When people say science contradicts faith, they usually define faith as “Believing without evidence”. In this Ready Reasons episode, Trent Horn explains why the traditional understanding of faith is not contradicted by science.
Transcript:
When people say, “science contradicts faith,” they usually define “faith” as “believing without evidence” or “believing in spite of whatever the evidence may say.” Science may contradict that definition of faith, but not the traditional understanding of faith.
In the broadest sense, faith is just a kind of trust we have in another person or thing. We might say, for example: “I have faith that John will finish our group project.”
Even scientists have faith that the laws of nature will operate the same way in all times and places—even though they can’t prove the laws of nature will always do this.
For Catholics, faith is “the theological virtue by which we believe in God and believe all that he has said and revealed to us” (CCC 1814). If God does exist, then it’s perfectly reasonable for people to trust, or have faith, in God—just as we would have faith or trust in other people. This includes trusting what God has revealed to an individual through something like prayer; or in a public way through things like the Bible or the teachings of the Church.
But doesn’t having faith mean you don’t have evidence for what you believe? After all, if you had enough evidence, you wouldn’t need faith.
But consider this: according to the United States Parachute Association, 99.99% of skydivers survive their jumps. Now imagine you’re wearing a parachute; you know it’s been packed correctly; you step toward the door of the plane; and as you look down at the ground 2 miles beneath your feet, you see the tops of the clouds passing by.
I ask you this: are you nervous? Probably! Even with so much evidence that you will survive jumping out of an airplane, you still need to trust that evidence. You still need to make a “leap of faith.”
This is not a blind leap, or belief without evidence. It’s a reasonable belief that trusts a conclusion based on the weight of the evidence.
For Catholic Answers, I’m Trent Horn. Thanks for watching.