According to an article published by Catholic News Agency on January 19, 2012, Pope Benedict has “launched a new foundation at the Vatican aimed at building a “philosophical bridge” between science and theology.” The Executive Director of this project, Father Tomasz Trafny, says, “I don't think most people necessarily see science and faith and being opposed.” Are science and faith in opposition?
Science operates under the banner of methodological naturalism; scientists, when investigating certain phenomena, assume that the natural world is all that exists and look for naturalistic explanations. Additionally, scientists favor explanations that are testable, falsifiable and demonstrable. Scientists openly present their findings so that others can critique their ideas. If contrary evidence is presented to challenge a scientific explanation, that explanation must be revised to fit the new data -- coupled with a very good reason -- lest the explanation is falsified.
Religious faith greatly differs from scientific methodology because religious explanations are often unfalsifiable, untestable, contain supernatural content and are not demonstrable. Religious belief may not be held because of verifiable explanations, but rather might be held because of tradition, authority or subjective reasons. If contrary evidence, argument, or reason is proposed to undermine religious faith, ad hoc explanations -- unsupported and often unfalsifiable assertions used to account for certain anomalies -- are often offered in an attempt to salvage religious belief.
For example, if a Christian is faced with the problem of natural evil – the argument asserting that natural disasters, disease and the like are incompatible with belief in the Christian god – he/she may assert that God might have a hidden, unknown reason for permitting natural disasters or assert that humans just can not possibly arrive at because of limited cognitive faculties. Assertions like these are not consistent with a scientific methodology; how can one possibly verify, test or falsify these ideas?
One common mode of argumentation that religious believers may employ is what is often called 'God of the gaps' or the argument from ignorance. Because something about the universe is unexplained – such as dark matter or the origin of the universe – some will argue, one is justified in believing that a supernatural force is responsible. This is, by no means, a method of investigation scientists would employ and is the exact opposite of scientific methodology.
In an interview with The Science Network, Neil deGrasse Tyson – American astrophysicist, director of the Hayden Planetarium and popularizer of science – argued against this way of thinking by offering ideas that persons once thought were the work of supernatural forces and said that if a lack of understanding were evidence of a god, “God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that's getting smaller, smaller, and smaller as time goes on.”
While individual scientists may be religious believers and operate differently in the laboratory than they do in the pews, it should be quite obvious that 'religious methodology' and scientific methodology are in opposition.
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