of responsibility to science and religion. For example, the biologist Stephen Jay Gould argued that
science and religion occupy separate areas of concern, with science having responsibility for
empirical matters such as whether evolution occurred, but with religion remaining autonomous and
paramount for questions of morality and meaning. My view is that even morality and meaning are
better approached via scientific evidence than by religious faith. Let us now look at the difference
between faith-based and evidence-based thinking.
How Faith Works
According to the Website adherents.com, 84 percent of the more than 6 billion people in the world
today support some religious group. The largest religions are Christianity, with 2.1 billion members
in various denominations, and Islam, with around 1.5 billion. Both of these religions believe in just
one god, unlike the third largest religion, Hinduism. And both have central texts, the New and Old
Testament Bible for Christians, and the Koran for Muslims. They also have historically important
religious leaders, such as St. Paul for Christians and Muhammad for Muslims, as well as
contemporary leaders such as the pope and cardinals for Catholics and ayatollahs for Shiite Muslims.
Christianity and Islam both have subgroups, with many different kinds of Protestants opposed to
Catholics, and Sunni Muslims often in conflict with Shiites over doctrines and practices.
Religious faith is a belief in, trust in, and devotion to gods, leaders, or texts, independent of
evidence. For example, Catholics believe in God and saints such as Mary the mother of Jesus, and
they also trust the pope and the Bible as sources that reveal the word of God. A belief is faith based if
the source of its acceptance is supposed communication from a deity, leader, or text. If you are
religious and have a moral dilemma about whether to lie to a friend, you can pray to God, consult a
religious leader such as a priest, or read a religious text such as the Bible. Your aim is to get a faithbased
answer
that
will
tell
you
what
you
are
morally
obliged
to
do.
Faith
can
also
propose
answers
to
factual
questions,
such
as
the
age
of
the
universe:
fundamentalist
Christians
consult
the
Old
Testament
and
their
ministers
and
conclude
that
the
universe
began
around
six
thousand
years
ago,
in
contrast
to
the
fourteen
billion
or
so
years
that
scientific
evidence
suggests.
Religious faith is enormously important to the lives of billions of people, but it faces three serious
problems as a means of deciding what to believe or what to do: variations among religions, falsity of
religious beliefs, and evil actions based on religion. The first problem is that religions vary greatly in
what gods, leaders, and texts they propose to believe in, and faith provides no basis for choosing
among them. Should you have faith in the single Christian God, or in the dozens of Hindu gods such as
Shiva? Who is a better guide to life, St. Paul or Muhammad? Should you listen to the Catholic pope
or to a Protestant minister? Should you seek wisdom in the Bible, the Koran, or the Book of Mormon?
There are major disagreements within and across various religions, and faith provides no way of
settling such disagreements other than simply shouting that your faith is better than the others.
Religious faiths cannot all be right, but they can all be wrong.
For most people, the religious faith that they acquire is an accident of birth. Consider two
prominent examples, former American president George W Bush and Arab leader Osama bin Laden.
Many of Bush's beliefs and decisions are based on his religious faith, which derives from his
Christian Protestant background. He became more deeply religious in his early forties, giving up
drinking and undertaking serious study of the Bible. Osama bin Laden has a very different set of
beliefs and values, but they are also heavily faith based, deriving from his Muslim upbringing and