In 2016, The Institute for Religion in an Age of Science devoted their conference to the topic "How Can We Know: Co-Creating Knowledge in Perilous Times". They invited me to submit a paper on The Empirical Standard for Knowing: Faith Misplaced. We are going to cover this material in two parts. Today, in part 1, I will introduce the articles of faith that underpin empirical knowledge, and explore the questions raised in the context of relativity and complexity theory.