Faith and Science

Julie Raney

Professor Smith

ENGL 1233.08

18 March 2013

Faith – Is it Needed to Believe Science?

Faith, belief, science, and reason are four terms that get tossed around a lot between religious and scientific groups of people. Before one can use these terms, especially when arguing their stance on a subject, they should first know what they mean. Dictionary.com defines faith as, “confidence or trust in a person or thing” (“faith” def. 1), belief as, “something believed; an opinion or conviction” (“belief” def. 1), science as, “systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation” (“science” def. 2), and reason as, “the mental powers concerned with forming conclusions, judgments, or inferences” (“reason” def. 3). Can these terms work functionally by themselves, or do they require each other? Does one need to have faith in order to believe in science?

In Peter McGowan’s article entitled, “Questions for Faith,” he comments that Christians and atheists both require faith. Even though they both require faith in different things, it is still a strong faith in what they believe in. Christians have faith in God, and atheists have faith in science (McGowan).

I have heard it said that the average person that does not conduct his own experiments to prove a scientific theory to be true must have faith in the scientist’s experiments. Faith, as defined above, is the type of faith that they were referring to. These people have to have trust in the scientists that they performed their experiments correctly, and have confidence in the conclusions that they came up with at the end of their experiments.

However, faith defined as belief that is not based on proof is not required to believe in science. Science does have proof, and therefore does not require faith. Yes, there are things in science that are not exact and still need some revising done to them, but that is exactly why we have the scientific method...