Differences between Religious and Scientific Faith

[Times Roman]

Keep it respectful mates. We are not in the lounge!

Can Scientific Belief Go Too Far? : 13.7: Cosmos And Culture : NPR

Last week, our own Tania Lombrozo ignited an intense discussion of the differences between factual and religious belief. I want to take off from there and examine a no less controversial issue, one that has been in the limelight of cutting-edge physics for the past few years: Do some scientists hold on to a belief longer than they should? Or, more provocatively phrased, when does a scientific belief become an article of faith?

To talk about faith in the context of science seems quite blasphemous. Isn't science the antithesis of faith, given that it is supposedly based on certainties, on the explicit verification of hypotheses? This vision of science as being perfectly logical and rational is an idealization. Of course, the product of scientific research must be something concrete: Hypotheses must be either confirmed or refuted, and data from experiments should be repeatable by others. Penicillin does cure diseases, airplanes fly and Halley's comet does come back every 76 years.

Things become more tentative at the cutting edge, where there are no certainties. What makes science so fascinating is that it aims at perfection even if it is the invention of fallible beings. It is this tension that moves our creativity forward.

Let me illustrate with a historical example. Early in the 20th century, physics was in a major crisis. A series of experiments demonstrated that the theories at hand, based on the mechanics of Isaac Newton and on the electromagnetism of Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell, failed to describe the properties of atomic matter. In the world of the very small — the world of quantum physics — reality seemed to play by a different set of rules. Scientists were forced to revise their worldview in radical ways.

In the classical world, the one we see around us, nature made sense — events following a nice chain of cause and effect — what we call determinism. In the quantum world, this certainty had to be placed aside: The properties of matter, of electrons in atoms, for example, had to be described by probabilities. However, Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Erwin Schrödinger and other great scientists involved in developing the theory refused to accept its apparent randomness as final. They believed that, deep down, nature had to follow simple causal rules, that determinism would triumph in the end.

This kind of posture, when there is a persistent holding on to a belief that is continually contradicted by facts, can only be called faith. In the quantum case, it's faith in an ordered, rational nature, even if it reveals itself through random behavior. "God doesn't play dice," wrote Einstein to his colleague Max Born. His conviction led him and others to look for theories that could explain the quantum probabilities as manifestations of a deeper order. And they failed. (And we now know that this randomness will not go away, being the very essence of quantum phenomena.)

There is, however, an essential difference between religious faith and scientific faith: dogma. In science, dogma is untenable. Sooner or later, even the deepest ingrained ideas — if proven wrong — must collapse under the weight of evidence. A scientist who holds on to an incorrect theory or hypothesis makes for a sad figure. In religion, given that evidence is either elusive or irrelevant, faith is always viable.

Bringing things to the present, we are currently going through a curious moment in high-energy physics, where some very popular theories may not be testable. This means that we can't determine whether they are wrong, which flies in the face of what science is about. Like a zombie that never dies, it's possible to come up with theories that can always be redefined to escape the reach of current experiments. Case in point: supersymmetry, a hypothetical theory where each particle of matter (electrons, quarks) gains a supersymmetric partner. The theory effectively doubles the number of fundamental particles of matter. Proposed in the early 1970s, so far no supersymmetric particle has been found. Hopes were high when the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland was turned on a few years back. They found the Higgs boson, but so far no signs of supersymmetry. We wrote about this in April, inspired by an article by physicists Joseph Lykken, from Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, and Maria Spiropulu, from the California Institute of Technology.

Some practitioners are disheartened, but others are confident that this will change next year, when the collider will run with twice the energy. If supersymmetric particles are found then, great: We will enter a new epoch of high-energy physics. But what if they aren't? My prediction is that there will be a split in the community. While some will abandon the theory for lack of experimental support, others will hold on to it, readjusting the parameters so that supersymmetry becomes viable at energies well beyond our reach. The theory will then be untestable for the foreseeable future, maybe indefinitely. Belief in supersymmetry will then be an article of faith.

How should we deal with this kind of situation in science? Clearly, scientists will do what they want (as long as they have funding for it); those who cling to supersymmetry will argue that it will drive them toward other hypotheses and that's OK. Maybe something will come up that will be testable. Others will search for explanations elsewhere.

The challenge, of course, is that we don't know the right answer. The worry is that we may never know it, in which case the program is scientifically useless. When you invest decades of your professional life in the pursuit of an idea, it's real hard to let go. Some never do.

[marcus300]

Very interesting topic and enjoyed reading it, no doubt this will open up many views and beliefs but no matter what our personal beliefs are sometimes we need evidence to back them up to really see what side of the fairy-tale and fact fence your really on.

[bartman314]

scientists are people and people sometimes act irrationally. ultimately useful theories must be testable or they will die out over time (from a scientific point of view) - or they will convert over and become a religion, which is effectively an untestable scientific theory... ;-)

professionally, i'm a scientist and have seen that different scientists have different standards of proof before they accept a given set of experimental evidence as a fact of nature. some are more liberal (need less data) and others more conservative (need more data) - sometimes the liberal scientists accept something too quickly and subsequent data casts doubt on the quality of the original experiments (like the higgs boson potentially) and the conservative scientists accept something too slowly (like some that continue to doubt the science underlying global warming). in the end though 'truth' as proven, repeatable experimental results prevails. theory is simply the construct that rationalizes experimental facts into a cohesive, self consistent framework. and... theory is only useful is it is predictive and testable. otherwise it is... religion and requires faith.

[Times Roman]

so why so many take the big bang as a fact?

[zempey]

Science is kinda like faith in a sense, it is what we understand to be factual, but is it really? They thought the earth was flat at one time, as a fact, but it wasn't, so they really had only faith that what they believed was fact until proven to be different than what they thought. The science they are dealing with now is so advanced, how can anyone be absolutely sure it is correct? Until either "God" or the Aliens come down and tell us what all this really means, we are just having faith in what we have learned up to this point in humanity.

[Times Roman]

Science is kinda like faith in a sense, it is what we understand to be factual, but is it really? They thought the earth was flat at one time, as a fact, but it wasn't, so they really had only faith that what they believed was fact until proven to be different than what they thought. The science they are dealing with now is so advanced, how can anyone be absolutely sure it is correct? Until either "God" or the Aliens come down and tell us what all this really means, we are just having faith in what we have learned up to this point in humanity.

not true. back then, without the scientific principle, they really didn't understand the definition of what a fact is. A fact is not an interpretation, it is what it is. It is a truth. We thought the world to be flat. But believing it to be flat doesn't make it a fact, nor to be true.

[zempey]

So how does that differ from today's science? They believe it to be fact, but what makes it fact? The belief that the pieces of the puzzle they put together add up so it must be fact? If the big bang is being questioned, why? New information, new ways of thinking, new science. It is all just guessing on a higher level, no different than when they thought the world was flat. With the information and understanding of the times, that is the conclusion they came to. Nothing can ultimately be proven, as we evolve and become smarter,, old theories come into question.

[Times Roman]

So how does that differ from today's science? They believe it to be fact, but what makes it fact? The belief that the pieces of the puzzle they put together add up so it must be fact? If the big bang is being questioned, why? New information, new ways of thinking, new science. It is all just guessing on a higher level, no different than when they thought the world was flat. With the information and understanding of the times, that is the conclusion they came to. Nothing can ultimately be proven, as we evolve and become smarter,, old theories come into question.

first, you leave arrogance out of it. you preface it by saying (instead of stating it is a fact), to say this is how we currently understand it. you be humble in your approach, because there are truly very few facts. And you fully expect your understanding of how things are now, for that to change.

We state things with degrees of confidence. In probabilistic terms.

It is the very nature of stating something as a fact is why we close our minds to other possibilities. it is a very big limitation for most people.

[zempey]

Then we get back to the original question of faith, what is the difference between the two? Doesn't seem like there is a difference, it's all in the interpretation and beliefs one has in what one believes to be true.

[lovbyts]

not true. back then, without the scientific principle, they really didn't understand the definition of what a fact is. A fact is not an interpretation, it is what it is. It is a truth. We thought the world to be flat. But believing it to be flat doesn't make it a fact, nor to be true.

Does it? Or does it just mean that we dont have or understand all the facts such as not being able to travel faster than light? They believed the world was flat because of the facts that some ships had sailed off the end of the earth, or so they thought. It was as close to fact as they could get without sacrificing their own life probably.

I think/believe our science is still in it's infancy and there are a lot of things we consider facts or proven by science, mathematics or??? In another 100 or 200 years they will probably look back on our science and think it was as laughable as when we thought the world was flat or that we were the center of the universe.

So how does that differ from today's science? They believe it to be fact, but what makes it fact? The belief that the pieces of the puzzle they put together add up so it must be fact? If the big bang is being questioned, why? New information, new ways of thinking, new science. It is all just guessing on a higher level, no different than when they thought the world was flat. With the information and understanding of the times, that is the conclusion they came to. Nothing can ultimately be proven, as we evolve and become smarter,, old theories come into question.

Well I guess I should have read down further before I wrote what I did since it was pretty much a repeat. lol

[zempey]

I too believe science of today is just scratching the surface of what's to come. Forms of energy, the speed of light, even telepathy, I believe will be looked at totally different when our understanding of these types of things reaches new levels. Once our knowledge becomes great enough, I believe most things we think are true today will be proven to be totally different in the future.

[bartman314]

looks like this thread is taking off...

there's a difference between proven, repeatable experimental evidence (actual facts) and theories that provide a self consistent framework. the big bang theory is widely viewed as being the best current theory consistent with all the experimental evidence. thus most scientists believe it to be true. that being said, it could very well be replaced by a different theory sometime in the future if such a theory better fits the experiment data.

[bartman314]

so... zempey has a point.