Faithless Science is Manifestly Bogus

So claims Paul Davies in a New York Times editorial, entitled “Taking Science on Faith.” He rightly points out that science relies (faithfully) on premises such as uniformity. And he touches on some influence Christian theology has had on the development of the scientific method.

At the end of the article, Paul suggests that science will continue to rely on faith until it can find system-internal explanations for physical laws. Maybe. But that implies a sort of universe that is far less appealing to the human spirit (at least to THIS human spirit) than one so vast as to require nothing short of eternal faith from those who would discover and create a multiverse of endless possibilities.

Faith is a tool, a muscle, even a primal technology, which we use in pursuit of knowledge – not instead of or at the expense of knowledge. Those who would situate faith in competition with knowledge or reason are using “faith” to mean something like “willful ignorance” or “superstition” or “anti-rationality,” none of which are faith.

Faith is the will to discover and create. It is the will go beyond what we already know. It is essential to attaining new knowledge.

Without faith, there is no progress and no scientific method. Indeed, we take science on faith. And we attain it on faith, as we take and attain all knowledge on faith.

Where absolute knowledge is impossible, faith is essential to whatever knowledge IS possible.