Putting Our Faith in Science
I’ve incorporated some musings on Venus, SAT analogies (from the pre-2005 era), Neil deGrasse Tyson, and drunken accountants to create a think piece about science, religion, and faith.
Science will always fascinate me.
When I was a kid, I looked into a telescope once and saw a small but brilliant object that immediately caught the attention of my corneas. I forgot which adult was standing next to me (my memory regarding celestial objects is strong, but for people, not so much), but I asked that particular human being, “Wow, look at that thing! Is that… the sun over there?”
I 100% expected that adult to say “yes”. In retrospect, I guess I was a bit of a smart-ass for already asking rhetorical questions at that age.
Instead, I remember the person turning to me in a slightly overdramatized fashion, slyly smiling, and saying, “No, Lawrence, that’s… (pause)… Venus.”
I was floored. My eyes bloated out of their sockets like properly cooked marshmallows. “Whoaaaa. VEEEEEEEEENUS?!”
“Yup, Lawrence, that’s our neighbor over there!”
“WOW!!!”
Up until that point, the only way in which I saw Venus was through books. The pictures included in those pages had much more detail of our neighboring planet than the bright little ball I saw through that telescope, but it simply didn’t matter. The fact that I got to validate Venus’ existence with my very own eyes completely substituted my desire to even see the details. I think that’s very telling of us as human beings. Validation of a belief as truth is sometimes all that matters… something is either absolutely true or it is discarded as being false. It’s funny… considering all the complexities of the human mind and the ridiculously intricate nature of how we all work, our perspective on belief systems is ultimately a binary one.
Enter in… *cue dramatic music*… the age-old tension between science and religion.
Evolutionists vs. creationists. Galileo vs. the church. Death is the end vs. death is just the beginning. And so on, multiplied by 1,000.
Despite the myriad of debates that already exist on this topic, I think the underlying principle of what differentiates the two schools of thought ultimately boils down to one word: faith. The concept of labeling something as a truth without concretely proving its tangible existence is one that is commonly attributed to religion. Science, on the other hand, is often viewed as the polar opposite: each and every belief must be validated through a series of rigorous observations, tests, and processes before its existence is considered undeniable. So… it makes sense that religion and science are destined to be at the opposite ends of the spectrum, right?
Well, not really.
(Imagine if my response to that was “Yes” and I just ended it at that; what a shitty piece that would be)
My thought is that religion and science are very, very alike, especially when it comes to the ways in which their perceived truths are spread. I’m not here to write an anti-religion or an anti-science piece; instead, the purpose of this article is to bridge the gap by discussing how both of them are driven primarily through the notion of faith.
With that said, let’s talk science. Here are some random scientific facts that I believe to be true:
(A) The speed of light is 299.8 million meters per second (trust me, it is, I just Google’d it).
(B) The collapse of a high-mass star can form a black hole (Neil deGrasse Tyson and his moustache told me so).
(C) E = mc^2 (I’m certain of this, but I have to also admit that I am infinitely less certain of how this necessarily works).
I find it interesting that I personally have not conducted any scientific analysis whatsoever to validate those three statements as truths, yet… I still believe them to be 100% true. Doesn’t that go against the basic principle of science itself? Am I not supposed to rigorously test my beliefs and process them through a conveyor belt of observation and experimentation before I accept them as truths? Come to think of it… how the heck did I even grow to accept them as facts in the first place?
I stated earlier in this piece that the notion of faith is what commonly repels science and religion from one another. Instead, I am beginning to realize that we consistently use faith when we approach science as well.
I can tell you this with 100% certainty: I don’t know any of the physics required to prove that a black hole forms when a massive star collapses. I wouldn’t know where the hell to start, and that is a monumental understatement. When I watched the Cosmos segment on black holes, I simply watched in wonder as Neil deGrasse Tyson explained their creation. I probably looked like a prehistoric caveman, breathing through both my nose and mouth at the same time, saying, “Er mah GAHD… that’s so AMAZING that somethin’ like that is OUT DEREE!”
Speaking of Neil deGrasse Tyson, I want to briefly talk about a video I watched of him answering a little girl’s question during a Q&A session (this is directly relevant to a point I am going to make, I promise). In that video, the little girl asked him a deceptively simple question, “Are you a good scientist?” I find it awesome that children have this innate ability to ask immensely profound questions in five words or less.
He smiled and went on to state that no, he was actually not that great of a scientist. The great scientists, such as Isaac Newton, Galileo Galilei, and Albert Einstein, were the truly incredible ones that he had the privilege of studying. They were so good, in fact, that they were on an entirely different level of intellect, and therefore couldn’t be understood by regular folks. Neil went on to say that he is instead what is known as a scientific communicator, or someone who takes all these incomprehensible works of these geniuses and condenses them to a format that could be digested by the general public. He explained that there is a big difference between being a scientist and a scientific communicator, and although he’s okay at being the former, he was much, much better at being the latter.
What scientific communicators are to science, priests (monks, imams, etc.) are to religion. Or, if you took the SAT prior to 2005:
Scientific communicators don’t just come in the form of people like Neil Tyson and Bill Nye the Science Guy. They mostly arrive through textbooks, educational material, publications, and other resources that help to provide us with a minute understanding of great minds that would otherwise be inaccessible to us. With that said, I think it’s important to understand that if we do decide to accept a piece of science as fact, we are putting faith in these communicators that they’ve done the work necessary to validate these truths. I think that’s why a lot of people scoff at the idea of using Wikipedia as a reference source for academic papers. Since Wikipedia contributors don’t have an academic barrier to entry, people that have not done the proper research to legitimately contribute to a topic can still do so.
If you believe something that you have not personally validated as being true, then by definition, that is a decision driven by faith. I think I’m speaking for many of us when I say that my acceptance of scientific facts is primarily driven by my hope that those scientists in question did their job correctly.
Let’s now take a look at the second half of that SAT analogy. Ah, yes, religion. Christianity. Islam. Judaism. Buddhism. Jainism. Hinduism. The list goes on.
The one thing that I find particularly interesting about religion is that there are so many different types of them, but they ultimately share one overarching message: be a good person and love one another. If you sit down and think about it, that’s all it really comes down to (*note: I’m excluding religions/cults that hold self-loathing and fear as central messages of their teachings. Just in case you’re screaming at the monitor, “OH YEAH, WHADDABOUT HEAVEN’S GATE?!”). It’s all just different ways to communicate that same message of love. In other words, religion is simply the story we use to communicate a universal faith.
Since each religion in itself is a story, its storytellers (read: religious leaders) are the ones that have a big role to assume. Not only are they expected to effectively communicate their story to nourish the faith of their congregants, they are also expected to be an embodiment of the very story that they represent. You see, Frank the Accountant can crunch numbers by day and become Frank the Drunken Shitshow in a club by night, and that’s completely normal (expected, in fact). Frank the Franciscan Monk, however, doesn’t quite get to live that dual lifestyle and get away with it.
Ultimately, I think what determines our belief systems comes down to how compelling the stories behind them are. How many times have you decided to accept a scientific thesis by watching a beautifully constructed TV series about it? How many friends do you know believe in their religion because it’s so closely connected with their family upbringing? How often have you questioned something you believe in, only to discover a more compelling story that better fits within the context of your current life?
When the story is compelling and the communicator is able to answer to your curiosity, it creates the perfect environment for a faith-based decision to be made. Our personal interests are way too varied and vast for us to dedicate the time needed to validate each theory or belief we come across. That’s why a lot of our energy isn’t necessarily spent in proving our beliefs, but is rather spent in choosing what we want to believe in.
Which of your beliefs have been personally validated as truth, and which have been chosen as a result of that gravitational pull we call faith? My guess is that if you were to check them off one by one, you would see a lot of the latter. Even though we love to place rationality as the number one tool for decision-making, it turns out that faith, in the end, is what makes us the most human.
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