The problem with that post, Dale, is that it doesn’t define what faith is. You just assert that everyone must have “faith” in various things. It might be a strong rhetorical point, but I would suspect not convincing to people who already have an allergic reaction to any whiff of the word “faith”. Even as a Christian, I think there needs to be more nuance in defining faith in science vs. faith in religion vs. faith in the government and so on.
To start with:
In science, it is true that the system relies a lot on trust. What trust means is that when a scientist says they have done experiment X and found Y, we believe them. If they are lying, we might not be able to immediately know that, which is why scientific fraud is so devastating. The only safeguards against fraud are 1) personal integrity and/or self-interest of researchers, 2) assessments of the researchers’ competence. By 2), I mean that if a researcher seems to “know what they’re talking about” (i.e. they use scientific terms properly, they design experiments which make sense and describe them well, they check things that obviously need to be checked, etc.), we give them the benefit of the doubt when they assert something. Some people might not like to admit it, but reputation and prior results also count a lot. If a researcher with an excellent track record reports something wacky, more people will believe the effect is real compared to someone with no reputation at all.
Does this constitute faith in the same way that it does in religion? I know I haven’t bothered to define how faith is used in religion (that’s supposed to be your part in this dialogue), but I’m going to go straight to the point.
What seems to be similar between trust in science and faith in religion is that in both cases, there is a lack of complete proof that nevertheless demands a decision. You don’t know for sure if God wants you to do X, but you choose to go forward with it anyway, after extensive consultation of Scripture and your pastor. Similarly, you accept that LIGO really has discovered gravitational waves, even though you never analyzed the data for yourself - you trust that the people there are competent, that they have checked for the relevant sources of noise and systematic error, and that they are not engaged in some vast conspiracy. And, the evidence they presented in their paper seems to make a lot of sense if it were honestly reported! So there’s some similarity there.
However, at this point, the skeptic may object. One difference between the LIGO case and the religious case is that in the former, there is a possibility in principle of verifying the data yourself. Given a lot of time, you could dig through all of the data, write your own code to analyze it, learn the relevant math and science to properly understand what it meant, such that you can arrive at the same level of collective understanding and personal evidence that the entire LIGO collaboration has. In religion, it seems that we don’t always have this possibility. Even the holiest, smartest pastor cannot tell for sure if God wants you to do X based on this voice in your heart which you think is the Holy Spirit. In other words, there is way more “noise” in the system when we’re talking about religion, and it seems to be an inherent part of it, instead of something which exists merely because of practical difficulties.
Is this presence of “noise” a mere difference in degree or kind compared to the need for trust in science? That’s the question to answer.
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), my wife and I did not really struggle with the decision either, nor have we about any decision in our 48 1/2 marriage. There is an implicit trust in our Father, that even if we make tactical mistakes, his strong tent is over us and we are never out of his hand, to mix a couple of metaphors.