The notion of “faith in the truth of perception”, as I will call Hume’s (and Ayer’s) unprovable assumption, is at the core of our experiences. I disagree that when I equate “faith in perception” and “leap of faith” necessary for religion, which I will limit to the Western notion of “faith in (a monotheistic) God” for the purposes of this discussion, is conflation of different concepts. This equivalence, I believe, is one of perception. That is, “I perceive the world” and “I perceive God” (or, if you prefer, replace “perceive” with “believe in”) are logically equivalent Neither of them can be proved and both form the foundation for a world view.

As to the distinctions between these forms of faith, I agree that there important distinctions. But these distinctions derive from the interaction of the foundational faith with the world view derived from them. They are not distinctions of fundamental form. While belief and faith are not interchangeable in English, they are logically equivalent in that they both represent the acceptance of something as true without support.

Your point about adopting “assumptions” agnostically is a good one, and I certainly agree that belief in the truth of assumptions or axioms for mathematics is true. I also suspect that most scientists do not worry about, if they are even aware of, the foundational rule(s) of science. And this does not prevent them from conducting science. I will quibble about the relationship to of belief to the use of the scientific method, though. I don’t equate the scientific method with science, which I see akin to equating a hammer or saw with carpentry. The scientific method is a tool which can be used without belief or understanding of science. My quibble here is that I would argue that (for human) tool users there is a belief or faith in the the *utility* of the tool, or the tool would not be used.

I disagree that “doing religion” requires a deep-seated belief in said religion. I don’t expect to convince you of this. I’ll just add an observation that has lead me to believe it. I have been exposed to a culture, namely Japan, where there is a casual adoption of various religions by segments of the population on a sort of “just in case they’re right” basis. I suspect this stems from the fact that some religions are just more tolerant about the (contradictory) beliefs of other religions in their adherents.

Back to the relationship between the foundational beliefs of science to its world view and religion to its world view. In science, the relationship between that there is a causal world and the explanation of the that world is rule based. If you have an explanation about some aspect of the world (i.e. a theory) and series of controlled experiments support that theory, then you have the justified belief that that theory is true. On the other hand, the relationship between the foundation belief of a religion, such as God exists, and some fact (perceived or not), such as the world exists, is declarative. That is to say, God wills it. In my mind, the problem with this is that religions strength is basically explicative and has almost complete lack of predictiveness. Science does both explanation and prediction.

- Fritz.

The thing about premises in logical reasoning, or axioms in mathematical systems, or assumptions in the project of science, is that it’s possible to take them on board while remaining agnostic as to their “real truth”. Just because you stipulate an axiom that parallel lines never meet, in order to do Euclidean geometry, doesn’t mean that you have to adopt some sort of belief that Euclidean geometry is true and Lobachevskian geometry is false. Mathematicians switch from Euclidean to Lobachevskian geometries all the time, and back, without undergoing any sort of crisis of faith or other emotional disruption. They don’t have to make any avowals that what they wrote about the other system was wrong and false in order to work in a different one. Contrast this to the behavior of people who undergo religious conversion experiences.

Likewise, in order to do science you have to presume that there are observable rules in order to carry on the project, but you don’t have to believe that that’s the way The Universe Really Is. The map is not the territory, and science is just a map. Doing science does not require one to claim that it’s the only map, or that the map perfectly reproduces the territory, or that the map is True, just that it’s the map that you’re working on right now. Other maps may be equally useful in order to do other projects. In other words, you can *do* science without any deep-seated beliefs about the fundamental truth of the premises of science, just like you can do modal logic without any deep-seated beliefs about the ‘truth’ of modality. You cannot do religion, you cannot profess faith, without engaging in deep-seated beliefs about the fundamental truth of your religion. That deep-seated belief in the truth of the religion you profess is what faith in that sense *is*. A belief so deep-seated, in fact, that it is not susceptible to disproof. Faith, in the religious sense, must operate even when all the evidence says otherwise.

(I no longer have a pointer to the essay, but I read a fascinating piece a couple of years back arguing that if you wanted to create a meme with vigorous growth and strong survival potential, you could do a lot worse than inventing one that makes its holders impervious to contrary evidence.)

Now, as a matter of fact, there may be a great many scientists who happen to believe in the premises of science. But that belief is supererogatory. They don’t have to have it in order to do science. In religion, that belief is not supererogatory. It’s necessary. In fact, it’s foundational. So, as I say, calling the two types of belief the same blurs some very important distinctions.