Testing Science and Religion: Acceptance vs. Faith

I was recently retelling someone about the discussion on science and religion that came about as a result of an email conversation that resulted from a talk I gave to the Austin Geological Society. In this conversation, I was struck by the common misunderstanding of the difference between faith in religion and "faith" in science. In this case, the person used "faith" to mean religious faith but "belief" to mean faith in science.

There are two kinds of "faith" being discussed here. Sometimes scientists use words like faith and belief (and thus they must be distinguished from religious faith). I instead avoid using words like "faith" and "belief" in scientific discussions because they are imprecise, confusing, and instead use the word acceptance because I think it more clearly relates to the underlying concepts.

An example of how this is often used in an argument: one could assert that faith in God is no different than a scientist's faith in some long held tenant of science that he/she never directly observed, such as the existence of atoms.

While I myself have never seen an atom nor done an experiment in a laboratory to confirm their existence, it is unnecessary for me to do this in order to accept the validity of atomic theory because of the way science works. Although this is a widely-accepted scientific theory, I always could (given the time and equipment) reproduce someone else's experiment to validate some prediction of the theory. This is the concept of testability. Testability is one of the key components of science. In order for any assertion to be called a scientific one, independent observers must be able to test it reliably and repeatably.

We scientists must, at some point, accept tthe work of others who have come before us has gone through the process of peer review, testing, and repeating. If an idea has been reliably demonstrated as a useful scientific hypothesis or theory, it is moved into the core of scientific knowledge. If we did not accept that the process of science works, we could never spend any of our time investigating new unsolved problems. We could constantly be caught in a lather-rinse-repeat loop of trying to verify something we already know forever and ever.

Some choose to call this "faith" or "belief" in science, but these words deny the care and rigor of the process and the underlying foundation of testability; so, I choose to say I accept these scientific ideas as valid science.

By contrast, religious faith has no foundation of testability. The distinguishing feature of religious faith is that it one is asked to accept a given idea with no possibility of testing or proving it.

I have no problem with this personally or professionally. I do not begrudge anyone their religious faith. Like Dennis Miller, I believe there is no point to "fighting to the death about what happens after you die". As a scientist, I concur that science is and must be agnostic about anything which is not scientifically testable.

The flipside of this coin is the problem we face here in Texas, around the country, and the world in general: when people use religious ideas to make scientific assertions. If you hold a religious belief that disagrees with some component of science, then you must also be aware that you are crossing the boundary between science and religion. You are now using religion to make a scientifically testable claim ("I believe science has X wrong because the Bible says Y.").

Science is agnostic about religion, despite what Dawkins, Hitchens and PZ Myers all say. Dawkins is particularly fond of his "God Hypothesis", in which he claims that the existence of God can be effectively disproved because the probability of his existence is so small as to be impossible. But this is a philosophical exercise and not a true scientific hypothesis because there is no real test.

It's also a bit disingenuous as well. In "The God Delusion", Dawkins makes the exact opposite argumen to support the search for a scientific explanation of the origin of life. Even though such an event is extremely unlikely and nearly statistically impossible, Dawkins writes, he goes on to explain that statistics and probability just tell you about likelihood and that a single event. no matter how improbable something is, it is still always physically possible, and if it happened (since we're all here, hey it must have happened somehow), then you ignore the statistics and deal with reality. He writes this after asserting his God Hypothesis and relying on the same level of statistical unlikelihood as a justification to deny the existence of God, so I find this sort of double standard unhelpful and toxic to the broader conversation to increasing peoples' understanding of science.

It also demonstrates how a single scientist can be flawed or make a false assertion, but the process of science will always win out in the end. The bad arguments, the frauds, the flawed theories--science has consistently proven that its methodology and rigorous application will eventually lead to the best ideas.