Is there any truth left in religion?
and Science
is faith ….
Now what?
Charles Townes, Nobel laureate in Physics for fundamental work in the field of quantum electronics, says that
science is based on faith.
Townes argues that a
characteristic of religion is an essential role that faith plays in religion –
everyone accepts that. Faith is often accepted as the distinguishing characteristic
of religion that makes it different from science.
But Townes claims that faith
is essential to science too, although we do not so generally recognize the basic
need and nature of faith in science.
He says: “
Faith is necessary
for the scientist to even get started, and deep faith necessary for him to
carry out his tougher tasks.”
He clearly states
that a scientist must be committed to the belief that there is order in the
universe and that the human mind-in fact his own mind-has a good chance of
understanding this order. Without this belief, there would be little point in an intense effort to try to understand a presumably disorderly or incomprehensible
world.
Faith
Another aspect of a scientist’s
faith is the assumption of an objective and unique reality which is shared by
everyone.
Charles Townes also
mentions the ludicrous (or maybe not) of George Berkeley’s ideas.
Berkeley was an
empiricist in an idealist way. He believed that experience is the source of
most knowledge but we experience only “ideas”. We never have direct experience of things themselves. This
means that our experience does not support the view that there are things outside the mind at
all.
All scientists who
are realists assume, and his experience affirms this, that truth exists. The
scientist’s faith is the assumption of an objective and unique reality. The
scientist can therefore assume and believe, and his experience affirms this,
that truth actually exists because experience corresponds with reality. Reality
is not just ideas like that in Berkeley’s philosophies.
Townes claims that
this kind of faith in science is now so deeply rooted in the scientist that
most of us never even stop to think that it is there at all.
Revelation
Another common misconception
concerns revelation as a method of discovery. Religion’s discoveries often come
by great revelations. Scientific knowledge, in the popular mind, comes by
logical deduction, or by the accumulation of data which is analyzed by
established methods in order to draw generalizations called laws.
Townes calls this
idea a travesty on the real thing. He claims that most of the important
scientific discoveries are parallel to revelation. The term itself is generally
not used for scientific discovery since we are in the habit of reserving
revelation for the religious realm. In scientific circles, one speaks of
intuition, accidental discovery, or says simply that ‘he had a wonderful idea.’
If we compare how great scientific ideas
arrive, they look remarkably like religious revelation viewed in a non-mystical
way.
Townes begs for the recognition
of the tentative nature of knowledge because there are deeper things which
we do not yet know. Based on the ‘weird and wonderful’ world of quantum
mechanics one can accept that scientists have become ‘tentative’.
Christians believe
that we have a limited understanding of God and of His will for us as well. Truth
exists but none of us knows the whole truth. But we know enough to be certain.
