Science & Faith is the second album from Irish pop rock band The Script, responsible for hits such as “Before the Worst” and “Breakeven”. The title track addresses “the primacy of love in the universal equation”, and worldviews clash when the singer tries to explain love to his girlfriend in scientific terms:

“I tried pushing evolution as the obvious conclusion from the start. It was for my own amusement, saying love was an illusion of a hopeless heart.”

Of course, she isn’t impressed:

“You won’t find faith or hope down a telescope
You won’t find heart and soul in the stars
You can break everything down to chemicals
But you can’t explain a love like ours.”

She chides him for holding to a form of ontological reductionism, which cannot explain their relationship in real terms – if all that we experience is merely molecules in motion, then love would certainly be an illusion along with everything else we feel, perceive and believe. Yet we as individuals give & receive love and our society commends selfless acts. And The Script agrees in “This = Love”:

“And it’s in the heart of the soldier
As he takes a bullet on the front line…
And it’s in the hands of the father yeah
As he works his fingers to the bone yeah”

But if Science & Faith deals with “the primacy of love in the universal equation” then love-gone-bad is the album’s lowest common denominator: the singer describes one particularly bad breakup as an emergency room experience in “Exit Wounds”:

“Can anybody help me with these exit wounds? I don’t know how much more love this heart can lose. “

It’s a great question but it’s also the sad note the album ends on. There are no answers in the drink and pills the singer laments are “living but without the will”. And at least one person in the relationship views people as functional saviours, as in the song “Walk Away”:

“If you’re looking for heaven than it sure as hell ain’t me.”

At least the singer has a realistic assessment of his ability.
So does The Script ever solve their universal equation? Well, yes and no. They affirm self-sacrificial relationships and in “This = Love” they declare that ‘love is from above’, without elaborating further. Love is something that comes from ‘above’, but not from the stars or some great unknown entity, but from God:

This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. (1 John 4:10)

Indeed, the Bible goes so far as to say that God is love (1 John 4:8); love is essential to His character. This a love that transcends space and time to reach us in our deepest need – the death and resurrection of Jesus transforms lives by conquering sin, reconciling us to God and enabling us to love people. In this way love truly comes from above.