Science and Faith

Science and Faith are complementary important elements of all Religions, secular or spiritual. Seeking minds practice Faith and Science continually to discover ever more true Religion, whether secular or spiritual.

Science

Science is knowledge. Or more usefully, the Scientific Method is the process of gaining knowledge, whether secular or spiritual.

I tell my children that "Science is not what you read in a book; it is what you do in a lab." Again, science is not what you read, it is what you do.

True science is the pure knowledge of a single piece of fact, or the act of performing a personal experiment to arrive at that knowledge. True science is accessible and repeatable, though the price may be higher than the average person is willing or able to pay. If a person considers the price of knowledge, or science, too great for immediate payment, she may reject the associated Religion, whether secular or spiritual, or she may adopt an interim policy of Faith.

Faith

Faith is a working belief in a hypothesis. By means of the Scientific Method, faith is transcended or discarded as a hypothesis (secular or spiritual) is either shown to be a fact or a fallacy (useful or unuseful).

Through faith people are able to take advantage of useful facts (secular or spiritual) about whose truth they have no personal knowledge. There are innumerable facts about which people can become aware, but about which people have no time or resources to become knowledgeable. If the price of a piece of knowledge is beyond the will or ability of a person, the person has no choice but to proceed on faith or reject the information. Because of this vast universe of unknown facts, it would be very difficult to accomplish anything at all in the world without proceeding very often on faith. Rejecting information as a standard operating procedure would be a very poor and ineffective approach to life at the start. Acting on informed faith is the standard and effective approach to living.

Faith by reasoning people is always partially informed to some degree. We use the term Blind Faith to express faith that is particularly uninformed, or that appears irrational. What an observer calls Blind Faith may be irrational or may be in fact rationally, but unusually scantily, informed. People may act rationally on what we call Blind Faith because they have what they believe is good reason to trust some source. If Jesus, my father, or Albert Einstein has a reputation for giving a certain type of good information, I may rationally have faith in his word, and that might be termed Blind Faith, though somewhat well informed.

Science and Faith

When a hypothesis of faith proves true or false, useful or unuseful, it ceases to become a hypothesis and becomes either discarded or becomes a piece of experiential knowledge, fact, or theory. Thus faith is a prelude to science (secular or spiritual). And through an act of science (secular or spiritual), faith in a particular hypothesis is discarded. We may accurately say then that faith and science are complementary, science being the natural validator of faith.

Religion

Religion (secular or spiritual) is an operating system for life that consists of a mishmash of science and faith. All people have a religion. As people mature in a religion, their religion increases in personally and scientifically proven aspects of knowledge as it decreases in the number of aspects relying on faith. Because of the building body of personal knowledge supporting the remaining aspects of faith in mature people, their remaining faith is more rational, less blind, and more effective or powerful. They are at the same time increasingly skilled scientists and increasingly confident in their faith.

Religionists who fail to use science (who stay out of the lab and never test their faith with experiments) never mature in their religion (secular or spiritual). They remain textbook religionists, dogmatically holding to the assertions of their masters. Advanced non-scientific religionists (secular or spiritual) may become expert logicians who are able to perform gymnastic feats with the dogma of religions (secular or spiritual). They may excel at showing how the assertions of their masters are logically consistent and beautiful. But non-scientific religionists never become masters themselves of their religion (secular or spiritual).

Science and Religion

It is common to speak of Science and Religion as opposites. But this line of thinking leads to error. I propose below a more consistent way to conceive and speak

• Religion = World View. An all-encompassing personal approach to life. Everybody has a world view or religion.
• Faith = Action based on belief in the unknown aspects of a person's world view or religion. Everybody practices faith in at least some aspects of their religion (secular or spiritual).
• Science = The Scientific Method. A repeatable, accessible experiment leading to personal knowledge. It is wise to practice science experiments to supercede faith with direct knowledge.

Thus an inexperienced disciple of a physicist or a biologist is every bit as much the religionist as the inexperienced disciple of a holy man. And a holy man is every bit as much a scientist as a renowned physicist or biologist.