Is believing in Science Not Based on Faith (in Science)?

In my last post, I mentioned that religious beliefs are often based on faith, not science.

Faith is beyond science. If you believe in something after “science has proven it”, that’s no longer faith. Faith is about believing before science can “prove” or “disprove” your beliefs.

Here is my first post on the myths on religion and science being mutually exclusive.

Believing in God is mostly faith-based.

But let me ask you a question.

Is believing in science not based on faith in science (at least partially)?

Myth- Religious people’s belief in God is blind faith. On the other hand, scientific community/atheists believe in science that is based on logic and facts.

Not entirely true and perhaps mostly untrue. At least from the “people’s perspective”.

Let me explain what I mean.

Scientific Fact: Most of the scientific (and non scientific) community believes that light travels at 186,000 miles/second.

However the fact is that most of us (if not all of us) have no idea how fast is that.

That’s is really incomprehensible for most people.

Most people (I would say over 99% of us) have not independently verified it themselves.

But they have faith in the scientists, so they believe this to be true.

I am in that category.

We still believe that to be the truth- because a group of scientists have determined that. Rest of the folks have blindly followed it- because they believe in the scientist(s) who discovered this fact

Scientific Fact: Our galaxy-the Milky Way, has a diameter of about 100,000 light years and that the Sun lies about 30,000 light-years from the center. (A light-year is the distance traveled by light in one year and is roughly 5,880,000,000,000 miles or nearly 6 trillion miles). 

To be frank, most of us (if not all of us) have no idea how big that really is.

That’s is really incomprehensible for most people.

Most people (I would say over 99% of us) have not independently verified it themselves.

But they have faith in the scientists, so they believe this to be true.

I am in that category.

However when it comes to believing in the unseen God- we take a different approach.

Are the messengers of God (e.g. Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad) and the Scriptures(The Bible and the Qur’an) like those scientists who asked the others to believe in the unseen?

Believing in the unseen God is incomprehensible (to some at least)

Most have not independently verified it.

But they still have faith.

But they have faith in the messengers/scriptures, so they believe this to be true.

 So why do we have different standards for the two groups?

 Sure the argument can be easily made that the scientists used a methodology that is verifiable and can be duplicated. Whereas we just have to trust the words of the messengers and the scriptures with apparent contradictions.

I totally get that.

For some of us, we view the relationship as follows.

Religion and science are separate.

You can write whatever issues that are applicable to your life- art, “having fun” etc in the circle that is blank.

There is another paradigm where we can draw our circles of religion, science and faith. We can put many things in the circle of science that it explains well. We can also put many things in the religion circle that it explains to our satisfaction. Then there are intersecting circles where both religion and science explain well and there is this intersecting circle where neither religion nor science explains it well.

I love Venn’s diagrams. This interconnecting relationship can be best illustrated by this Venn diagram I drew. (Not to scale- in fact the scale is very individualized- yours may be a little different than your friend’s).

Borrowing from one of my dear friends who said, “That little arc where neither explains stuff is a great place to live for inquisitive and open minded people.”

I am inviting you to live in that arc. This would indeed require open mindedness and inquisition.

I can honestly tell you that the study of the Qur’an opened my mind and explore the relationship between religion, faith and science (“nature”). In my subsequent posts on this subject, I will share some of these passages.

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