I recently saw a coffee cup proclaiming, “Science doesn’t give [two hoots] what you believe.” My first thought was that the person showing me this cup seems to care quite a lot about what I believe.
Belief presents us with a basic human problem. On the one hand, our knowledge is limited by a whole range of factors, from our own innocent ignorance and finitude to our sin and self-deception; on the other hand, we are built for truth and crave a kind of certainty that evades us. Christianity addresses this problem head-on by reflecting on the role of faith and the nature of belief.
Without at least some basic commitments about how the world is and how I relate to it, knowledge becomes impossible. Of course, those commitments can be mistaken and the knowledge that follows from them flawed, but that means we must take great care with them. It does not mean we should, or even can, avoid them. Those who pretend to do without such commitments are making their own kind of basic commitment and deceiving themselves about it.
The problem of scientism
One such approach is often called “scientism.” Many people believe (I use the term deliberately) that science offers a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card from our conundrum. And so, we are presented with unintentionally ironic coffee cups.
The cup’s owner surreptitiously arrogates to themselves the authority they attribute to science. The claim that science doesn’t care what you believe is the groundwork they are laying for the superiority of their own — ostensibly scientific — point of view in any public discussion. “Science doesn’t care what you believe” is code for “my point of view is valid and yours is not.”
In such cases, there is a truth underlying the claim that science doesn’t care what you believe. It is the same truth behind such chestnuts as “It doesn’t matter if you believe in God; God believes in you.” Whether the question is a properly scientific one (about, for example, humanity’s contribution to climate change or the efficacy of a given vaccine) or a philosophical one (about, say, the existence of God) or a theological one (like the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead), the truthful answer is independent of anyone’s beliefs.
It is often suggested that science is unique here because of the role of evidence. We can look, we are told, at the evidence for anthropogenic climate change or vaccine efficacy and make a determination in a way that we cannot for claims about God’s existence or Jesus’s resurrection. But while it is certainly true that these kinds of claims admit of different kinds of evidence, they all require evidence.
That is why the New Testament is so interested in the empty tomb. It is also why Thomas Aquinas does not simply assert the existence of God but rather argues carefully from the evidence he sees in the world about how things work and must work. In a sense, this latter kind of evidence (from sound axioms to logical conclusions) is more compelling and certain than scientific evidence ever can be. Indeed, there is a huge range regarding the certainty possible for various scientific claims. And no scientific claim is more certain than a sound logical argument. Moreover, all science is, in principle, revisable in the face of new evidence.
Understanding what science means
This is not to deny the value of scientific claims. Nor should this be used in bad faith to ignore or dismiss overwhelming evidence for a given scientific finding that one finds inconvenient. It is only to say that scientific claims, properly understood, do not pretend to be the kind of certainty that scientism grants them.
The basic problem with the claim that science does not care what you think is almost grammatical. Science is not the kind of thing that can care what you think. Other human beings care what you think, and only they can invoke the findings of science to convince you of one thing or another. The objective reality is always what it is. But that reality is only ever known by subjects. Our own subjectivity is unavoidable. We cannot duck our responsibility here by invoking science or any other authority.
More than that, science in itself cannot answer all the questions the “follow the science” crowd imagines. Two people might agree about things like humanity’s contribution to climate change or the safety and efficacy of a given vaccine and disagree about the justice or prudence of this policy for curbing emissions or that vaccine mandate. Any answers to those kinds of policy questions that contradict the best available science are bad, but many possible answers do not, and choosing between those requires more than scientific knowledge.
Good science used well is an immensely powerful tool to help us achieve our goals. But it cannot tell us what our goals are or should be. In the end, belief is unavoidable. And it is we humans that believe, not science — even if what we (mistakenly) believe is that science lets us avoid the problem of belief.