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The Difference Between Science And Religion
Why the difference is fundamental but frequently misunderstood
A few days ago while in the gym (still recovering from injuries sustained) I had an accidental conversation with another gym-goer. Unlike ninety percent of those who summon up the willpower to go to a gym regularly, she was clearly taking it seriously and not just (like most men) merely jerking weights around with appallingly bad and injury-creating form so as to pretend to a strength not actually possessed.
By chance we began talking and it quickly became evident that she was intelligent and inquisitive. We spontaneously moved from topic to topic, covering literary techniques such as foreshadowing and seeding, musical techniques such as subtle alterations in rhythm and key, and then we reached the topic of scientific empiricism. She’d qualified as a medical doctor a few years earlier and defined herself as “spiritual.” When I smiled gently and explained that for me such beliefs are as vapid as those of any more formal mythology, she was perplexed. How could a polyglot like me, and one seemingly pleasant and non-autodidactic, not have “spiritual” leanings?
As we talked for the next hour it became apparent that like a great many people she’d never actually understood what scientific empiricism is. For her, it was “just another belief system” that was surely therefore just as good or just as flawed as any other belief system. I decided I’d try to elucidate the profound and unbridgeable gap between myth-based beliefs and scientific empiricism. You’d think it would be obvious to everyone, because thousands of years of fairytales about invisible magical pixies have yielded nothing of substance whereas only a few hundred years of scientific empiricism has radically changed the world.
Due to the way in which the hardwiring of the human brain evolved, however, this distinction is to most people entirely invisible.
This article, therefore, is an attempt to explain the fundamental difference between mythological beliefs and scientific empiricism. But before we begin the exegesis we need to ask: why do people form beliefs at all? After all, we don’t see chimps expending vast efforts to construct edifices by means of which to honor imaginary chimp deities…
