Sense and Goodness Without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism

by Richard C. Carrier

Science and faith are not in conflict—unless you want them to be. If someone places faith before truth, then they are stepping out of bounds. But if faith is what one has because something is true, and not the other way around, science becomes the One True Faith. This is another counter-intuitive feature of science: it is thoroughly empirical, built on observation and evidence, yet “empiricism” is not observation and evidence alone, but a view of things that is constructed from observed facts, and the whole enterprise of science requires at least the provisional belief that those constructions are true. On the one hand science requires faith, a faith that certain principles and models and bodies of knowledge are true. On the other hand, this faith is not blind, but based on evidence. It is justified faith. Scientists build up faith in science’s concepts, principles, and conclusions through repeated practice or testing, and when this faith is challenged, they return again to examine the facts, to see if their faith is justified by them. This is what makes science an empirical enterprise, the fact that it ultimately grounds and justifies its faith by appeal to observable evidence. The idea of an empirically-based faith is hard for many people to grasp, especially if they are used to thinking that “faith” is only a reason for believing something when you don’t have evidence. The term “faith” does have both connotations, meaning “belief” in some cases, but also “reason to beli...