Science and faith

I WISH Angus Logan understood science (Letters, 26 March). He seems not to appreciate that ­experimentation needs something to experiment with or on and must predict a logical outcome from that experimentation. It must be replicable; everyone must be able to see, ­understand and logically follow the outcome.

The Higgs boson is a good and current example. Scientists worked for many years on Higgs’ hypothesis. They never claimed they had found the particle until they could repeat the experiment over and over again, and get the same result. The result is, and will remain, falsifiable. If someone can show that it is not so, then the theory will fail. Anyone can attempt to falsify published results under the same rules of scientific enquiry.

The trouble with religious faith is it is intensely personal and cannot be replicated by anyone else. Because there is nothing to experiment with, the hypothesis that the believer relies on remains his own hypothesis. Sure, believers use language to communicate their ideas but there is nothing tangible that believer and unbeliever alike can focus on. It is not objective.

It’s a shame Mr Logan disses Richard Dawkins as a “guru”. He is actually a scientist who is also an atheist/agnostic (both terms mean the same thing really).

Secularists aren’t necessarily atheists. Secularists want to separate the functions of the state from those of the church. Such separation gives the church more freedom and it certainly allows the state to function on behalf of believer and unbeliever alike, without fear or favour.

The problem is that the church has had a seat in government for so long that it fears leading a separate and more cloistered life. Most religions want to evangelise, witness and proselytise regardless of their reception in the wider world. Secularism merely wants such objectives left at the personal level, not included at the state level of operations.

I don’t think that ridicule extends to faith itself but more to the superstitious and physically impossible beliefs on which faith is based. If such beliefs were sensible, then ridicule would have no target. Alas, that will never be.

Veronica Denyer

Glenrothes

WHEN I suffered a stroke four years ago, with a 30-60 per cent chance of death, I was glad that the doctors treating me adopted the “scientific” medicine pathway rather than a “faith” “let’s gather around the end of my bed and pray” pathway.

I am alive because science works, Mr Logan (Letters, 26 March). I am not opposed to “faith”. Scientific research shows that people who have a “religious faith or belief system” could prolong their own lives by up to two years.

Neil Sinclair

Edinburgh