Last weeks op-ed, Science and Faith by Evan Keegan, rehashed a series of popular myths and unfortunate misconceptions about the nature of science, faith, and knowledge. These myths do believers and unbelievers alike a disservice, but persist because they legitimize religion by tying it to science (curiously, one never observes scientists trying to legitimize science by tying it to religion). This line of fallacious argument usually consists of two steps: 1. Tie science and religion together by labeling them both beliefs, an equivocal term that encompasses both facts and opinion, and 2. Claim that science has problems only religion can fix.

Keegan asserts that everyone can agree that like religion, science is very much a belief as well. We can all agree that a golf cart and a passenger jet are very much motor vehicles, but Im not crossing the Atlantic in a golf cart. 1 + 1 = 2, and I like poodles are both beliefs, but are fundamentally different statements. 1 + 1 = 3 can also be a beliefa belief may be about a subjective opinion, an objective fact, or a falsehood. Science, in fact, is a method and not a belief.

Science is a gradual but powerful process that takes empirical observations about the world, matches them with systematic explanations, and then refines or throws away such explanations when they contradict evidence. Educated hunches are called hypotheses, very-well supported explanations are theories, and occasionally something becomes a law.

Faith, on the other hand, is a different animal. It, by definition, asks the believer to accept something without a reason. In ancient times, faith began as a series of beliefs to explain the natural world. Organized religions go a step furtherthey espouse a specific dogma as the truth. Modern religion and spirituality navigate a dilemma: usually, a religious belief is either specific enough that science can disprove it (putting the religion at risk) or vague enough that it is unfalsifiablemeaning that it cannot be disproven even hypothetically and is thus not knowledge in a meaningful sense. Successful modern religions must be flexible enough to maintain educated people, but structured enough to fill meaningful social roles.

Religious fundamentalists who refuse to be flexible rely on demonizing science itself and willfully spreading ignorance. This has been and continues to be a source of tremendous human suffering. Whether more moderate religious belief is good or bad, and whether moderate religions are sustainable over the long run is a question Im intentionally evading. Even if one were to take the optimistic view, faith is still bound by knowledge, but is not a source of knowledge. It cannot generate testable predictions. If faith is good at all, it is for purposes very different than scientific inquiry.

Keegan argues that within the field of science, there are principles and theories, which cannot be directly or fully explained, and are generally accepted to be true. This mischaracterizes the nature of science, and the specific examples he uses he describes inaccurately. Science takes natural phenomena and finds deeper patterns (which are usuallyalthough not alwayscauses).

Keegan uses the fact that science does not fully understand gravity as an argument in favor of religion. But there are two possibilities: Either every fact about the universe can be explained by another fact, ad infinitum, or every fact reduces to a series of axioms that are true, just because. In either scenario, we never can explain everything, but science sure can explain a lot. It might be tempting for a believer to say, Stop! Science has hit rock bottom, but given the current rate of scientific discovery, thats unjustified. As the joke goes, a creationist complains about a gap in the fossil record, until an anthropologist discovers a proto-human fitting that gap. Then the creationist says Aha, now there are two gaps! But just for the sake of argument, suppose scientists finally reached those axioms that were true just because. This wouldnt prove that an omnipotent being made them true; in fact, such an appeal to the supernatural would create logical contradictions and raise more questions (like where did the gods come from?) than it would answer.

Keegan argues that God exists outside of time, but a philosopher could invent an infinite number of hypothetical beings that exist outside of time. The only reason anyone ever proposes that the Judeo/Christian/Muslim/Whatever god explains science is because theyve already committed themselves to believing in this concept without a scientific justification and are simply fishing for a justification. This reasoning is backwards, but ironically, this common fallacy has been identified by psychologists as confirmation bias, and has even been explained by evolutionary biology. (Constantly recognizing patterns kept our ancestors alive more than abstract thinking.)

Speaking of infinity, lets address some of the more specific scientific and logical gaps that Keegan would have us fill with god. One such fallacy is Zenos dichotomy paradox (which Keegan confuses with the closely-related paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise). In order to get from point A to point B, one must first travel half the distance, then half the remaining distance (one quarter of the total), then half of that (one eighth of the total), etc. Keegan believes that without the magical hand of God, these numbers would never quite reach one, and wed never be able to walk anywhere. But as Aristotle pointed out over 2,000 years ago, the time it takes to travel each distance at a constant rate is also decreasing towards 0.

In the 1700s Newton and Leibnitz used infinite sums to invent calculus, and in the early 1800s, mathematicians began rigorously defining the concept of a limit: proving from basic mathematical axioms that + + = 1. (Mathematicians have learned a lot about infinite series, as Math 143 and 162 students painfully learn). If you cut a piece of paper in half, and cut the half in half, and keep on cutting, the amount of paper still says the same, illustrating the same mathematic truth.

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Not All Beliefs Are Made Equal