Catholicism and Science

[Samwise21]

I’m struggling with a very apparent viewpoint from the scientific community that religion/faith and science can never be compatible due to what they see as conflicting worldviews or a presupposed stance on what can and can’t be tested, or that religions (mainly the Abrahamic ones) are incompatible with each other, let alone science. This stance gets thrown around by the like (Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, Lawrence Krauss, Sam Harris), to the point where it goes beyond scientists addressing stuff like fundamentalism and becomes an order to submit to a materialist worldview, where art, literature and philosophy are useless and all that is true is only what they declare to be.

And then I see how the Catholic Church has the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and how Pope Francis advocates against climate change. How Pope John Paul II championed Galileo and held evolution to be fact. Bishop Robert Barron and his addresses on science and scientism, Father Georges Lemaître and his discovery of the Big Bang, and all those Vatican astronomers.

So how in the heck do people keep thinking that these two can’t ever be incompatible?

 

[TeenCatholicGuy]

I’m struggling with a very apparent viewpoint from the scientific community that religion/faith and science can never be compatible due to what they see as conflicting worldviews or a presupposed stance on what can and can’t be tested, or that religions (mainly the Abrahamic ones) are incompatible with each other, let alone science. This stance gets thrown around by the like (Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, Lawrence Krauss, Sam Harris), to the point where it goes beyond scientists addressing stuff like fundamentalism and becomes an order to submit to a materialist worldview, where art, literature and philosophy are useless and all that is true is only what they declare to be.

And then I see how the Catholic Church has the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and how Pope Francis advocates against climate change. How Pope John Paul II championed Galileo and held evolution to be fact. Bishop Robert Barron and his addresses on science and scientism, Father Georges Lemaître and his discovery of the Big Bang, and all those Vatican astronomers.

So how in the heck do people keep thinking that these two can’t ever be incompatible?

My (opinion) is that they are simply misguided or wrong.

My Conservative Science Teacher says that Science is built on guesswork, and that Science and God Cannot disprove each other until Jesus Returns.

Climate Change is real, that’s a fact and Is part of church teaching. So is evolution.

 

[grannymh]

I’m struggling with a very apparent viewpoint from the scientific community that religion/faith and science can never be compatible due to what they see as conflicting worldviews or a presupposed stance on what can and can’t be tested, or that religions (mainly the Abrahamic ones) are incompatible with each other, let alone science. This stance gets thrown around by the like (Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, Lawrence Krauss, Sam Harris), to the point where it goes beyond scientists addressing stuff like fundamentalism and becomes an order to submit to a materialist worldview, where art, literature and philosophy are useless and all that is true is only what they declare to be.

And then I see how the Catholic Church has the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and how Pope Francis advocates against climate change. How Pope John Paul II championed Galileo and held evolution to be fact. Bishop Robert Barron and his addresses on science and scientism, Father Georges Lemaître and his discovery of the Big Bang, and all those Vatican astronomers.

So how in the heck do people keep thinking that these two can’t ever be incompatible?

Clarification.
Pope John Paul II did not hold that the Science of Human Evolution to be fact.

This is because the basic evolution model has as its base that a speciation event, (example Homo/Pan split) is a large population arising from a previous large indiscriminate random breeding humanizing population in the hundreds or thousands. Please note that this polygenesis progression works in the material world of bears, bananas, birds, bacteria and busy beavers.

The Catholic Church holds that the human species was originally founded by two
fully-complete humans, Eve and Adam.

 

[grannymh]

Moral Theology as taught by the Catholic Church is based on the teachings of a leading prophet. The Science of Human Evolution could describe this popular prophet Jesus Christ as a descendent of previous humanizing evolving crowds which eventually produced the human species. This would be a denial of the possibility that a Divine Person can assume a human nature without evolution.

The basic problem occurs when the Science of Human Evolution intersects with the Catholic teachings which flow from the first three sacred chapters of Genesis. The Catholic Church does not accept the concept that the leading prophet Jesus is a talented preacher in a long line of evolving humans. True Moral Theology is based on the teachings of the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity who assumed human nature.

 

[randomuser]

So how in the heck do people keep thinking that these two can’t ever be incompatible?

They’re NOT incompatible. God created evolution - who else would have created it?

 

[mVitus]

Climate Change is real, that’s a fact and Is part of church teaching. So is evolution.

Be careful with your terms. Neither are Church teaching. They don’t contradict Church teaching and recent Popes may hold them to be true, but they are the realm of science, not faith.

 

[Mintaka]

There is no conflict between Catholic teaching (including the Bible) and the discoveries of science. There is only one truth, as St. Albert the Great taught us; so conflict can only be illusionary, not real.

This illusionary conflict is caused by insufficient understanding: either of Catholic teaching, or of the facts of the physical world.

The cure is to study up, to argue, and not to be too sure that science has somehow “disproved” anything religious. Naturally, a lot of online atheists (or rather, science-idolaters who are uninterested in actually practicing science and logic) want to create illusionary conflict rather than clear it up. Catholics should not fall for this.

As St. Augustine advised, we should be somewhat knowledgeable about science and its relationship to Bible interpretation, so that we don’t make Catholicism look ignorant.

Our God is Truth Himself, the Creator of the natural world, the Logos Who created logic. We need not fear anything true that science can discover.

St. Albert the Great, pray for us!
Blessed Nicholas Steno, pray for us!

 

[grannymh]

They’re NOT incompatible. God created evolution - who else would have created it?

Seriously, evolution is a material process and if you wish, you can say that God created a material process. This material process can be beneficial in the medical arena.

Where the evolution theory intersects (incompatible) with proper Catholic teaching is that the material process cannot produce a spiritual rational soul which moves humans up the ladder and out of the material world. Yes, because of Genesis 1: 27, humans are spiritual beings.

 

[reggieM]

So how in the heck do people keep thinking that these two can’t ever be incompatible?

I don’t know. I think people just came up with that crazy argument because they hate God. It makes no sense.

 

[grannymh]

There is no conflict between Catholic teaching (including the Bible) and the discoveries of science. There is only one truth, as St. Albert the Great taught us; so conflict can only be illusionary, not real.

This illusionary conflict is caused by insufficient understanding: either of Catholic teaching, or of the facts of the physical world.

The cure is to study up, to argue, and not to be too sure that science has somehow “disproved” anything religious. Naturally, a lot of online atheists (or rather, science-idolaters who are uninterested in actually practicing science and logic) want to create illusionary conflict rather than clear it up. Catholics should not fall for this.

As St. Augustine advised, we should be somewhat knowledgeable about science and its relationship to Bible interpretation, so that we don’t make Catholicism look ignorant.

Our God is Truth Himself, the Creator of the natural world, the Logos Who created logic. We need not fear anything true that science can discover.

St. Albert the Great, pray for us!
Blessed Nicholas Steno, pray for us!

It is very important that Catholics learn what the Science of Human Evolution teaches.

For example, there is the Science of Human Evolution teaching that the human species evolved from indiscriminate random breeding very large humanizing populations following the Homo/Pan divergence aka a speciation event. Please compare that evolution process with the Catholic teaching that the human species was founded by two sole fully-complete humans, Eve and Adam.

 

[Richard_White]

In his book Mysteries of the Middle Ages, historian Thomas Cahill discusses the growth of science “from the cults of Catholic Europe.” He argues along the lines that, as people began to really delve into the mystery of transubstantiation, with the substance being the Body and Blood of Christ, but the accidents being bread and wine, they began to have a curiosity for what truly made up the world. As such, more detailed, process-oriented scientific inquiry began to develop.

May God bless you all!

 

[Samwise21]

Clarification.
Pope John Paul II did not hold that the Science of Human Evolution to be fact.

Consider his message to the Potifical Academy of Sciences:

ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/JP961022.HTM

 

[grannymh]

Consider his message to the Potifical Academy of Sciences:

ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/JP961022.HTM

May I respectfully suggest that you need to become familiar with section 5 in the above link. I put the words “are incompatible …” in bold.
From section 5.

“As a result, the theories of evolution which, because of the philosophies which inspire them, regard the spirit either as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a simple epiphenomenon of that matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. They are therefore unable to serve as the basis for the dignity of the human person.”

In normal discussion, the strong word incompatible does not mean a given blessing.

Perhaps it is time to review the Catholic teachings regarding the truth about humankind. A good understanding would need Genesis 1: 27 as a start. CCC 355-366 is very helpful. Warning–This section is not a page turner.

If you survive, add CCC 1730-1731.

 

[tee_eff_em]

And then I see how the Catholic Church has the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and how Pope Francis advocates against climate change. How Pope John Paul II championed Galileo and held evolution to be fact. Bishop Robert Barron and his addresses on science and scientism, Father Georges Lemaître and his discovery of the Big Bang, and all those Vatican astronomers.

So how in the heck do people keep thinking that these two can’t ever be incompatible?

tee

 

[Samwise21]

May I respectfully suggest that you need to become familiar with section 5 in the above link. I put the words “are incompatible …” in bold.
From section 5.

“As a result, the theories of evolution which, because of the philosophies which inspire them, regard the spirit either as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a simple epiphenomenon of that matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. They are therefore unable to serve as the basis for the dignity of the human person.”

In normal discussion, the strong word incompatible does not mean a given blessing.

Perhaps it is time to review the Catholic teachings regarding the truth about humankind. A good understanding would need Genesis 1: 27 as a start. CCC 355-366 is very helpful. Warning–This section is not a page turner.

If you survive, add CCC 1730-1731.

Whatever you say. Yet I seem to have read more of the letter than you did.

Today, more than a half-century after the appearance of that encyclical, some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than an hypothesis. In fact it is remarkable that this theory has had progressively greater influence on the spirit of researchers, following a series of discoveries in different scholarly disciplines. The convergence in the results of these independent studies—which was neither planned nor sought—constitutes in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory.

And to tell the truth, rather than speaking about the theory of evolution, it is more accurate to speak of the theories of evolution. The use of the plural is required here—in part because of the diversity of explanations regarding the mechanism of evolution, and in part because of the diversity of philosophies involved. There are materialist and reductionist theories, as well as spiritualist theories. Here the final judgment is within the competence of philosophy and, beyond that, of theology.

In his encyclical Humani Generis (1950), my predecessor Pius XII has already affirmed that there is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation, provided that we do not lose sight of certain fixed points.

It is by virtue of his eternal soul that the whole person, including his body, possesses such great dignity. Pius XII underlined the essential point: if the origin of the human body comes through living matter which existed previously, the spiritual soul is created directly by God.

Note how he doesn’t refer to the overall theory of evolution as being incompatible, but certain theories regarding it put forth which are promoted by atheists and materialists. And John Paul II isn’t saying Catholics are specifically required to believe in evolution, the most he is doing here is saying that evolution, at this point a given scientific theory, does not contradict or is not irreconcilable with the deposit of faith, since the overall Church does not deal with matters outside of teaching what was passed on by the apostles. It isn’t in the business of teaching science.

 

[grannymh]

Whatever you say. Yet I seem to have read more of the letter than you did.

Please see post 15 for the provided quotes. Also see post 13 for the quote from section 5.

Note how he doesn’t refer to the overall theory of evolution as being incompatible, but certain theories regarding it put forth which are promoted by atheists and materialists.

That is correct.

Once one learns the theory of the Science of Human Evolution, it is easy to understand that the basic evolution theory continues to be present in the material world of bears, bananas, birds, bacteria and busy beavers.

Please see post 15 for additional editing.

 

[Samwise21]

I don’t know. I think people just came up with that crazy argument because they hate God. It makes no sense.

They don’t hate God.

They want to be God.

 

[jeannetherese]

My Conservative Science Teacher says that Science is built on guesswork

You might find The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn of interest. Here’s a link to publishing company discussion (University of Chicago Press).

press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo13179781.html

From the discussion:

"With The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn challenged long-standing linear notions of scientific progress, arguing that transformative ideas don’t arise from the day-to-day, gradual process of experimentation and data accumulation but that the revolutions in science, those breakthrough moments that disrupt accepted thinking and offer unanticipated ideas, occur outside of “normal science,” as he called it. Though Kuhn was writing when physics ruled the sciences, his ideas on how scientific revolutions bring order to the anomalies that amass over time in research experiments are still instructive in our biotech age. "

 

[edwest2]

I’m struggling with a very apparent viewpoint from the scientific community that religion/faith and science can never be compatible due to what they see as conflicting worldviews or a presupposed stance on what can and can’t be tested, or that religions (mainly the Abrahamic ones) are incompatible with each other, let alone science. This stance gets thrown around by the like (Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, Lawrence Krauss, Sam Harris), to the point where it goes beyond scientists addressing stuff like fundamentalism and becomes an order to submit to a materialist worldview, where art, literature and philosophy are useless and all that is true is only what they declare to be.

And then I see how the Catholic Church has the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and how Pope Francis advocates against climate change. How Pope John Paul II championed Galileo and held evolution to be fact. Bishop Robert Barron and his addresses on science and scientism, Father Georges Lemaître and his discovery of the Big Bang, and all those Vatican astronomers.

So how in the heck do people keep thinking that these two can’t ever be incompatible?

They aren’t compatible since faith/religious belief is beyond the limits science has set for itself. Pope John Paul II did not state evolution was a fact. That fragment of a more complete message has been spread far and wide. I’ve read Sam Harris. I’ve seen Richard Dawkins on TV rail against, as in the title of his book, the God Delusion. What does Galileo - the full story - have to do with anything?

Take abortion. Is that growing embryo a human being or not? Apparently not.

Ed

 

[edwest2]

My (opinion) is that they are simply misguided or wrong.

My Conservative Science Teacher says that Science is built on guesswork, and that Science and God Cannot disprove each other until Jesus Returns.

Climate Change is real, that’s a fact and Is part of church teaching. So is evolution.

Evolution part of Church teaching?

Ed