4 Faiths: Why Science Needs Religion
Science and religion; both are needed
“Faith” is defined as belief or trust which is not based on proof. The institution most commonly derided for its reliance on faith is religion. However, many fail to see that the institution now praised as the embodiment of reason and opponent of religion actually has its foundation on four articles of faith. These “Four Faiths of Science” may be summarized as such:
Nature is all that exists (aka. there is no such thing as the ‘supernatural’)
The primary operating principle of science is that miracles must be ignored. Science would not go far if its scientists could merely call upon the supernatural to explain a perplexing problem. However, many modern scientists have mistaken this principle as encompassing all of life: since science ignores the supernatural, they say, the supernatural must not exist. In fact, it is impossible to prove the absence of the “supernatural” when the “natural” is the only place we can look for proof!
Humans are capable of perceiving the whole of - or even true - reality
Our picture of reality consists of five senses: sight, smell, taste, hearing, and touch. Our brains can only focus on a certain amount of the information our senses receive at one time, and most of our experiences are discarded from our memories. What I actually experience is my brain’s re-enactment of reality using neural impulses. The range of information we receive from our surroundings is extremely limited, and thus we will never be able to understand existence entirely. We may create technology which is capable of extending our senses, e.g. through infrared vision or supersonics, but we are still experiencing everything the machines tell us with our same five senses (D’Souza, 2007 - chapter 15: “The world beyond our senses: Kant and the limits of reason”).
Finally, as J.B.S. Haldane said: “If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose my beliefs are true... And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms”, (Haldane, 1927). Where does the concept of “truth” come from? What reason do we have for supposing the unintelligent stuff which makes up our brains can give us a sure path to truth? The truth is: it can’t.
The universe operates according to reason (aka. it follows certain laws)
This belief is so deeply entrenched in our civilization that it doesn’t occur to hardly anyone that inanimate objects don’t actually have to follow rules. We see an object fall and assume the fall was caused by gravity; the thought never enters our minds that the fall could merely have happened due to chance. Because all observations have shown that unsupported things fall towards the ground, we say it is unreasonable to assume otherwise.
However, what many scientists won’t admit is that there is no proof that the universe is rational; that is, it is impossible to prove that nature even follows laws at all. All the evidence supporting the existence of laws may merely have been created by chance; objects might have been falling towards the earth for as long as we can remember, but we can’t tell if those countless falls were due to gravity or just random movement.
One might argue that even though we don’t know whether the universe operates according to reason, the likelihood that all the experiments already performed and all the observations made of rational laws being the result of chance is extremely small. However, probability is no excuse for dismissing possibility. Many scientists scoff at the anthropic theory, which holds that some sort of intelligent designer must have created the universe because the odds of a universe having the exact conditions to support life are extraordinarily small (as much as 1:10^229, according to astronomer Lee Smolin).
If you can protest to someone using odds in support of the theory of design, you must also protest to using odds in support of the theory of natural order. In fact, no one can even guess what the odds of having a reasonable universe are. Many scientists love highlighting the fact that we inhabit a tiny planet orbiting an insignificant star buried inside a galaxy in a remote backwater of the universe. How much must our tiny species observe in this unimaginable vastness before it can even begin estimating odds?
I am in no way advising that anyone relinquish their belief in the universe’s orderliness - indeed we would probably go mad if we truly believed everything in the universe happened by chance instead of adhering to certain patterns. I am only calling attention to the fact that we cannot prove whether the universe follows laws or not, and that our belief in such laws can be therefore considered a form of faith.
The human mind is capable of comprehending the universe’s laws
We are all aware that ideas can vary profoundly based on a person’s intelligence. During the construction of a new science or scientific theory numerous observations are collected and compared, various schools of thought emerge with competing interpretations of those observations, and eventually a theory emerges which fits the observations best and is accepted by a majority of scientists (Kuhn, 1962). Those theories that are accepted and elaborated upon may seem accurate, but we can’t know if there wasn’t an even better theory which no one thought of.
Mistakes like this have their own broad piece of history: obvious examples include beliefs in the world’s flatness or that it was the center of the universe. If the universe does have laws, those who follow the enterprise of science must also have faith - and a lot of hope - that they have the brainpower to discover the true laws, not just a crude and misleading interpretation of them. This point combined with #2 produces a daunting obstacle: not only do we have a limited amount of information which might not come close to giving us the entire picture, but we might not even be smart enough to figure out what information we do have.
Science is not supposed to be an enterprise of faith, yet it is forced to borrow these four articles of faith before it has even begun. Furthermore, because these four articles originated in faith, it is only faith which can be used to explain them - reason and observation are useless. All science can say is: “the articles just exist”. This is why science needs religion: to offer a construct whereby these articles can be seen to make sense (the first article is an exception, of course).
As an EXAMPLE, I will explain how my own faith answers these questions: the universe was created by an all-powerful, intelligent being who planned for us to be here, and made us different from other creatures in that he gave us a soul and characteristics similar to His own, with a certain capability to understand ourselves and the world he created for us. Is there proof for this? No. Does it make more sense than “the universe just happens to be rational and capable of being comprehended by us insignificant and limited animals”? To me, yes. There is an enormous variety of faiths with an almost equal variety of explanations for our existence...
SOURCES:
Ideas and inspiration for these four faiths were taken from:
D’Souza, D. (2007). What’s so great about Christianity? Washington D.C.: Regnery Publishing Inc.
Haldane, J.B.S. (1927). Possible Worlds. London: Chatto and Windus., pg. 209
Smolin, L. (1997). The Life of the Cosmos. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, pg. 37, 45
Kuhn, T.S. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago, MI: University of Chicago Press.
