That's simply replacing on religion with another, but those who are doing so refuse to acknowledge what they're doing and have managed to convince (brainwash) a great many people somehow, that trusting in *science* is somehow better; more sane, more rational, more reasonable that believing in a god.
Actually, all men have faith, it's just a matter of what they put it in. Those who wish to reject God have simply replaced Him with science and/or *reason*. It takes faith in the system, that it will always work as it has, even though they have no reason to expect it except precedent- *it always has before*. And it takes trust that the practitioners are reliable and the system set up by those practitioners is accurate and reliable.
It is simply another system of beliefs; a religion or philosophy.
So very true, metmom.
Which basically puts them in the identical position as that of the ancient Greeks, who thought that the birth of "the grey-eyed Athena" -- the goddess of reason and intellect and cultic deity of Athens -- consisted in springing forth "fully formed from the brow of Zeus." Don't ask any questions about that! That's just the way "it happened."
Such men as think this way reject the Christian God as the foundation of truth; but Zeus would probably be okay for that purpose. :^) Any foundation at all for some sort of ersatz truth will do in the end, so long as it is not the God of the Christian Bible.
However, Zeus, like all the Olympian gods, is a created being. That is to say, all the Olympian gods (according to Plato) have a divine origin beyond themselves. They are intramundane gods. Yet it is to the extramundane, to the "Beyond" (i.e., beyond the Cosmos) or Unknown God that one must look for the Source of truth and reason, not to Zeus, who himself derives his existence from it.
Somehow I continue to find Greek mythology relevant to our own disordered times....
Thanks so much for writing, metmom!