Mystery and Evidence

Tim Crane recently wrote a piece in the New York Times on the difference between science and religion which I feel deserves a response.

His points are basically these:
1. If we are to take the claims of religions as beliefs supported by evidence (something akin to a scientific hypothesis), then they almost always fall short.
2. We should not interpret religious claims this way. While religious claims are statements often about history, this does not make them necessarily "scientific."
3. The principle difference between science and religion is that while both are attempts at explaining the world, the former does so by "showing how things conform to its hypotheses," while the later "sees a kind of meaning or significance in things."

I think Crane has made some crucial errors. While his description of the project of science is accurate, I feel it must be viewed in context of the larger goal it is in service of. Science is a project that is in service of rationality. Here, I am using the following definition of rationality: the interest in having one's beliefs about reality actually track reality. There are clearly differences between science and history. Scientific theories make predictions for example, history does not (at least, not as explicitly and quantitatively). But clearly both science and history are attempts at rationality. Both scientists and historians are concerned with having good reasons for believing what they do about their respective fields. And both are only willing to invest precisely as much confidence in a belief as there is evidence in support of it. So, historians are functionally certain that Napoleon existed because the evidence in support of this is overwhelming. Historians have less confidence in the existence of Socrates and Jesus, because the evidence in their favor is far from overwhelming. Notice that while no equations are being invoked, this is exactly how a scientist thinks.

This is why it is misleading to characterize religion as interested in "facts" in a historic sense, but not in a scientific sense. If you take a step back and ask "are the religious concerned with the evidence for their claims?" the answer is no. Even Crane's answer to this is no. He observes:

When the devout pray, and their prayers are not answered, they do not take this as evidence which has to be weighed alongside all the other evidence that prayer is effective. They feel no obligation whatsoever to weigh the evidence.

It is in this way that religion does not meet the criterion for rationality. So speaking of whether or not its claims are "scientific" or "merely concerned with the historicity of the facts" becomes meaningless. Rationality is the backdrop which makes sense of the various projects of humans: history, science, religion etc.

Every human being on Earth is in the business of being rational. We all want our beliefs about reality to actually track reality. The higher the fidelity between our beliefs and reality, the happier and healthier we typically are. The problem is that we have a tendency to form beliefs about the world we wish were true, and then halt our search for evidence to disprove our beliefs. Religion is an irrational project because it enables this error.

It is a misrepresentation to suggest that the new atheists are asking religious people to be scientific per se. Certainly no one is asking them to carefully define their terms, conduct a double blind study, analyze the data and publish in an academic journal. The challenge to the religious person is to be rational: to engage in an honest appraisal of the available evidence and not claim to know things you couldn't possibly know when they evidence just isn't there. Even Dawkins would agree to that.