I write in response to the article titled ‘Faith and Reason’ by Mgr Joseph Farrugia (May 13). It is not my intention to convince anyone to choose to sit on either side of the fence dividing atheism and religious belief. However, I do have to take issue with a number of statements that, I think, would make any scientist feel quite uneasy - and hereby aim to clarify some of the points that were raised.

Farrugia begins by saying that he does not accept the “claimed incompatibility between faith and reason”. Perhaps, he would be more accepting, or at least willing to consider it, were he to look at the whole issue through the lens of a bona fide scientist practising the scientific method.

This method requires any claim to be backed by robust evidence if it is to be taken seriously - and the onus to provide such evidence is on the person making the claim. Moreover, as is oft-quoted (in various forms), “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”.

Or, to give an example, it is one thing to have someone knock on your door to tell you that it is raining and that you should take an umbrella when leaving the house, quite another to be told that they have just witnessed a flying elephant outside your doorstep.

In the case of the former, you might not question their claim thoroughly; in the latter, any sensible person would demand hard evidence to support such an assertion. It is to be expected then that many scientists - indeed, most scientists - do not feel at ease with accepting any form of doctrine or ideology (be it religious or otherwise) that asserts any number of extraordinary happenings – events that are claimed to violate the physical laws of nature, even - if these are not supported by extraordinary evidence.

When Farrugia touches upon the issue of evidence, he states that “ordinary Christians are not trained to address ‘scientifically’ the evidence of God’s being”. For that matter, neither is anybody else.

Farrugia himself puts the word “scientifically” within quotation marks, presumably already realising that using that term in this context is plain wrong. Secondly, is Farrugia trained as a scientist, qualified to address this question from a scientific standpoint himself?

There is certainly no consensus among the scientific community that there is any rational reason to support the existence of a deity

Are scientists, even, trained to address the ‘scientific evidence’ for the existence of God? No, and the reason is a simple one: scientists do not concern themselves with matters which, by their own construct, lie outside empirical examination. They are occupied doing what science does best: proposing hypotheses that can actually be tested via comparison with experiments that yield repeatable results.

That is how one tests the rigorousness of an idea - and if it fails the test, it is quite simply thrown out.

Now, there is certainly no consensus amongst the scientific community that there is any rational reason to support the existence of a deity. One could certainly find a number of scientists who also happen to be believers of some sort, but were they to apply the same mode of inquiry employed in their field of study to their own faith, that is, were they to judge the claimed veracity of their belief with the same standard they apply when judging claims by their own peers in their inquiries into the workings of nature, they would have problems reconciling religion with reason.

And they would certainly not propose that their belief is backed by scientific reason and evidence. If they did, they would probably not be taken seriously, even if they were “leading scientists”.

One’s prominence is not a factor, for arguing from authority is a fallacy that has no place in science. For a scientist, the incompatibility between faith and science is very tangible. A universe whose laws can be violated at the whim of a creator is a very different universe than one that stems from and evolves according to a simple set of immutable, physical laws. A doctrine that is based on faith is very different than a system rooted solely in reason and evidence.

Unfortunately, I do not have the space here to properly address the story of Galileo Galilei, a far more complex case (both scientifically and politically) than what Farrugia, regrettably, portrayed. The same goes for Greek systems of knowledge.

For a scientist, the clash between reason and faith is a very real one. One might very well claim that they have encountered God “from transcendental or spiritual knowledge”, as Farrugia says.

However, adopting this mode of personal ‘knowledge’ acquisition is vastly different than the thoroughly rational and evidence-based methodology of scientific reason. For many practising scientists, one does not sit easily with the other.

And I strongly suspect that many Humanists have the same issue. I hope the above discussion shows that it is neither straightforwardly easy, not productive for an honest discussion, to categorically reject claims of an incompatibility between faith and reason; for many it is a very palpable clash - and for good reason.

Joseph Caruana is a researcher in astrophysics and lecturer at the Department of Physics and the Institute of Space Sciences & Astronomy at the University of Malta.