The biggest difference between science and faith is that science isn't afraid of the truth (truth meaning empirical evidence). In other words, science isn't afraid to be wrong. In fact, this is what makes science the amazing tool that it is for learning about the world we live in. Faith, on the other hand, often insists on the absence of evidence, or at least empirical evidence that can be tested.
This difference, the willingness to be wrong, is a fundamental and critical difference between science and religion. Despite what some may say, because of this there is no compatibility between science and religion; there is no room for accommodation.
A great example of this is
this news story about the discovery of brown dwarfs in our local galactic neighborhood. Scientists have discovered that there are far less brown dwarfs in a 26 light year radius around our sun than previous studies had predicted.
Davy Kirkpatrick of the WISE science team at NASA's Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena had this to say about the study:
Those discoveries could bring the ratio of brown dwarfs to
stars up a bit, to about 1:5 or 1:4, but not to the 1:1 level previously anticipated.
"This is how science progresses as we obtain better and better data," said Kirkpatrick. "With WISE, we were able to test our predictions and show they were wrong. We had made extrapolations based on discoveries from projects like the Two-Micron All-Sky Survey, but WISE is giving us our first look at the coldest brown dwarfs we're only now able to detect."
Here is a scientist not just admitting that his theory was wrong, but actually excited about the fact. Why? Because this is how we learn things. This is the way that we find out how the world around us really works. Being wrong in science isn't a liability, it is a strength. The history of science, going back to when humans first started making tools, is one of trial and error. The more you can eliminate what doesn't work, the closer you get to what does work. And that is what science is all about, finding what works.
Faith, in contrast, relies on gut feelings, mystical prophets preaching magical things, books that make claims that can't be tested. that are improbable and often contradictory. Faith gives us unicorns, leprechauns, krakens, multiple gods, goddesses, angels, demons, and men rising from the dead. Faith causes
people to die when proven, life saving treatments are available, but shunned. Faith no only shuns facts, but often demands that facts be ignored. Martin Luther put it quite well when he said that, "Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has." (Tischreden, 1568, #353)
The ability to falsify an idea or hypothesis is crucial to understanding if that idea or hypothesis is correct or not. In learning about the world around us, the willingness to be wrong is a virtue. If we accept that something is true without evidence or proof and leave it at that, we make an assumption about the world that very well could be wrong. If we question and probe, making mistakes along the way, we learn something valuable and are much more likely to be right.
It's been somewhat callously and pithily said that, "Faith flies you into buildings. Science flies you to the moon." While this greatly oversimplifies the issue, there is certainly truth in it. Science does fly us to the moon, the planets, and with the Voyager spacecraft, even to the stars. Faith, while it might give us comfort, tells us nothing about our world. It makes no testable predictions, it solves no technical, social, or practical problems. It teaches us nothing about the world around is. It is wishes, hopes and dreams, but without the means to achieve any of them. Faith does not make dreams come true; science does.
