podcast 147 – Dr. Daniel McKaughan on faith – Part 1

This was an interesting discussion about “faith” and “belief.”

I particularly liked when Dale pointed out that there is an element of faith that cannot be considered “scientific” (e.g. believing that George Washington was the first President). The scientific method isn’t suitable to verify all “truth” because it is based upon empirical verification whereas historical knowledge relies on human testimony that most often cannot be validated by repetition or observation.

I also think Dr. MacKaughan’s point about how modern science is based upon the assumption that what we observe in nature today (e.g. natural laws) has always held true is critically important. Many of the things that scientists propose about the “history” of the Universe is merely theoretical (mathematical) speculation based upon this assumption.

Whether one believes in God or not, there is only a limited amount of scientific knowledge we can rely upon. How do we know that anything we observe today existed or operated this way in nature 10,000-20,000 years ago when there wasn’t any human “history” to verify what we observe today? For all we really know today, the Solar System (or the Earth) could be a few billion years old, or they could be only thousands, or tens of thousands, of years old.