What Faith and Science Have in Common

Mr Holdsworth tackles the Faith v Science debate. 

His introduction:

Science is a tool that we developed to help us observe and interpret the habitual behaviour of the natural world. The point about the habitual nature of the universe is something I emphasize because the vast enterprise of science depends on a very important assumption: that the universe behaves consistently. Most ancient cultures did not believe in this underlying assumption which is a reasonable explanation for why they weren’t able to develop something as rigorous as the scientific method. Instead, they believed that natural phenomenon were actually manifestations of the personalities and temperaments of the gods which meant that they could be chaotic and subjective rather than objective. When they witnessed the weather behave certain ways, they didn’t think they were observing natural systems behaving according to objective and intelligible laws. The advent of science depended on a departure from anthropomorphist pagan interpretations of the natural world. The assumptions needed for science depended on a more collective belief that could be universally embraced and this unprecedented collective belief was eventually found in two great civilizations because of their underlying religious beliefs - Christianity and Islam. And the reason why these two civilizations were able to go further than any predecessor in the development of a scientific understanding is because they unanimously agreed that the universe was intelligible. They could watch the behaviour of cosmic bodies like planets, moons, and stars and record what they saw anticipating that they’d see the same thing tomorrow. They were set in motion and behave according to laws and patterns defined by an intelligence which means that when we apply our intelligence in observing those patterns, we should be able to make some sense out of them and as we do so we don’t have to be afraid of provoking divine wrath. You could take samples from nature and study them irreverently because those natural elements aren’t constituents of a particular deity. This is something that is so easy to dismiss but put yourself on the other side of history in which there is no existing scientific discipline. Are you, as a curious thinker, actually going to spend all the time it takes to make hundreds of observations and gather pages of hand recorded data when everyone around you is convinced that the data will never be consistent and will never resemble anything intelligent? Probably not? The only reason you would do that is if you’ve already accepted this notion that reality is objective and for those cultures, that was a massive leap of faith. Christians and Muslims didn’t need to take this leap of faith because they already took it by believing that God created the natural world and set it in motion to be governed by intelligible laws. That’s why, if you went to a monastery in the early middle ages, you wouldn’t find dark age superstition, but libraries of hand written materials that were a rich deposit of knowledge, philosophy, and eventually, science. That’s why the first universities were established by the Catholic Church and why it’s a complete fabrication to say that faith and reason are adversaries. The truth is, if it weren’t for the faith of European Christians and middle Eastern Muslims, we wouldn’t have the science of today. The thing about science is, unless you have the intellectual horsepower, academic training, and time to scrutinize every scientific claim, you’re have to admit that you’re accepting those claims on faith. Medicine is a perfect example of what I’m talking about. If your doctor were to tell you that you had something critically wrong with your body and that he had to cut you open to fiddle around inside a gaping wound or else you were going to die, most of us would say, “Ya, go for it. Whatever you gotta do.” Because we blindly accept the authority of the dude in the lab coat. None of us would be like, “Actually doc, I’m gonna take those blood samples home and take a look under my reading lamp to see what’s really going on.” Almost everything you know is based on your reliance of faith upon other people. From the books you’ve read, to the media, to your teachers. No reasonable person insists on scrutinizing every transmission of information because it would take a PhD understanding of the subject matter and unlimited spare time to do so. So, at the end of the day, I challenge you to recognize that whatever you put your faith in, whether it be science, your teachers, your own intellect, the media, your religious tradition, recognize that it is faith that you are exercising.