“There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.”
Alfred Lord Tennyson
The difference between science-based and faith-based approaches to explaining the world is one of degree rather than category. The scientific method is undeniably powerful but we should always remind ourselves that it is in fact, faith-based.
The faith-based nature of scientific inquiry is instantly apparent to us when when we consider the familiar axiom that although a theory can be disproved, it can never be proven. As we move forward in the process of constructing knowledge, the explanatory edifices built by those who profess to follow the discipline of scientific method, are based upon belief that is deemed to be increased by degrees with each experimental or experiential confirmation of predicted outcomes. It is of practical rather than metaphysical consequence that all “scientific” belief is falsifiable and therefore always conditional, but this methodology of negation in no way obviates nor diminishes the seminal role of belief in all “scientific” assertion!
If we take a bit of “time” to consider the implications of this well accepted but often overlooked axiom of scientific inquiry, those of us who want to explain consciousness scientifically must grapple with the nature of belief itself. Our intentions, the questions we ask, the efficacy of our investigations, and the measurements we make, are all bounded by the circumstances of our existence and the narrative by which we make sense of our circumstances.
So we can say that scientific inquiry is efficacious in terms of our circumstances, aims and intentions, but we must also recognize that what we “discover” (better said, what we “construct”) will vary with the circumstances, aims and intentions that constitute our socially constructed, faith-based reality narrative.
We construct our world as intentional actors, based upon our belief by degrees in our theories tested in terms of the efficacy of our actions as causal agents. The tautologies of mathematics notwithstanding, the strength of the scientific method lies in pragmatic falsification of theory but that process is in itself, subject to the conditions of belief that bound our inquiry and govern our assertions.
At some point in all scientific reduction, we will always encounter an impenetrable belief-barrier that constitutes the fundament of our consciousness in which we always tell the story of how I, you, and we are, were, and will become.
See my post: “The Blinding Stupidity of Unconditional Belief“
Besides sharing the nature of being faith-based, science and religion are both systems of knowing. They have different requirements to complete the phrase, “I know it because….” For instance, Science requires that a statement of knowing be testable and the category of expressions such as “I know God” is not empirically testable.