9.0 Final Thoughts

Throughout the course of modern history, science and the scientific method have contributed substantially to the ever shrinking scope of religious claims about the world as well as the scope of religious authority. Science has done far more to both explain the world around us and help us improve our condition than millennia we have endured religion. It's not surprising that some religious believers resent this view, and among their response is to deny that science is any different from religion.

An important aspect of this flawed tactic is to insist that science doesn't really provide objective knowledge about the world and that it doesn't utilize a consistently reliable or proven method for acquiring knowledge. Instead, science is supposed to be based on guesswork, "theories," and false beliefs which are all inferior to "true" religions, like Christianity, and their revelations from God, as described in the Bible.

There is a curious contradiction here because people who argue for this myth end up involved in two efforts which should be recognized as contradictory: first, they have to denigrate science and argue that it really isn't as good as its defenders claim; second, they have to argue that science is actually a type of religion which relies on faith, not unlike their own religion uses faith (a false accusation, and a "tu quoque" fallacy, all in one). This argument denigrates science, and by implication their own religions by essentially arguing that they both are "merely" faith-based, rendering them both rather inferior methods of obtaining knowledge. It would be far more persuasive and clever to argue that one's own religion is as good as science, and then that science is also a religion.

However, we have seen in previous sections that science lacks the major characteristics of religion, so even going down this path is a waste of time. We see that religions and other mystical belief systems always fail when trying to obtain the objectivity and reliability of science. The reason is that the advances made by science, the benefits of science, and reliability of science cannot be matched at any level by any religion. Religions have claimed for all of human history that they have received special information from gods, but at no point did any of those gods explain how to utilize electricity, how to improve sanitation, the origins of disease, the building blocks of matter, and so forth. Much of this discovery was already well underway even during the earliest stages of modern science — they didn't even require a fully developed scientific method or scientific community for much progress to be made.

To be fair, it can be argued that a certain amount of "faith" exists with how average person accepts what science says. Few people are in a position to confirm the results of modern scientific experiments so they have to accept what others say based on their experience and authority. Unlike with religion, however, anyone can, in principle, confirm those experiments on their own — and the ability of others to repeat experiments to make sure they are right is one of the most distinctive attributes which defines the scientific method.

Moreover, most people can observe the practical impacts of what science says and thus don't need to conduct experiments to confirm that scientists are right. Not everyone is able to understand the theories behind how electricity operates, but everyone is able to witness the obvious and dramatic effects of electricity at work — both good and bad.

Some religious believers might claim the same on behalf of their god(s), but there are many believers from many religions claiming the same about many different gods. Not all of those gods can exist, so not all of the claimed "effects" can be attributed to real gods. For every god who blesses Israel, there is another god who is failing Canaan. Everyone, however, uses the same electricity and sees the same effects of electricity. There aren't alternative denominations of "energy" with competing claims about what the "real" source of energy is. Thus the claims about gods and their effects do have to be taken on faith, but the claims of science — for example the science of electricity — don't need to be taken on "faith" in the same way.

Lastly, I would add that religions don't re-evaluate their basic tenets. They don't put themselves and their doctrines on trial as part of their fundamental operation, as does science. They are not evidence based. Their knowledge is revealed, not discovered empirically, and is offended by criticism. To paraphrase an exchange heard during a evolution/creation debate, the creationist quipped that “his textbook was cheaper”. The evolutionist struck back with, “perhaps, but that’s because we update ours occasionally”.

It ultimately boils down to this: when it comes to obtaining knowledge about the universe, are you going to trust empirical methods and logic, or revealed knowledge? Which will you rely on? Which do you rely on when crossing a busy street or when looking for your lost keys? Keep in mind that even when people from different cultures and eras use the former (empirical) method, their findings all agree. But there are thousands of different and conflicting versions of revealed knowledge. This stark difference: consistency and agreement vs. inconsistency and incompatibility should be very compelling.