It’s important to realize that both of these are theological positions, rather than scientific ones.
In our time the word science has come to mean the study of phenomena observable in the physical universe, things with physical existance and their workings and relationships to one another. The natural sciences of biology, chemisty, physics, astronomy are disciplines we call science today. Aquinas shows that theology is a science. Skeptics of the past claimed that the only knowledge, the only things we can be certain of are the things we can observe with our physical senses, and the instruments we make that extend their powers. This precludes us from knowing anything beyond the bounds of the physical universe. We can have no knowledge or awareness of anything spiritual, or know anything about spiritual truth if the skeptics are correct. We can never know anything by means of religious faith, by believing that which has been revealed.
This limits what we can know and this idea was the beginning of the thinking that the findings of natural sciences trump any other form of knowledge or knowing. The natural sciences work by postulating theories of how things in the physical universe work. The theories might accurately describe a phenomenon or not. A new theory might disprove an existing theory at any time. Using this model we can never know anything for certain, even about the physical universe. We can never know something as objectively true. We can never know that the theory of relativity or the theory of evolution is true. What then can we know for certain?
A famous English atheist recently anounced he can no longer believe that ther universe was not made. Its workings are so ordered that there had to be an orderer. He discovered Aquinas’ proof of God’s existence using natural intelligence without faith. So an intelligence outside the physical universe made the heavens and earth. If something is outside the physical universe of time and space is not observable by our senses, then its study is not within the jusrisdication of the natural sciences. They can say nothing about this thing if it has no measurable observable properties. If it exists outside the physical universe, having no mass or speed, then it must be a spiritual thing. If this thing or intelligence made everything that exists then whatever purpose things in existence have, are given purpose by their maker. Without their maker, or if they have no maker they can have no purpose.
The natural sciences can observe things that exist physically and their operations, but can say nothing about why they exist, their purpose. So Stephen Hawkings can say he spent his life trying to understand how the universe works and he succeeded, but he does not know why. The scientific study of man’s origins may or may not lead to a correct understanding of origins. Even if they do, the knowledge is useless to us in terms of understanding why we exist. We are trying to understand where we come from. But where are we going? As we learn more and more of the history of the universe, the movement of galaxies and how it all came into existence we realize we know nothing about why it came into existence, or why we came into existence and our sciences can not help us. Yet we wonder. We are curious to know this. For this we need theology. We are curious about where we came from, but also where we are going. We see we make choices that determine what our future will become what our world will look like, as our predecessors shaped the world we have today. How should we live to make tomorrow good? In order to direct our steps we need to know where we are supposed to be going, our purpose, our proper end. How can we know this other than guessing? We can only know why we exist, our purpose, where we are going, if the knowledge is revealed to us by the being who gives existence. Revelation, not evolution, tells us our origin and destiny is God.
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