the essential beauty of nature!

The renewed confidence remained even when it turned out that "CP" was also imperfectly respected. "Surely," we now believe, "there is in store some spectacular, new, unforeseen splendor in all of us." She will not let us down. This we believe, even though we can't prove it.

[Hikari]

I take lots of things on faith, I mean I have no "proof" Denmark exists, I mean sure people say it does and even claim to be from there, but having never been there I cannot say beyond a shadow of a doubt. I trust those that say it does exist however, so I believe in it, and a great many other things that I don't have the means to observe or test.

I still don't believe in god though, because not enough trustworthy claims of gods existence seem to exist. Still I could understand if a person were to consider the source trustworthy enough how they could do something like believe in god with no actual proof seen with their own eyes.

[peky]

I take lots of things on faith, I mean I have no "proof" Denmark exists, I mean sure people say it does and even claim to be from there, but having never been there I cannot say beyond a shadow of a doubt. I trust those that say it does exist however, so I believe in it, and a great many other things that I don't have the means to observe or test.

I still don't believe in god though, because not enough trustworthy claims of gods existence seem to exist. Still I could understand if a person were to consider the source trustworthy enough how they could do something like believe in god with no actual proof seen with their own eyes.

Spend a summer in Aarhus, and you would believe in heaven !

Got to love those "Danish Cookies" !

[CalmRage]

I take lots of things on faith, I mean I have no "proof" Denmark exists, I mean sure people say it does and even claim to be from there, but having never been there I cannot say beyond a shadow of a doubt. I trust those that say it does exist however, so I believe in it, and a great many other things that I don't have the means to observe or test.

I still don't believe in god though, because not enough trustworthy claims of gods existence seem to exist. Still I could understand if a person were to consider the source trustworthy enough how they could do something like believe in god with no actual proof seen with their own eyes.

read this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bielefeld_Conspiracy

[MadeleineG]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bielefeld_Conspiracy

That's hilarious.

[Hikari]

read this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bielefeld_Conspiracy

Lol now that is great, now the question has to become have you met anyone from Bielefeld? I know I sure haven't... 

[CalmRage]

Lol now that is great, now the question has to become have you met anyone from Bielefeld? I know I sure haven't...

neither have I? Come to think of it, i don't know anyone from Dortmund either.

[Jill F]

If there was no such thing as an organized or codified religion, there would be just as many religious beliefs as there are people in the world.

And Mexican food is far more delicious than any other cuisine.  /irony