Faith and Science

Preliminary Note

This blog post represents my thoughts and experiences, and I recognize that I lack much philosophical breadth and critical thinking training that would open further understanding to the topic. Because I love science and spirituality, I do find this particular subject very interesting and I have thought about it for many years. 

Introduction to the Age-Old Question

"What is truth?" asked Pontius Pilate, responding to Jesus Christ's divine testimony. I'm not sure whether this question was cynical rhetoric or genuine curiosity, but if it was a genuine question, as it has been among many throughout history, it could be interpreted in a couple of ways: what is objective truth, or how does one know truth? Today I want to explore the latter inquiry: how do we know what is true? 

There are many responses to this question, with some extreme claims being that only religion tells us what is true, or only science tells us what is true. As it turns out, this exact question is the foundation of an entire branch of philosophy called epistemology, the study of how we know what we claim to know. It has been explored for millennia by some of the greatest thinkers in history. 

In academia today, it often seems that the question is whether religion or spirituality is ever a credible source of truth, and in my experience, many scholars see religion as an absurd or even shameful ideology. From a certain perspective, I see where they are coming from; history is replete with examples of dogmatic religionists, from church clergy forcing Galileo to recant his model of heliocentricity to the utter rejection of Darwin's theory of evolution. These scholars may also occasionally encounter those that comment things like "the universe couldn't have started as an explosion", or from my personal experience, "you really believe that we came from monkeys?". It must be very frustrating to spend years studying empirically supported physical and other sciences only to hear from religious believers that their models can't possibly be correct because an ancient book or an old man says so. 

I waste no energy to conjure evidence that scientific experiment is very good at building models of understanding and approaching truth through falsification, and there is no doubt that humankind has reaped wonderful rewards from its progress. However, science itself has limitations; it is evident that there exists dogmatism within the scientific community, particularly for those who subscribe to scientism. For example, in the novel Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind, renowned anthropologist Yuval Harari writes about the early history of humankind but then suddenly begins a shifted monologue, saying "there are no gods in the universe outside of the common imagination of human beings . . .  religious myths are imagined fictions produced from collective imagination, not objective reality". Using the principles of science, how could Harari know this? Did he make this conclusion by studying the bones of these early humans? Here, Harari doesn't appear to use scientific methodology to make this claim. It seems that his statement is formed on the basis of conjecture or emotion, yet presents his argument as if it were rooted in pure science. In any case, I reject the idea that one can truly know the metaphysical solely on a scientific basis. Indeed, the word metaphysical means "beyond the physical". While science can certainly disprove some religious claims, I again impress that the scientific method is, ironically, incapable of omniscience. 

The best supporting evidence I have is Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems. In 1931, the Austrian-American logician Kurt Gödel mathematically proved that within any consistent logical system (like mathematics used for science) there must exist truths that cannot be proven or disproven by their own axioms. In other words, it is impossible to find all truth using a single logical system because the system's own rules get in the way. Perhaps a bit sadly, his findings shattered the ambitions of many mathematicians who thought everything in the universe could be described using mathematics. Some theoretical physicists cite these theorems to suggest that consciousness may not be purely computational, but I digress. Our best knowledge of logic tells us that one logical system alone is incapable of capturing all truth. In layman's terms, science cannot prove everything that is true.

Conversely, can theology prove all truth? I've already mentioned cases of devout dogmatism, so the natural conclusion would be that it historically has not, and therefore does not. According to my appeal of Gödel's work, if theology were a purely logical epistemology, the answer would also be no. But maybe these kind of questions are not very fruitful; perhaps a better question would be what can theology prove? We've already discussed how useful science is, but what does religion bring to the table? I believe that spirituality has a priceless artifact that is rare in the scientific community—faith. 

On Faith

To me, faith has been the most hard-earned tool for which I have ever worked. While studying topics such as fluid dynamics, heat transfer, differential equations, and the many other wonderful topics I have learned in engineering have filled my being with the invaluable, insatiable wonder of discovering the beauty of the universe, they have not been so illuminating as my faith has been. I will attempt to explain these observations by answering the previous question: what can theology, or religious faith, prove? 

Faith and empirical science operate in different domains. Just as a micrometer isn't very good at measuring the internal temperature of a ribeye steak, the purpose of faith is not to come to a conclusion through empirical falsification, or even to prove physical laws. Unfortunately, this is where historical and modern opponents of heliocentricity, evolution theory, spherical earth, and other dogma have been snagged; that is, they expect more physical precision from the Bible or other religious texts than they were originally intended to provide. In his Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, Galileo Galilei defends his astronomical observations that contradicted prevailing interpretations of scripture, stating "scripture… accommodates itself to the understanding of the common people", and "the intention of the Holy Spirit [and the Bible] is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how heaven goes". From Galileo's perspective, the supposed conflict between science and faith is simply a stubborn misunderstanding of purpose. If this is true, then faith does not seek to replace empirical observation. 

I will not attempt to resolve the debate of "how is there something rather than nothing?", because both methods seem to encounter a dead end very quickly.  However, religion attempts to answer why anything exists at all, and why we exist in the first place; these quests are clearly beyond the domain of science. 

How Can We Trust Faith?

Again, many scientists would claim that spirituality is not a credible arbiter of truth: arguments such as "faith is blind", or "gods are only used to fill the gaps of human comprehension" are very common and should not be dismissed. Truly, the fallacy of blind faith is not hard to accept. For instance, if B.J. Novak approached me and boasted that he could predict the winner of any college basketball game with absolute certainty, I would be very hesitant to believe him. Without evidence or prior experience, his claim would require "blind faith". However, the inverse would highlight an important distinction: through experience creating pathetic March Madness brackets, watching games, and seeing upsets, I have well-grounded reason to believe that Mr. Novak's claims to absolute certainty are unrealistic. In this sense, not all faith is blind. Some forms of belief are informed, tested, and refined over time, especially when done through firsthand experience. 

Why is faith a requirement of spirituality? If gods are real, why can't we observe them? Why do they not descend to the earth, appear to all mankind, and show themselves to us? For some time, this was a significant mental hurdle that I didn't know how to overcome, especially considering that God wants us to strictly obey a set of commandments. If He expects everyone to follow those commandments, then why not set the expectations more clearly? Why involve any level of ambiguity at all?

If God appeared in the sky every morning, faith would be replaced with compliance; perhaps more importantly, love would be replaced with . Elder Dale Renlund, a leader of my church, stated beautifully that "[God's] goal in parenting is not to have His children do what is right; it is to have His children choose to do what is right". 

To be continued!