Most physicists believe, as Einstein proposed, that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. You might say that some, like Jim Al-Khalili who promised to eat his shorts if this was proved untrue, hold this belief religiously. But the recent fuss over the possible existence of faster-than-light neutrinos illustrates precisely how different science and religion are when it comes to questions of "belief" or "knowledge".

As a science teacher, I have met a number of students who have questioned whether scientists simply "believe" in science in the same way religious people "believe" in God. It's easy to see why they might think this. Children encounter ideas about how the world works from both religion and science and they are often presented with these ideas as "truths" from figures of authority – priests, imams and science teachers – who in turn claim to be informed by even greater sources of authority such as the bible, Qur'an or science textbooks.

But there is a key difference between the way we teach science and religious teachings. Students of science can, at least in principle, test the claims made by science in a way they cannot do for religion. For example, most high school physics courses require students to know that all objects accelerate towards the ground at the same rate, regardless of their mass (providing we ignore air resistance). This is counterintuitive: most people assume that "heavier" objects fall faster. As a teacher, I get my students to find evidence for this claim by designing and carrying out their own experiments. They do not have to take my word for it, or the word of any other authority figure.

We cannot do this easily for all the claims science makes. For example, it's quite difficult to prove that atoms and electrons exist. In fact, many prominent scientists refused to believe atoms existed well into the late 19th century and it took Einstein to come up with a proof that was widely accepted. However, even if my students cannot prove for themselves that atoms and electrons exist, even if they cannot grasp the mathematics of Einstein's proof, I can point them to the fact that the physical world behaves as if our theories about these entities were true. For example, modern telecommunications would not work if what science tells us about electrons were not true in some sense. We cannot say the same for that other invisible thing so many people are asked to believe in, God.

Of course, we do not usually go out and test every single scientific claim we encounter (it would be impractical) and so, in that sense, you could argue that scientists and science teachers have "faith" in science, but it is certainly not the same kind of faith that is demanded of people who believe in God.

One of the things that appeals to me about science is that, unlike religion, science is not dogmatic. It does not say: "This is the way things are, and it can be no other way." Instead it says something like: "Based on the evidence we have so far, this is how things probably are; if clear and solid evidence is discovered that shows this is not how things are, then we will need to change our minds."

Science can seem rather weak in comparison to the certainties religion offers. But it is this very "weakness", this refusal to issue absolute statements of truth, that allows science to progress, and to come up with increasingly better ways of explaining the world.

This is why, even though their existence might mean that "the foundations of science would crumble", science will not shy away from considering the possibility that faster-than-light neutrinos are real. The issue will not be settled by consulting some supposedly infallible text but rather by close scrutiny of the controversial data and further experimentation if necessary.

And anyone who is capable of doing that work is entitled to put forward their conclusions: there are no hierarchies that absolutely must be respected, there is no single person who will have the final say. If, after scientists have done their work, we find that faster-than-light neutrinos do indeed exist, science may go through some kind of crisis, but it will emerge stronger, with even better ideas about the true nature of the universe.