IS SCIENCE A RELIGION

IS SCIENCE A RELIGION?

                I would like to compare science and religion in this post. Adherents of both seek after truth. Religion depends upon scriptures, prayer, sometimes a human intermediary and interpreter, usually from a church, and faith; science claims to use our senses and the scientific method, but in reality also depends upon written materials, a human intermediary and interpreter, usually from some scientific organization and faith. Prayer is of course usually missing from science and I will explain below why I believe science depends upon a modified version of faith. This use of faith may make science in some ways almost another religion.

                The scientific method consists roughly of the following steps:

• Ask a Question
• Do Background Research
• Construct a Hypothesis
• Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment
• Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion
• Communicate Your Results

The critical parts for our discussion are creating a hypothesis, testing the hypothesis, and analyzing the data and drawing a conclusion. Coming up with a hypothesis is somewhat subjective at best since it means trying to guess at a scientific conclusion. Hopefully a scientist has done the proper research so that the hypothesis is reasonable. It is also sometimes hard to remove personal bias from this part of the method as well, but if one can prove the hypothesis, then it really doesn’t matter how the hypothesis was generated. Testing the hypothesis involves observation and measurement by using scientific instruments and our human senses. Analyzing the data and coming to a conclusion involves mathematics and logic. You start with some premises or assumptions, then work your way through the logic to come to a conclusion.

The five senses which Aristotle first identified are touch, smell, hearing, sight and taste. Each sense is connected to a sense organ; skin, nose, ears, eyes and tongue if we don’t get too scientific about the actual organ itself. Sight is the sense most often used in the scientific method, usually used by observing something, or reading an instrument or some detector’s output. The other senses also obtain data, but the data is more difficult to quantify. It should also be noted that there are other senses beyond these five that humans also have. For example, there are organs in our inner ears which allow us to sense balance. These other senses are not widely accepted by scientists as useful in the scientific method. One sense that is way down at the bottom of the barrel from a scientific viewpoint, but which is very important in religion is the ability to feel input from God often as a result of prayer or perhaps music. We say we feel it in our heart although the sense organ itself may actually be in our brain or in our spirit/soul.

This is a real sense which could be proven by science if they had an interest. I offer the following as an example. Several weeks ago, I had the experience of singing in a church choir for a congregation of over a thousand people. There were lots of small children and thus a constant background noise of child sounds, that parents were unable to control. The choir sang the closing hymn. It was accompanied by a warm, wonderful feeling that made it difficult to sing and still maintain composure. As we finished I looked out at the congregation and noticed a number of people crying, but the most remarkable thing was that it was totally silent. Not one of the thousand people, including all of the children and babies, was making a sound. Not one! That is a measurable event and to me indicates communication from God. It is also repeatable. A scientist might frame it in different language, but the actual event was undeniable. The scientific method can thus be used to find religious truth if one is allowed to use this feeling as an observable. The hypothesis might be God exists or this is the church I should go to, or this is the person I should marry or whatever; the experiment is praying for an answer. The conclusion is reached by analyzing the data received by our senses. This technique is indeed a way of finding truth, whether it be religious or scientific truth. In fact I believe that both kinds of truth will eventually converge to the universal truth, which is truth known by God.

So, in what way does science need to have faith? First of all, they have faith in the scientific method. In a fashion, this is their god. Generally, I have no complaint about this; as I said the same method can be used in religion. However, there are several parts of the method which might not be worthy of faith. Observation is by sight. Some have presented theories that we live in an artificial world that may operate under different laws than the universe in general. That could completely negate the principle that what we observe is universal truth. The allegory of the cave by Socrates is an example of this theory. So science has faith that we can observe truth. Under the “analyze and draw conclusions” section, scientists have faith in their assumptions. For example, in radiocarbon dating, one assumption is that the percentage of carbon-14 in the atmosphere has remained relatively constant over the last 60 thousand years. If that is not true, then all of the radiocarbon dates that we are so familiar with go right out the window. Often archaeologists make startling assumptions about what people or animals were thinking or doing thousands of years ago and no one questions them, because they are experts. Science has faith in their experts and their assumptions.

What if we received a present in the mail? It was a beautiful watch, exquisitely made and stunningly accurate. We could make two assumptions concerning the watch. One, it was made by an extremely competent watchmaker, then purchased, wrapped and sent to us by a friend. Or two, it built itself, wrapped itself, addressed the package and sent itself to us, or maybe even a million monkeys working for a billion years did it. I ask you, what are the probabilities for these two events? They are about 1 for the first event and close to 0 for the other two possibilities. OK, now what are the probabilities that our bodies simply evolved over billions of years from a one celled creature of some kind versus the probability that a superior intellect who lives somewhere else in the universe created and packaged us and sent us to this planet. Again the probabilities are about 0 for the first event and 1 for the second. What kind of faith does it take to believe that we evolved from nothing to what we are today, something that is thousands of times more complex than the best machine man has ever designed?

Science itself is always evolving. One discovery supplants the last one and truth changes to become more accurate. I have no doubt that eventually this will lead to universal truth, but right now it is still changing. Some theories probably have arrived at the truth, but how do we really know which ones they are? No. there’s still a lot of faith required in science. I might also add that not all religion is true either. Our faith may be in the wrong individual; consider all of the intermediaries involved in religion, who are after all, humans. None are or were perfect. Our only hope is to have faith in God and Jesus and pray that we will be humble enough to recognize religious truth when He sends it.

Elmer Grubbs

A semi-rational conservative