A review and commentary upon the film. This quote stands out to me:
It pains me to hear people speak as if science and faith are polar opposites.
Yes, I agree. Indeed, I was thinking of this this very morning. Science and religion are mutually exclusive, in my opinion. Science has a foundation in philosophy, that without it, it is meaningless. The foundation is how do we know what we know? In philosophy, it is called epistemology. My understanding of science is that you know something if you can observe it directly or indirectly. Now, contrast this with faith. There's no epistemology to it. Indeed, if there were, it wouldn't be faith.
Faith requires a belief in something without the requirement of evidence to support that belief.
This may draw some criticism, I suppose.
Look at it another way. In a PBS documentary about "the theory of everything", there was the assertion that you can't teach a dog physics. The knowledge of physics is beyond the dog. Dogs are limited, but so are we. It would take a lot of arrogance to proclaim that human kind is the ultimate in the ability to comprehend knowledge. In fact, there may be intelligences in the universe far greater than our own. So much so, that we may as well be like a dog is to man with respect to physics. Indeed all knowledge can be included in that. Would it be too much then, if you accept that premise, that there is an ultimate knowledge that beyond all others?
Such could be faith then, since it requires no evidence to support it and yet you can believe it.
Science and faith can complement each other. But one should not be a substitute for the other.
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