In my last post I proposed that science is largely a faith based endeavor - that the conclusions it asserts as knowledge are only in small part scientifically verified, but are mostly hopeful projections of their inductive findings upon the rest of the created order.
But it's not only within the laboratory that we find faith at work. Indeed science utilizes faith in the way it communicates its findings, both within the scientific community itself and to the general public. This communication is - even must be - based upon faith.
While most people gain knowledge by both processes, more and more a strident naturalism in the scientific world is gaining hold creating a bias for empiricism and a hostility against faith. The late Harvard biologist Stephen Jay Gould expressed this antagonism in his comments on a scene from the Gospel of John in his book Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life(New York: Ballantine Publishing, 1999), 12-16.
The scene from John's Gospel (ch.20) is that in which the risen Christ appears to the disciples and to the famous doubting Thomas, who had been absent from an earlier occasion and declared, "Unless I see the nail marks in His hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe it." To which, in the present scene, Jesus chides, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen but have believed."
About this Gould says, "I cannot think of a statement more foreign to the norms of science... than Jesus' celebrated chastisement of Thomas. A skeptical attitude toward appeals based only on authority, combined with a demand for direct evidence (especially to support unusual claims), represents the first commandment of proper scientific procedure." (Quoted in Dinesh D'souza's, What's So Great About Christianity? [Washington D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 2007], 192).
Note we have the scientific method of empirical research which yields "direct evidence" in contrast to faith, which in Gould's words is characterized by "appeals based only on authority." But again, I assert that science itself - Stephen J. Gould's science - routinely and even must be based on an appeal to authority (faith) rather than empirical demonstration (science).
Consider the findings of a physicist. What is the first thing he does upon making a discovery? He publishes them in a peer reviewed journal with the relevant data that would enable other physicists to duplicate the research and verify or disprove the findings. This is effective and keeps good physicists honest since most physicists understand one another as well as the disciplines and equipment peculiar to their field. They are, hopefully, an open book to one another.
But what about when the discovery is to go beyond the relatively small circle of physicists who understand the world of physics, that is, when the information is to go public? What about the cell biologist who wants to know what the physicist has discovered? Even though they may both share a commitment to metaphysical naturalism; though they both may have earned doctorates from UCLA - let's even imagine the cell biologist has a higher IQ than the physicist - chances are the biologist cannot follow the research the physicist has done. Smart as he is he is baffled by quantum mechanics and cannot do the math. Physics are outside the area of the cell biologist's expertise and in the end he must take the physicist's word for it. He must rely on the learning of the physicist and trust that the peer reviewed process has produced verifiable (truly scientific) knowledge.
How much more is this the case when the findings of physics are declared to the masses of common people who may have never had a college education let alone formal scientific training? They do not have first hand knowledge of the physicist's research, nor can they comprehend the information as it's spelled out in the scientific literature. At best they believe in atoms, black holes and relativity based solely upon the authority of the physicist - and it must be so! There is simply no other way to communicate scientific knowledge.
At this level it is evident the scientific knowledge possessed by the masses is not discovered knowledge but received revelation. Further, the scientist is the mediator of this knowledge even as a priest mediates matters of God and religion. In each case people must take - and the respective priesthoods expect them to take - this information by faith. Moreover, if the people can then legitimately claim to possess scientific knowledge based upon this authority, it follows that the vast bulk of that knowledge is faith based and not empirical.
