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 people more oriented by the mystical, the supernatural, or religious resent this view, and among their response is to deny that science is any different from religion or belief in the supernatural - that it is just one of many competing worldviews.

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 attempts to trivialize the methodologies and requirements of 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, the comings and goings of the seasons, and so forth. Much of this discovery was already well underway even during the earliest stages of modern science over 2000 years ago — the fathers of science in ancient Greece didn't even require a fully developed scientific method or scientific community for much progress to be made.

Some argue that the average, non-technical person accepts what science says based on "faith". It is true that 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. But in the same way, we rely on experts to fix our cars, wire our houses for electricity, style our hair, and fix our leaky faucets. We do this not out of "faith" that they know what they are doing. We have done whatever due diligence we can, and decide which of the experts in these fields we should trust to do the work. By the same token, we decide to trust experts on climate science, cosmology, evolutionary biology, physics, and all the other scientific disciplines. In principle, we could learn plumbing or auto mechanics, just as we could learn astro-physics, but we just don't have the time, the inclination, and probably the talent to do so. Unlike with religion, anyone can, in principle, confirm scientific experiments on their own. The ability of others to repeat experiments (or show that those experiments cannot be replicated) 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 in their electric appliances.

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" at all - you would be insane to debate the reality of the science behind electricity.

I should 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. They make claims that cannot be verified or falsified - they can't be evaluated at all, but must simply be accepted or rejected. 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.

As Steven Novella wrote in his Neurologica Blog.

What do you think science is? There's nothing magical about science. It is simply a systematic way for carefully and thoroughly observing nature and using consistent logic to evaluate results. Which part of that exactly do you disagree with? Do you disagree with being thorough? Using careful observation? Being systematic? Or using consistent logic?

... and ...

We should reject the "science is religion" gambit that Creationists and other anti-science proponents will not let go of. This is philosophically naive. Science does not require any worldview. It just follows a certain set of methods. You don't have to believe anything to do science. You just have to follow methodological naturalism. Philosophers specifically distinguish between methodological naturalism, which is just following the methods of science, and philosophical naturalism. With methodological naturalism, you assume "cause and effect" exists in the universe, that you can't invoke magic in scientific arguments. It doesn't require that you actually believe that there is nothing magical in the universe. Having that actual belief is philosophical naturalism, which many scientists do, in fact, subscribe to - but it is not required to successfully "do" science. Science is not about belief - it is about a set of methods. Religion is about belief. Science is categorically not a world view, it is not a religion.