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Originally Posted by Ustwo
No.
I have no faith in Newtons laws. I have used them to calculate ballistics or the force of an impact and then compared this with actual measurements to verify them as part of a university physics class. They work. With them I could tell you (well I would have been able to tell you 18 years ago) how much velocity and what angle was needed to make a projectile travel X distance, how high it would get, and how hard it would hit, in a vacuum and at various air densities. The variables add up and slight deviations will be noted.
Likewise at the same university as an exercise you would calculate the expected temperature of a liquid when a cold body was placed in a hot liquid, and then measure the actual result.
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You show your faith in newton's laws every time you put your life in the hands of a machine or building whose design was based on first principals. You expect the universe to behave in a rational way, and though it isn't an off expectation, it is one that is at its very core faith-based. You expect things to happen as a direct result of the things that happened before them, and that is a position of faith, regardless of how obvious it seems that things happen as a direct result of the things that happened before them.
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Both Newtons laws and the laws of thermodynamics are flawed to some degree, but they are working tools which are 'close enough' to make accurate predictions.
I have no faith in them, I have demonstrated some of them , those capable for a 2nd year science major at any rate, and they have held up.
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Laws are just emphasized observations- you didn't demonstrate them, you just observed them. All you did was observe that f = ma. Whether f actually always (or even usually) equals ma is another thing entirely.
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If we had such proofs for God, odds are I'd be in the choir right now. There is no faith involved beyond assuming that which I haven't directly tested is also valid. Likewise when someone comes along as shows that they are not valid, I'm willing to change that 'faith' I have.
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If you think that there is such a thing as a proof for any of newton's laws or the laws of thermodynamics than you are mistaken. They are nothing more than observations of how things happen, and it would clearly be fallacious to claim that the fact that you have observed something to be true every time you've observed it means that it is true all of the time.
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Originally Posted by Augi
@ Leto-
I can observe that the scientific theories I use in school and work are valid. I can physically see them in practice. There is no faith in that.
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The faith comes in when you attempt to apply the things you have directly observed to the things you have not.
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The common misconception about "laws" in science is that they are not actually laws, but observations that are so basic we have no real ways to prove them. Quantum Mechanics is a theory, despite the work that validates it, only because a better theory can come along and replace it, once one is found.
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It isn't a misconception. There is no proof for the notion that energy is conserved, there is no proof for the belief that heat can only flow from hot to cold. It is impossible to prove the validity of a set of rules from within those rules' jurisdiction. You can't use geometry to validate the axioms on which geometry is based, and first principals are axioms, albeit axioms well supported by experimental evidence.