3 What is faith?

The accusations which I quoted in section 2 all share one misconception – that the type of faith which backs up religious or superstitious belief is the same sort of conviction that serves as the foundation upon which rational, scientific knowledge is based.

The word, “faith” has several similar meanings, but with very different ramifications. You can consult any dictionary to get a listing of its many different definitions. We are concerned with only two senses of the word here:

There is religious faith, which is a strong spiritual conviction in the absence of, or even in contradiction to, external evidence.

And then there is rational faith – a belief, which is built on inference from past experience, material evidence, repeatable observations, and a trust in fundamental logical principles. In other words - justifiable, true conclusions.

These two meanings of the word are not only different, but the exact opposite of each other. Both of these uses of the word "faith" entail a belief or attitude that something is the case, or that some proposition about the world is true. However, it is disingenuous, misleading, and consciously deceptive to conflate faith in the reality of miracles, resurrections, angels and fairies with belief in an external world, evidence from that world, and logical rules for processing that evidence. This confused use of the word consolidates all of these non-empirical concepts into one category and one definition of “faith” – a belief that cannot be deductively proved. Instead, it would be more correct to put religious faith in the same category as belief in superstitions, ghost stories, leprechauns, and other myths and delusions rather than to associate it with the type of belief that underlies science.

Faith, in the traditional sense, is a very powerful force. Like many powerful concepts it has the potential to produce very good or very bad results. Faith can help people through uncertain and troubled times. There are some studies that indicate that it actually helps people recover from injury and disease. It is behind many great acts of kindness, charity, strength, and generosity. It can bring divided communities together. Faith can also have less beneficial outcomes - it can lead a nation to believe that their race should dominate the world, or that everyone should convert to a particular religion at the point of a sword. It can divide communities into those who share the faith and those who don't, who become targets of ostracism and punishment.

This document in no way will attempt to denigrate or belittle religious or spiritual faith. It has its place in peoples’ hearts and in the world at large. I only take exception to the characterization of science as being fundamentally a faith-based enterprise.

As Paul Davies wrote in Taking Science on Faith, “The term ‘doubting Thomas’ well illustrates the difference. In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue... Science has its own faith-based belief system. All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn't be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed. When physicists probe to a deeper level of subatomic structure, or astronomers extend the reach of their instruments, they expect to encounter additional elegant mathematical order. And so far this faith has been justified.”

Dr Davies view of faith, and the view taken by the others quoted previously, is problematic several ways:

1. It is factually wrong that science relies on faith. Any use of the word, "faith", that encompasses the way religious believers think and the way scientists think is a very diluted and useless concept. Science does rely on inference and induction, which, together comprise the "trust" we have that nature behaves in consistent, predictable ways. This trust has been exercised and shown to be reliable during a 500 year history involving a long, unbroken series of propositions and tests. The net result is what we know about physics, the other sciences, and about reality itself.


2. At first, this may simply appear to be an attempt by the non-rational side to bring science down to the their level – i.e., having no firm and provable basis for belief. But it is more than that. It is the first step in a process of the destruction of the scientific/rational worldview. The next shoe to drop would be to show that scientific faith is weak and lost without reliance on God; that it is an inferior form of faith. Next would be to persuade the scientific minded to abandon their principles and join the “saved” and those who subscribe to the “true” faith.


3. Even if it had any truth in it, it still doesn’t undermine the scientific criticism of religious faith. Simply asserting that the basis of science is as unjustifiable as that of religion and superstition does not strengthen the position of the irrational. That is an irrelevant argument and an example of the “Tu Quoque” (i.e., "you too") fallacy. Rather than argue for the merits of their irrational worldview, they resort to a “pot calling the kettle black” argument, which doesn’t address the underlying issue of whether the “pot” really is black.


4. Last, and certainly not of the least importance, this is a “fallacy of equivocation” – purposely using the same word (faith) in two very different ways. As described before, religious/superstitious faith is belief without evidence or even in the face of evidence and is based on hope and tradition. The beliefs that scientists come by are based on logic, evidence, and valid inferences from diverse experiences that all work together to confirm and support a common, consistent framework of understanding. This distinction is described in greater detail at the website, http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/8/12/4294/44070.

As Richard Dawkins said in his article, "Is Science a Religion", “Religious faith not only lacks evidence, its independence from evidence is its pride and joy, and is shouted from the rooftops.” All evidence-free faiths are based on dubious written accounts, oral tradition, ancient rituals, and long-established cultural norms whose origins fade into antiquity. There is no way to prove their claims. In fact, adherents of these faiths frequently discourage attempts to introduce proofs into their realm. Just as often, faiths of these types, which have survived to our day, have been self-selected precisely for their opacity and immunity from proof or disproof.