On Science & Faith
Revision 1
A lot of thoughtful discussions came out of this essay, and it helped me sharpen the model. I’ve added a short revision note clarifying the taxonomy without changing the core argument.
At first, I included the spiritual domain into the cultural, but spirituality makes more sense as a subset of culture, and language as the medium from which culture emerges. Science in this case would be a structure mediated in language and informed by culture. The issue was that I was conflating systems which belong to different scopes of categorization.
Spirituality, just like attitudes, philosophies, religions, ideologies, etc. should not be confused with their overarching domain and frame. I am now talking about the culturo-normative domain mediated within the linguistic frame.
I differentiate two main tasks that culturo-normative systems fulfill: social and structural.
I must stress here that to explain such a complex system is impossible to do perfectly. To better illustrate this problem, consider this imperfect analogy: The heart, the brain and the bacteria in our gut fulfill different roles in the human body, but they depend on each other.
Social systems, structural systems, and their currencies, exist in a similarly symbiotic way.
Before delving deeper, here is the memetic taxonomy put simply:
The overarching scope from which our reality is mediated: the Linguistic Frame.
The domain of the linguistic frame: the Culturo-Normative Domain
Two main types of culturo-normative system (CNS): Social and Structural
Mechanisms of mediation between agents: Currencies
Structural CNSs emerge from social CNSs; those structural CNSs, in turn, support social CNSs. Currencies emerge from both and support both.
Social Systems: languages, religions, ideologies, philosophies, epistemologies, etc.
Structural Systems: scientific research, engineering, medicine, laws, markets, etc.
Currencies: mores, money, virtue signaling, food, status signaling, intimidation, etc.
Force is another means for an agent to acquire something, but it does not belong in the linguistic frame, it belongs in the physical realm. Intimidation can belong in the linguistic frame though, because it can be symbolically encoded. Although other animals can intimidate each other, this memetic taxonomy is not to describe animal experience but to describe human interpretation.
Note that I use language as the overarching medium (frame) from which all these other systems arise, but I use languages as social systems. Language is used to describe our medium for interpreting reality, languages are the specific linguistic systems emerging from that frame.
To be clear, science is a structural CNS as an institution, and a social CNS as an epistemic attitude. Religion is a structural CNS as an institution, and a social CNS as a system of belief.
We haven’t been able to derive meaning simply from a scientific epistemic attitude, and we haven’t been able to send rockets using religion as an institution, unless that same institution allowed for a scientific institution to coexist with it. As we saw in history, armies sent by popes were sometimes accompanied by trebuchets, and more recently, a certain Islamic Republic built its fair share of rockets.
The goal of this essay is not to say one is better than the other, but to establish a taxonomy to help differentiate concepts when discussing them, as to limit the conflation of concepts belonging to different scopes or roles.
Original Essay:
We often fall into the habit of treating science and religion as if they were rivals competing for the same role. Conversations about belief often consist of one side insisting that science has rendered religion obsolete, and the other side defending religious belief as if it were an alternative explanation of the physical world. In doing so, we miss something essential. Science and religion are not apt to adequately replace one another. This may explain why religion and spiritual traditions remain so powerful today, even though many claims found in religious texts are contradicted by scientific knowledge.
If science is so successful at explaining the world, why do cultural and spiritual belief systems persist? The answer is not that people are ignorant of science, but that science does not address one of our most fundamental human needs: meaning, in the sense of our reason to live; meaning that makes our suffering bearable. Some will argue that science on its own is enough to inspire us, but science is an institution operating according to what I call a Holodoxic recipe. The love of learning, the desire to use science for good, and even our definition of what counts as “good” are not scientific conclusions, they are values we cultivate in our children and ourselves because they are culturally inherited and reinforced. In that sense, being inspired by science is itself a cultural phenomenon.
To make sense of this, I distinguish between three broad categories of belief systems, each serving a different function in human life.
The first category consists of societo-structural belief systems. These include science, governance, law, and the institutions that organize large-scale cooperation. Their role is to help us coordinate around shared reality. Science, in particular, is indispensable here. It allows us to build reliable models of the world, to correct errors, and to adapt our understanding as new evidence emerges. A society that abandons science, or treats it as optional, quickly loses its ability to keep up in a post-industrial world.
I have somewhat argued in "A Spectrum of Beliefs", for the central importance of science in this domain, and I won’t repeat that case here.
The second category consists of spirituo-cultural belief systems. These include religion, ethics, philosophical traditions, and the narratives through which people understand who they are and how they ought to live. These systems are not primarily about predicting outcomes or explaining natural phenomena. Their function is to provide coherent norms, moral orientation, and stability in the face of uncertainty and suffering. They are also the narratives that legitimize group actions, citizenship, and currencies. They answer questions science does not address: What makes a life worth living? What does it mean to remain aligned with my values?
Currencies form a third class of belief systems. These include money, status, credentials, shared mores, etc. Their function is not to establish truth or generate meaning, but to facilitate exchange, coordination, and social navigation. Like any currency, their value depends most heavily on consensus.
Problems arise when we expect one type of system to rule the others. When science is treated as a substitute for religion (I use religion loosely here,) it is asked to answer questions it was never designed to answer. When religious belief is treated as a literal explanation of the physical world, it is only reasonable to believe it as long as a better explanation isn't discovered, and many such explanations have, in fact, been discovered through science.
These explanations are “better” not merely because they enable technological progress, but because they sharpen our understanding of sentient life, causality, and consciousness in ways that both inform and challenge our moral intuitions. But in and of themselves, our values are not scientific conclusions. They precede science, guide its application, and constrain its use.
To argue for the importance of spirituo-cultural belief systems, I will present a few examples. But I must first define faith and hope.
In everyday language, hope and faith are often used interchangeably. Here, I define them in a specific way, not to capture their full semantic range, but to give us tools to talk coherently about how our attitudes toward uncertainty shape satisfaction, resilience, and stability.
I define hope as the belief that an outcome has any probability to be attained.
Faith, however, is an unwavering belief in an outcome or in the high probability of it.
I can be unwaveringly committed to the belief that seatbelts significantly reduce the risk of death, without believing they guarantee survival. I’d still say that I have faith in seatbelts. It’s more than just hoping for the best. It’s believing the best will most likely come, enough that I am as certain as if the best will necessarily come.
According to science, as of now, there is no hope for people to walk on the Sun and come back in time for dinner. I can’t have faith that it will happen if I don’t believe there is even a chance it might. That “chance it might” is what I call hope. Faith is contingent on hope.
When we believe an outcome to be unattainable, our goal usually shifts. Otherwise, we’re hopeless and we become passive.
A parent helping a child with an impossible task, say building a fort that will reach space or finding the Sasquatch, is not secretly hoping the task will succeed; the real goal might have simply become encouragement, shared joy, bonding, etc.
The important consideration about faith is how it is anchored. Faith itself may remain firm, while the satisfaction it produces can be either fragile or resilient, depending on what it is tied to.
When faith is anchored to a narrow outcome, satisfaction becomes fragile. The problem is not merely that some outcomes are unlikely, but that they are highly contingent and their result lies outside of one’s agency. Having faith that you will win a contest illustrates this clearly: regardless of the odds, satisfaction is entirely dependent on an external result you do not control.
When faith is instead anchored to a broader orientation, (effort, ethical alignment, attitude,) it becomes elastic, not in the sense that your beliefs change, but in the sense that coherence and motivation are preserved across a wider range of outcomes. In that case, success is no longer defined solely by whether a particular result occurs, but by remaining aligned with one’s chosen orientation.
How we align our faith has a decisive impact on our stability and satisfaction, even when the faith itself remains unwavering.
You can have faith that you will win the race, but you can also have faith that you can and will do everything to win the race. The latter should generally conduce to greater satisfaction without hindering your chances. Conversely, doubt in your abilities might affect your chances of winning negatively. And while you might have hope that you could win, if you highly doubt it, we would not call you "hopeful". It seems that what we mean when we commonly say "hopeful" is really "optimistic", and optimism rhymes with faith.
Many spiritual and philosophical traditions operate on this principle. Faith in God, for example, need not be understood as a claim about predicting events. It can be understood as a commitment to a framework in which whatever happens can be integrated meaningfully. If something seems off, we take the Jobian view and ask, how do you figure out you can understand the will of God? God works in mysterious ways. Similarly, Stoic ethics does not promise favorable outcomes, it promises that one can remain aligned with one’s values regardless of outcome. In these cases, coherence itself is the outcome. Faith used that way does not guarantee success in the world. It guarantees inner stability.
This kind of elasticity is often mistaken for a flaw, but it is only problematic in the societo-structural domain. Spirituo-cultural systems create order from the chaos, and the durability of that order protects us from disorientation and despair. In this context, preserving coherence at all costs, whether through effort, ethical alignment, or attitude toward what exceeds one’s agency, is not a failure of reason, but a success in sustaining human satisfaction. When such systems can also remain compatible with scientific societo-structural frameworks, that compatibility should be actively pursued as a means of optimizing human welfare.
Seen this way, science and faith are not contradictory. They are complementary responses to different human needs. Science remains essential for organizing society and understanding how the world operates. Spirituo-cultural belief systems remain essential for providing us with belonging, existential meaning, and stability in the chaos of lived experience.
Recognizing this does not diminish science. It places it where it belongs, indispensable, but limited in scope.
Perhaps many of our disputes would soften if we stopped asking which system should win, and started asking which system is better equipped for which job.
