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Faith: Does Only Christ Ask for It?

October 03, 2006

A couple of days ago, I touched on the question of whether Christ has asked followers to believe based on “blind faith.”  Today, let’s stop and think about a related issue:  whether faith is an essential component of all belief systems, including philosophical naturalism. 

The consensus among contemporary scientists is that the universe originated with the Big Bang.  Just today, two American scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics for their work in developing a NASA satellite that produced “dramatic evidence” supporting the Big Bang theory.  Per Carlson, chairman of the Nobel committee for physics, described this evidence as “one of the greatest discoveries of the century; I would call it the greatest.  . . .  It increases our knowledge of our place in the universe.”

I’m no scientist.  Nor am I particularly interested in mastering the details of the “dramatic evidence” supporting the Big Bang theory.  What does interest me is the question of what caused the Big Bang.  Accordingly, I’ve read a little about several multiverse theories.  These theories concern the origins of the universe, and either contemplate or require the existence of many different universes.  As a layperson, what strikes me about these theories of the Big Bang’s cause is that not a single one is testable.  Not one is scientifically verifiable.   

[W]hat caused [the Big Bang] is untestable.  Whether it was by a fluctuation in the quantum potential or by the command of God, either is a scientifically untestable thesis.  As a consequence, all belief systems are based on a faith statement.  The only issue we have to decide is which requires the most faith.  (Regis Nicoll, Putting on a “Bright” Face)

The next time you hear someone assert, “Science is about facts, and religion is about faith,” ask them:  (1) what they believe caused the origin of the universe;  and (2) whether that belief is based on fact or faith.
Posted by Ramsey Wilson at 02:35 PM

Comments

Abraham Kuyper in his Lectures on Calvinism put it this way:

Every science in a certain degree starts from faith . . . . Every science presupposes faith in self, in our self-consciousness; presupposes faith in the accurate working of our senses; presupposes faith in the correctness of the laws of thought; presupposes faith in something universal hidden behind the special phenomena; presupposes faith in life; and especially presupposes faith in the principles, from which we proceed; which signifies that all these indispensible axioms, needed in a productive scientific investigation, do not come to us by proof, but are established in our judgment by our inner conception and given with our self-consciousness.

Posted by: Ramsey Wilson | October 16, 2006 07:26 PM

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