What is comes to answers to profound questions, science offers much less certainty than most of us believe.  In the book "First You Build a Cloud and Other Reflections on Physics as a Way of Life" by K. Cole, Ms. Cole quotes Einstein and Infield as saying: "In our endeavor to understand reality, we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. ----- he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations."  (Einstein is referring to analyzing how the watch works without opening it up.)

In the same book on page 26, the author says; "Physics is about the simple things in the universe," notes one physicists, and yet "it could be argued that simple things plainly do not exist."  Biology is incredibly complex (extremely large number of degrees of freedom and dependence on a large number of interrelated interactions) as compared with physics, but even such a seemingly simple thing as a stone, the author says, is "much too complicated for a physicists to deal with.""  (The many ways in which a stone can be formed are not amendable to simple laws and formulas.  Physics cannot even tell us why objects have mass.  See "Let there be mass" about 1/4 way down on linked page.       The mass as in Newton's law of  "force = mass times acceleration" is that same mass as in gravitational attraction and physics cannot tell us why that is so!

Noted physicist Richard Feynman once said, "The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific 'truth."  The corollary to this is clearly that if the "science" is not directly testable by experiment, there is no proof of truth!  Sadly, this is often true of what is often put forward erroneously as "science".

Physics and science should, of course, still be viewed as a valuable but limited way to better understand and use the incredible richness of the structure of the world around us.   The lack of perfect scientific truth does not decrease the value of science which can be demonstrated in the laboratory.   This does not mean, however, that we should always equate science truths with a science proofs.  There can be a huge difference between knowing some science limited truth and having a proof of something more than a simple science relationship.   Here is a link to another site about science and doubt which has a good description of a science proof about 3/4 of the down from the top.

Physicist C. Townes, winner of the Nobel Prize, views religion and science as having basic similarities in important ways.  He recently outlined his views in the Washington Post, explaining that “both are human creations.  In both we use faith, we use assumptions, and we have uncertainties.”

The inadequacies of basic science do, however, leave society with imperfect information and with a more difficult task of understanding and watching over science.  It also leaves a more difficult problem in keeping scientists from causing societal problems when they overstate the meaning of scientific findings and when they begin misusing societies resources for personal gain of some sort.  In the book "Doubt and Certainty" by T. Rothman and G. Sundarshan, on page x they say "wisdom is more important than knowledge.    Too often, writers and scientists present speculation as fact and fail to stand back and examine their own assumptions." (Our colors and fonts.)   We would add that knowing science facts does not equate with having wisdom (correctly interpreting the deep meaning of facts.)

In the same book on page xi the writers say "what most people believe to be uncertain in science is fairly certain, and what they believe is certain is not."  On page 83 they say "almost any realistic situation is far to complicated to be analyzed directly in terms of causes."  In those situations we abandon causality and talk about probability.  We would add that this leave room for and a need for faith of some sort and makes questioning absolute and dogmatic scientific pronouncements an even more important task.

This somewhat mis-titled site quotes many open minded scientists questioning science in a number of ways.

In light of the reality of uncertain science, we must ask questions like:  

Looking at our schools, should we allow science to be taught as certainty, especially in the area of evolution and other life science theories, when the resultant atheistic bias may tend to undermine our nations morals?   THERE ARE ABSOLUTES BENEATH THE RELATIVE.   Morals and ethics are not relative.  If we teach absolutes that are not real, what kind of thinking are out children going to be capable of?

Looking at industry; when is there enough certainty that industrial society is damaging our environment for citizens and the government to take action and accept the economic cost that must be paid to save that environment?

Looking at medical sciences, when does the risk of experimenting with creating new forms of life become too great?  Such experimentation could save the world from famine or plague or cause plagues with forms of life our immune systems can’t handle?  When does the risk of bio engineering our food become to great a risk for the economic rewards?

The correct decisions on all society related science issues requires the public to become more educated in science and more capable of dealing with the reality of science uncertainties.  The public must fill the need for morals and faith that science cannot supply.

Physics Myths and Physics Facts, Flaws in Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics

SCIENCE UNCERTAINTY AND DOUBT

Science, Uncertainty and Risk: The Problem of Complex Phenomena

TEN MYTHS ABOUT SCIENCE.

TEN MYTHS OF SCIENCE: REEXAMINING WHAT WE THINK WE KNOW.

Dispelling Some Common Myths about Science

Is String Theory Even Wrong? (Read the last paragraph.)

Chance from a Theistic Perspective.

On the Inherent Incompleteness of Scientific Theories.

Does Conceivability Entail Possibility?  (Just because something is conceivable (like a Zombie), does not mean it is possible nor certain by an means.)

More public input means better science