Belief and Knowledge

I am not a scientist, but I love science.  I am not a theologian, but I love theology and the effects of spirituality on my life.  Just like I am a practitioner of pathology, I am also a practitioner of faith.  I am enriched by both.

Religion deals with matters of belief.  Science deals with matters of knowledge.  Both address the big questions of life—”Why are we here?” “Where are we going?”—but from different perspectives.   One is not a backstop to the other.  Beliefs are not morally inferior to knowledge, just as knowledge is not morally inferior to beliefs.  Both are important, but they live in different realms.  Innocently confusing science and religion leads to superstition, ignorance, or harmful conclusions.  Deliberately confusing science and religion is a deception that robs us of material and spiritual treasures.

Falsification is a key distinction between belief and knowledge.  A scientific claim is falsifiable, meaning it must make a prediction that can be tested by experiment.  If experimental results are not what the claim predicts, then the claim is false.  But if experimentation supports the claim, it’s not necessarily true; it simply might be true.  The scientific process is a last man standing game.  The longer a claim stands, the more likely it is to be true.  At some point, when an idea becomes more likely than anything else, we call it knowledge.  But knowledge is, and always has been, what is most likely true, not what is certainly true.  We can only have scientific certainty about what is false.

Lack of certainty isn’t the only limitation of knowledge.  There are scientific horizons, and we cannot see what’s on the other side.  For example, the universe is most likely expanding, but expanding into what?  We cannot know.  If the universe is expanding, then it must have been smaller before, and even smaller before that, and so on until it’s a tiny universe holding all matter and energy.   But what happened before that?  We cannot know.  What’s outside the event horizon of light, or the gravitational horizon of black holes?  Does our physics work there?  Can alternate universes coexist?  We can hold beliefs about these things, but these questions are not in the realm of science.  We have no applicable knowledge because we have no power to observe.

Science has significant limitations.  We can never be certain about what science tells us, and there are some questions that are not open for scientific investigation.  Religion also has limitations, but different ones.  Religious claims do not have the requirement of falsification.  Omnipotence is the ultimate answer for all religious questions.  When there’s no experiment that can demonstrate an idea to be false, it cannot be science, but it can be religion.  Science requires falsification; religion requires faith.  Faith and beliefs are good things.  They give us hope, purpose, and compassion.  Science cannot.

Despite its limitations, science is a powerful tool that augments our understanding of reality.  We cannot rely on science to give us quick answers, so during this pandemic, we must have faith—lots of faith.  But we also must speed science along by testing as many ideas as possible, all at the same time.  A pandemic response that clings to ideas which are demonstrably false and dismisses competing ideas without experiment is not based on science.  It’s religion pretending to be science, and it’s dangerous.  There are three explanations for nonsense disguised as science: foolishness, greed, and evil.  I fear that all three are now hopelessly entangled.

Religion and science have important roles in our fight against the pandemic.  Understanding the difference between them is a protection against deception.  When someone says, “believe in science,” beware of fraud.  Your life, your liberty, and your sacred treasures are at risk.