A recent post of (((Billy)))’s got me thinking about that age-old creationist argument; “Science is just another religion.” On the face of it, the claim seems ridiculous, but it seemed worth a more detailed examination. To what extent, then, can science-based atheism be considered a “faith” position?

First off, I should admit that I’m no scientist. My qualifications from A-level onwards are in arts and humanities; all the science I know comes from avid reading and a PhD-wielding father who drummed science into me at every opportunity when I was a child. That said, I consider myself fairly bright, and although I have a bit of trouble getting my head around quantum theory, most scientific concepts filter their way into my brain with little difficulty. With that in mind, I’m able to understand scientific arguments, see how conclusions have been drawn from a given data set, and recognise potential flaws in the reasoning. Thus, a piece of research is only valid to me if it demonstrates a solid line of logic from the original experimental evidence to the conclusion.

An example, admittedly an obvious one, of a set of conclusions that I emphatically do not accept would be the Intelligent Design thesis. The process of reasoning that leads from “life is complex” to “God did it” is riddled with more holes than an Emmental cheese at a shooting range. Rebutting every stage of the argument would take more time and effort than I’m frankly willing to commit, but I’d direct interested parties towards Answers In Genesis Busted and The Panda’s Thumb for a thorough dissection of the ID movement.

However, I suppose in a way that a certain sort of “faith” is required for my acceptance of scientific knowledge. I have to believe that the experimental data is accurately reported, for example, and that it was correctly collected in the first place. In other words, I have to trust that what scientists are telling me is true. How is this different to trusting what a priest or imam says? Is this not just a case of choosing one argument from authority over another? In trusting Richard Dawkins over Pope Benedict, I am making a decision as to what criteria I will accept as delineating my theory of knowledge. In effect, I am choosing to believe the statements of science over the statements of religion, and thus have no tenable position from which to criticise those who choose to encompass their epistemology with religious faith instead.

The difference, I would argue, lies in the reason behind my acceptance of scientific arguments over religious ones. In essence, the arguments of theism are based on attempts to reach an already assumed conclusion, “God exists.” If one looks everywhere for proof of something in the certain expectation of finding it to be so, one is liable to find a whole stack of supporting evidence. Scientific arguments, however, do one of two things instead. Either they assume a hypothesis and attempt to dis-prove it, or they begin dispassionately with a set of data and look at the conclusions one might draw from it. To my mind, these methods are self-evidently more likely to yield unbiased, accurate results, and so I am more willing to accept them as a basis for my worldview.