Questions of Truth and Quantum Theory (Religion)

by Mark , Tuesday, March 03, 2009, 08:54 (5539 days ago) @ George Jelliss

Thanks for pointing this out George. I wasn't aware that Tony Hewish is a Christian - I read Maths as an undergraduate at his college in Cambridge. - One area where science does require faith is the assumption that things will behave the same way tomorrow as they do today. Science cannot prove that. If all we relied on was pure logic, I could say that just because the speed of light has one value today doesn't mean it will be the same tomorrow. Every time we apply science we trust that the same orderliness holds. - John Polkinghorne makes the same point that I've tried to make more than once on this site - that science abstracts a particular aspect of our experience of the world and builds theories on that. It is a huge leap of faith to claim that all reality is comprehensible under the same approach, including personal experience - especially when there is no conceivable means to get from the physical to the personal. - I can understand that you find Tony Hewish's comment frustrating. I suspect he was making the limited point that Christian faith should not be dismissed on the ground that it is mysterious and contrary to common sense to believe, for example, that God became incarnate, for the physical world at its most fundamental level is so mysterious and counter-intuitive that, despite our ability to mathematically model it, it defies understanding.