Are science and faith compatible?

This was the subject of three short talks last night, here at the University. Giving a combination of my own thoughts and what was spoken, I want to say that it depends on which faith, and on the presuppositions of the science. It seems to me that conflicts can come in two ways, at least in the Christian context. Firstly it depends on how the Scriptures are interpreted, and secondly on the interpretation of the data.

One helpful distinction was made between empirical science, where we are essentially looking at repeatable experiments, and scientism. Wikipedia defines scientism as a term generally used to describe the cosmetic application of science in unwarranted situations not covered by the scientific method. In fact, the term was only mentioned in passing. The point is that evolution is not empirical science and going in this direction could have opened up a whole new can of worms. But perhaps she has a different definition of scientism, and for sure some forms are more dubious than others.

One of the forms that I regard as extreme is naturalism. Wikipedia defines this as a philosophical viewpoint according to which everything arises from natural properties and causes, and supernatural or spiritual explanations are excluded or discounted. Richard Dawkins is a strong proponent of this position. In response to questions he is unable to answer, he would say things like “We don’t know the answer to that yet, but we will.”

I want to make two related comments about this. The first is that naturalism is in fact a position of faith, and the second is that you cannot arrive at this position using the scientific method. There is a Theorem by Kurt Godel, which essentially states that no system is self verifying. So the position for example, that only things which can be verified by one or more of the five senses are valid, cannot be validated by any of the five senses. So what I’m saying is that the presuppositions of scientific naturalism, cannot be verified using scientific naturalism.

The fallacy of this position, can perhaps be most clearly seen when we try and apply naturalism to origins, in particular to the origin of the universe. There are essentially only two possible positions, either someone or something, the force or whatever, something external and independent of the universe created everything that is out of nothing. The second possibility is that nothing created everything that is out of nothing. Perhaps those who laugh those of us who believe in God, should consider the implications of the alternative positions!