A common enough criticism of various scientific explanations (especially the theory of evolution) is that it requires "as much or more faith" to accept them as it does to believe in a scriptural-based alternative to them (such as creationism).
This criticism is usually levied by Christians, and while "faith" in Christianity can mean more than one thing, it seems to me that the Christians who employ this particular criticism of the sciences generally tend to mean by "faith" "a staunchly held belief or trust in something in the absence of conclusive evidence for it". Hence, the notion that scientific explanations require as much or more faith to accept as religious explanations seems to boil down to a charge that scientific explanations require a staunchly held belief or trust in something in the absence of conclusive evidence for it.
As I see it, the problem with the criticism is at least three-fold. First, it utterly ignores the fact that most scientists do not "staunchly" believe in a scientific explanation (such as evolution), but rather only tentatively accept it as currently the best available explanation, and would be willing to discard it should a better explanation come about. Contrast this with the ideal of Christian faith as unshakeable. So, to equate the alleged "faith" of scientists with the faith of Christians would seem to be a mistake.
Second, the criticism again utterly ignores the fact that widely accepted scientific explanations tend to have an overwhelming weight of reasoning and evidence in favor of them. Contrast this with the generally underwhelming evidence for Christian scriptural-based explanations. To say that scientists have a Christian like faith in scientific explanations would be like saying that scientists blindly base their acceptance of such explanations on some kind of authoritative scripture -- which they do not, and which would actually contradict the very epistemic foundations of the sciences if they did.
Last, some people like to argue that the sciences are based on scientific axioms which are equivalent to "things taken on faith". Yet, scientists would most likely discard or modify axioms that conflicted with experimental observations, but people who take things on faith tend to value doing so steadfastly, even in the face of conflicting reasoning and evidence. Hence, there seems to be a distinction between how scientific axioms and things taken on faith are treated by their respective communities.
For those, and for other reasons, the criticism of some Christians that scientific explanations require as much or more faith as religious explanations seems to me shallow and simplistic.
Your thoughts?
