Believers often ignore science, by stating that it is fallible and has changed. They state that you cannot trust science because it may change what is thought to be true, where as the word of God is infallible.

Getting things wrong is actually a good thing and is not a reason to disregard science entirely. Knowledge is an evolutionary process. It is cliché, to say “You learn from your mistakes,” but it is true we do learn a lot from our mistakes. In some ways, we learn more from failures than from successes. Science thrives on mistakes and making corrections. That is the only way we can get closer to the truth. The problem occurs when empirical statements are made as if they were truth without being put to the test. Science puts everything to the test.

When science finds that it was wrong or things don’t go as expected, science corrects itself. When believers are wrong or things don’t go as expected, they do not correct themselves. When believers do admit they were wrong it is only done after years of contradictory evidence. But there are still some things that believers refuse to accept still.

Here is a quote from the great mind of Carl Sagan from The Demon-Haunted World:

The reason science works so well is partly that built-in error-correcting machinery. There are no forbidden questions in science, no matters too sensitive or delicate to be probed, no sacred truths. That openness to new ideas, combined with the most rigorous, skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, sifts the wheat from the chaff.

I disputed with a minister, who voiced his opinion that God-believing biologist Francis S. Collins shouldn’t be speaking to Christians, asking them to embrace the truth of evolution. The dispute boiled down to this: Collins was asking Christians to give up a core belief. But that shouldn’t matter, if what is believed is false. Science is self-correcting, belief is not. When things don’t go as expected, science adjusts and believers make excuses, which makes it impossible to dispute their belief: “God is mysterious and has his own plans for us” is a common excuse. With this attitude, truth does not win but is repressed. Only in an environment, where things can be open to criticism and put to the test, can truth win.

With science, accurate predictions can be made. With God, none can be made. God is temperamental and unpredictable. In the Bible, God was somewhat predictable, through punishment for sin, and constantly made his subjects aware of it. Believers would like to believe that God is predictable by making statements of the sort: if you do such-and-such, God will do such-and-such. Believers still like to state that if you believe in God and do good, God will bless you and if you do bad, God will punish you. Obviously, if one makes their life a life of crime, for instance, more bad things are going to happen to them than those who do not choose a life of crime. This is simply a matter of not putting yourself in harmful situations and has nothing to do with God.

What about all the believers who do suffer? Bart Ehrman wrote a very interesting book, God’s Problem, about what the Bible has to say about why God’s faithful children suffer. In Ehrman’s opinion the biblical writers were constantly searching for that answer and the Bible is a record of their search for the answers for why they, God’s chosen, suffered. Some of the reasons given by the biblical writers even contradict each other. If we are to take the parable of the lilies of the field to be true, then God will take care of his own, but unfortunately that does not always hold true and there are many of his own that suffer. Believers even pray and ask God to relieve their suffering and many times relief does not come. Why is this? Why does God play favorites? Why isn’t God like science: if I pray for a loved one to get better, then they will?

There was a study done to see if intercessory prayer would help with the recovery from coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery and reduce post-surgery complications. The results of the test showed that intercessory prayer had no impact on the rate of complications among the test patients and did not differ from the control group. If fact it had a negative effect on the patients that were told that someone was praying on their behalf and had a greater rate of complications when compared with the control group (this shows to me that prayer could have a positive or negative psychological effect, which has nothing to do with God answering or not answering prayers). When science behaves unexpectedly, adjustments are made. When God behaves unexpectedly, adjustments are not made and only excuses for why the expected results did not occur. Initially, academic religious believers had high hopes for this study as they were sure that it wold prove the benefits of prayer, but they did a complete about-face when the results were published. Basically, the excuse is that God is not predictable and does what he wants to do regardless of the prayers of his children and he would not change this for a scientific study. God knows best.

What if science did the same thing when something failed? Science would lose all credibility.