So, all science requires faith in axioms. If I want to do Geometry, I have to accept the following 5 postulates on faith, as there is no possible way to prove them:
- Through any given pair of unique points, there is exactly one unique line that passes through both.
- Every line segment has one unique midpoint.
- For any give pair of unique points there is exactly one circle containing the second point with the first point as its center.
4. All right angles are congruent to each other.
- (Euclid’s Parallel Postulate) Given a line and a point not on the line, there exists one unique line that passes through the given point which is parallel to the first line.
I can pretty much recreate all Euclidean geometry from scratch on a desert island with those presumptions, although it helps to have some additional presumptions, such as “things equal to equal things are themselves equal.” If you are familiar with geometry, they seem to make sense, but they are all articles of faith. If I am a wicked smart brainiac like Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevskii or Janos Bolyai, I can even replace a postulate like #5 with a different one, and come up with a rational, internally self-consistent system of non-Euclidean geometry.
These postulates are unprovable and are Articles of Faith, then.
Even the attempt to use Logic to resolve our questions requires us to first accept the arguments of formal logic. We cannot use logic itself to prove these first premises of logic, so again, we are forced to accept certain starting premises.
But before I can even get to those, to do any kind of science I have to accept still other Articles of Faith. I have to accept that the universe is orderly and runs on accepted rules (such as…Causality). I have to accept that there are other consciousnesses that can understand my discoveries, and that if those consciousnesses do the same experiments I do, that they will achieve the same results I did, all conditions being equal. I even have to accept that science is a useful use of my time.
So, we are dealing with more Articles of Faith.
At this point, a materialist will usually argue that these postulates aren’t what anyone considers “faith,” they are just observations of observable phenomena or rules of logic or rules of thumb that anyone could deduce. They will argue that “faith,” as religious people use the term, is believing in crazy, “non-scientific” things for which there is no evidence.
I would agree that extending faith to a unique idiosyncratic belief, such as a non-evidential belief that there is a talking dog named Sam who lives inside the walls of my apartment and who is giving me advice, is a crazy thing for which there is no evidence. (Or so Sam just informed me.)
But for the views of religious faith held by most Christians, it is sufficient to point out that there is no evidence against the existence of the Christian view of God; that there is a strong body of evidence that points towards the Christian view of God; that there exist no inherent contradictions in a Christian view of reality; and that sufficient numbers of the world’s greatest thinkers have so embraced the Christian view of God, on faith, that it cannot be argued that it is an inherently unreasonable view. According to Gallup, 93% of Americans believe in God, so it is hard for a materialist to argue that pretty much everyone else is wrong and that he and his friends are the only ones who are right.
And while it is possible that everyone else is wrong and you are right, as Brother Guy Consolmagno has said, if almost everyone else gets “7” as the answer on an arithmetic math test and you get “777,” you know whose math we’re going to check first.). Again, this is not a proof for the existence of God, but it is some good evidence for the proposition that faith in God is not unreasonable.
(I would also suggest reading Pope Francis’s recent encyclical on the nature of Faith itself, for a better understanding of what the Church considers “Faith” to be. It’s quite well-written)
