Pontius Pilate's sarcastic, ruthless yet also sympathetic and challenging question to Christ (for which he did not wait for an answer) will echo in my mind as long as I live.
"Substituting science for religion is like swapping a series of case-notes on senile dementia for King Lear."
It has always seemed to me that non-scientists, and non-students of the hard sciences and math, put more faith in "science" than do students of science.
Non-students of science seem quick to find truth in the results of the scientific method than scientists themselves, who, like the great Polanyi, tend to be humble about knowledge, and are always questioning their methods and their findings. Science is about "theory" and a search for facts, not about Truth. Scientists never talk about Truth.
It was good to see Polanyi referenced in a piece by John Polinghorne in the UK's Times Online, titled The Truth in Religion. He uses Dawkins and Hitchins, et al, as starting points for a serious discussion of the relationship between faith and reason. One quote:
No progress will be made in the debate about religious belief unless participants are prepared to recognize that the issue of truth is as important to religion as it is to science. Dawkins invokes Bertrand Russell’s parable of the teapot irrationally claimed to be in unobserved orbit in the solar system. Of course there are no grounds for belief in this piece of celestial crockery, but there are grounds offered for religious belief, though admittedly different people evaluate their persuasiveness differently. Religion does not have access to absolute proof of its beliefs but, on careful analysis, nor does science. In all realms of human inquiry, the interlacing of experience and interpretation introduces a degree of precariousness into the argument. Yet this does not mean that we cannot attain beliefs sufficiently well motivated to be the basis for rational commitment. In his book on the philosophy of science, Personal Knowlege (1964), Michael Polanyi stated that he was writing in order to explain how (scientifically) he could commit himself to what he believed to be true, while knowing it might be false. That is the human epistemic condition. Recognizing this should encourage caution, but not induce intellectual paralysis. It is in this spirit that the dialogue between science and religion needs to be conducted.
Polinghorne's whole essay/book review here.
Image: Tintoretto's Christ before Pilate
