Some here have used to often the word “faith”, myself included, some even going as far as using the word “religious” when talking about science. Faust is rightly displeased.
Science requires leaps of faith, it requires Faith, but not religious faith…although reading Three Times Great one wonders if he prays to Einstein and Newton, and if he isn’t then he is missing out on the ultimate consequences of his convinctions.
Science requires a belief in identity, the survival of something real over the course of time. This is how a Law obtains. The Law names something using the same procedures used in assigning identity to people. But this is not a religious stance…most of the time.
Religions are the origin of science. Not all religions, of course, or even within the same. I believe that there is religious doubt as much as there is religious certainty. It is this quest for certainty that gave rise to scientific methodology. Religion and science share this in common: both seek to explain what has been observed and apply such knowledge to make predictions. But like religion even those with a scientific preference are not united and you have those that claim a lot more than others.
God, in monotheism, is like Nature. Some perceive it or believe it to be naked before their eyes, known in what is most important and shadowed only by details. Others perceive it as wholly beyond our sight, trancendental, and place us in little cells from which we can make educated guesses but never say that we fully “know” for sure as we know that within the cell.
But a scientist is not a priest because a priest relies on unverifiable revelations taken by others observers and which cannot be relived by himself. The scientist, in contrast, relies on observations which although made by others before him, can still be relived, and verified, in most cases, by him whenever he feels the necessity. This is the reason why science is a universal language, something which religion has not and cannot achieve…ever. Though verification requires a step towards faith, belief in God and then in someone’s revelation from God requires two steps towards faith, a larger leap. And it is the rest of the context which separate them. Science is indifferent towards human behaviour. It is silent on what is right or wrong. It tells us how things are rather than how they ought to be. It doesn’t carry that desperation, that sense of revenge within it, it needs no day of judgment, as monotheists require.