Philosophy: Science and Faith

[Truthstalker]

Are science and faith mutually exclusive, complementary, overlapping or hostile? In the first case, they have nothing to do with each other, in the second, they strengthen each other (but do not overlap), in the third case they speak in agreement sometimes about the same things, in the fourth case they speak about the same things but say different things (as in contradictory).

Please take a position and defend it. Thank you.

 

[Socrates4Jesus]

I think faith is immovable like a great mountain. Science is a moving train. What was commonly thought to be true by a majority of scientists in the past is commonly thought to be false today.

 

[john_doran]

scientists have faith that their senses are not deceiving them with regard to the experimental apparatus they are observing, and that their memory is not deceiving them with regard to (1) the reason they are observing that apparatus, (2) that they actually set up the experiment, and (3) that the apparatus is good one for the kind of tests they want to run.

so, no - faith and science are not at odds.

 

[Socrates4Jesus]

scientists have faith that their senses are not deceiving them with regard to the experimental apparatus they are observing, and that their memory is not deceiving them with regard to (1) the reason they are observing that apparatus, (2) that they actually set up the experiment, and (3) that the apparatus is good one for the kind of tests they want to run.

so, no - faith and science are not at odds.

I concur. The Scientific Method deals with visible evidence. Religion deals with historical evidence. The Scientific Method is for the seen. Religion is for the unseen. The Scientific Method deals with physical results that can be observed. Religion deals with historical evidence that can be inferred. You cannot prove that Jesus was God by putting Him in a test tube, any more than you can prove that all of the universe was caused by something other than God.

You can prove Jesus is God by examining the historical and Scriptural evidence. For history tells us that no one would die for a lie, and the fulfilled predictions of the Bible prove that its books are Divine, rather than human, in origin.

 

[nobody]

I would say that they overlap. It does depend on what you mean by faith. Faith in God or people? I will assume the former, which, as a previous poster said, does partially rely on faith in people’s relaying of history, but also requires a supernatural leap to faith in God (idea as explained in Fr. Groeschel’s A Virtue Driven Life).

I think that they overlap because a scientist’s faith often shapes their view, especially in what they look for, which directly effects what they find.

Albert Einstein said (quoting from my imperfect memory here) “God doesn’t play dice with the universe”. This belief helped to shape how he spent his time in studies. Einstein also said, “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”

Both science and faith look for truth (and beauty). George Lemaitre (priest and scientist who initially came up with the “big bang” theory) said, “There are two ways of arriving at the truth, I decided to follow them both.”

Science still does not have the answer to how everything even exists. That is where faith goes beyond science. I cannot think of anything where science goes beyond faith. I think science is an area of knowledge, which exists inside the broader knowledge we consider faith.

Science and engineering are different, though they are often confused. Science seeks to define what is already happening in nature. Engineering seeks to use science to bring about a desired result. This is where ethical questions sometimes come into play, and where conflicts arise between people of different faiths.

 

[Nita]

…
Both science and faith look for truth (and beauty). George Lemaitre (priest and scientist who initially came up with the “big bang” theory) said, “There are two ways of arriving at the truth, I decided to follow them both.”

Science still does not have the answer to how everything even exists. That is where faith goes beyond science. I cannot think of anything where science goes beyond faith. I think science is an area of knowledge, which exists inside the broader knowledge we consider faith. …

Beautifully said, nobody.
I could not imagine being a scientist without having faith in God and prayer playing a major part. A good scientist’s pursuit is truth, and the originator of all truth is God. Who better to go to for guidance in the search.

Nita

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Science

---

There are, I believe, different kinds of knowledge.

Sapienta is wisdom – engineering, for example – tells us which outcomes are good from a range of possible outcomes.

Scientia – from where we get the word science – is knowledge, the kind of knowledge that makes reasonable predictions. Science has evolved from Aristotle’s thinking, particularly induction as a means of inferring a general rule from particular observations. His sciences were:

practical: ethics, politics
poetical: the arts
theoretical: physics, math, metaphysics

Techne is skill. Skilfully assembling (techne) an electrical circuit from knowledge of how to read a circuit diagram (scientia) drawn up (techne) from engineering specifications (sapientia)…

Ok so I ran out of steam and can’t finish this sentence. I’ll go sit in the Comfy Chair for a bit… OK, I’m back.

Faith

There are two poles of science: theory and observation.

I contend that faith is in fact theoretical science. Look at Hebrews 11:1 (DRC)

Now, faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that appear not.

Surely a hypothesis fits the description of “things to be hoped for.”

Surely also, theoretical science or logic fits the description of “evidence of things that appear not.”

So in answer to the OP: I choose mutually exclusive (just because) and complementary (for reasons which may at first glance appear obvious but which are in essence frightfully mysterious).

Observational science and theoretical science (faith) are mutually exclusive and complementary. That’s my theory (and my observation) and I’m sticking to it. Until you persuade me otherwise or until you bribe me.

Faith has much to do with what we cannot (yet) observe.

Now I could ask if there is a causal relation between observational science and theoretical science (faith). OK. You twisted my arm.

**Is there a causal relation between faith (theoretical science) and science (observational science)?

Ani asks this knowing full well that someone is going to bust her for choosing mutually exclusive. :yup: “Bring it on,” she thinks as she makes herself a German salami sandwich with honey mustard on toasted rye. Ani munches and thinks, thinks and munches, wondering when she is going to run out of colour combinations to hilight her main points. Of course maybe she wouldn’t need any hilights if she were not so longwinded.

Intermission

Ani freely admits that she knows nothing, nothing at all :blushing: and so invites posters to read what recent popes have to say .

JP2
Faith can never conflict with reason
Faith and reason

B16
Pope says science too narrow to explain creation

Paul6
Gaudium et spes

 

[Malcolm_McLean]

Are science and faith mutually exclusive, complementary, overlapping or hostile? In the first case, they have nothing to do with each other, in the second, they strengthen each other (but do not overlap), in the third case they speak in agreement sometimes about the same things, in the fourth case they speak about the same things but say different things (as in contradictory).

Please take a position and defend it. Thank you.

They are overlapping. A proposition can’t be true in one subject - say history, and false in another, say metallurgy. If a Saxon axehead is one thousand five hundred years old according to an examination of the metal, then it must also date from about the first invasion, according to history.

Sometimes you get an apparent contradiction. Theology says that men have free will and a soul, biochemistry says there is no way that can happen. Atoms are atoms and move according to electrical attractions between them. In this case it is pretty obvious that biochemistry is in the wrong; a theory of human behaviour that has no place for consciousness, free will and language has nothing going for it. Exactly how the biochemists are in the wrong is something this particular biochemist would dearly like to know.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

nobody:

Albert Einstein said (quoting from my imperfect memory here) “God doesn’t play dice with the universe”.

He said this to Heisenberg whose observations brought into question the law of causality.

Einstein knew better. He knew what it would take a century for other scientists to prove. Causality is a done deal.

If we lose causality then we lose logic. And, with observation being in the tenuous state it is these days in the quantum world, observation ain’t much good either.

We’d lose both poles of science and be left with nothing we could know. Nietzsche would be happy.

nobody:

Both science and faith look for truth (and beauty).

Ah! Would you say that truth is beautiful? Or would you say that truth is beauty? Or both?

How can science be beautiful?

Kant said:

Beauty is a symbol of Morality.

For Kant, beauty was free from purpose, was objective, hinged on impartial observation, and was interesting in its own right. Actually these all sound the same to me. Moreover they sound like science.

D-oh! :doh2:

Did I just answer my own question? (Ani has a brief delusion of grandeur then falls off her chair while looking at her reflection in the computer screen.)

nobody:

Science still does not have the answer to how everything even exists. That is where faith goes beyond science.

What we normally call faith answers the question why? What we normally call science answers the question how?

nobody:

I cannot think of anything where science goes beyond faith.

Let’s start with my definitions above of faith and science. Science in the sense of observation. Faith in the sense of theory and logic.

Each is always going beyond each other in history. A theory will hold true for a certain period of time and what we observe will be determined by that theory.

(Ani wonders if she is answering the question in the previous post too… :hypno: Be quiet Ani and keep on typing.)

Then firsthand experience will change what we observe. Then the theoreticians go back to the drawing board and come up with a theory that reconciles the new observation with what folks think they can know. Only they can’t get the math to come out straight and come up with a theory which observation cannot confirm. Then the engineers have to invent new methods of observation.

And so it goes.

nobody:

I think science is an area of knowledge, which exists inside the broader knowledge we consider faith.

Yay! nobody agrees with me! :extrahappy: Give nobody a cigar!

nobody:

Science and engineering are different, though they are often confused. Science seeks to define what is already happening in nature. Engineering seeks to use science to bring about a desired result.

That desired result being ‘the good.’ In that respect, was Plato an engineer?

nobody:

This is where ethical questions sometimes come into play, and where conflicts arise between people of different faiths.

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy suggests that we rid ourselves of hairdressers. ***If we ridded ourselves of engineers instead, would that bring an end to religious conflicts? ***

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Malcolm McLean:

They are overlapping. A proposition can’t be true in one subject - say history, and false in another, say metallurgy.

It only took one post for Ani to be busted for choosing mutually exclusive. Sigh…

But wait! Rescue is at hand! A proposition can’t be true in one subject and false in another. That is true. But is a proposition equivalent to faith? Is a proposition equivalent to science?

No. Faith and science are approaches to truth, not truth in and of themselves.

Whew! That was a close call.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

The Scientific Method is for the seen. Religion is for the unseen. The Scientific Method deals with physical results that can be observed. Religion deals with historical evidence that can be inferred.

:yup: I like it.

 

[Janet_S]

Are science and faith mutually exclusive, complementary, overlapping or hostile? In the first case, they have nothing to do with each other, in the second, they strengthen each other (but do not overlap), in the third case they speak in agreement sometimes about the same things, in the fourth case they speak about the same things but say different things (as in contradictory).

Please take a position and defend it. Thank you.

They are overlapping.

The argument can be made that science comes from faith. We “moderns” take it for granted that the universe is rational and orderly, but we forget that this idea has eluded many civilizations. Fr Stanley Jaki is one who points out the Church’s role in the development of science. He contends that it is no coincidence that the intellectual endeavor known as “science” began in a Catholic milieu:

“The coupling of the reasonability of the Creator and the constancy of nature is worth noting because it is there that lie the beginnings of the idea of the autonomy of nature and its laws.”
Stanley L Jaki, Science and Creation: From Eternal Cycles to an Oscillating Universe

Wisdom 11:20 “But you have disposed all things by measure and number and weight.”

Psalm 19:2-5 “The heavens declare the glory of God; the sky proclaims its builder’s craft. One day to the next conveys that message; one night to the next imparts that knowledge. There is no word or sound; no voice is heard; Yet their report goes forth through all the earth, their message, to the ends of the world.”

Psalm 104:9 “You set a limit they (the oceans) cannot pass; never again will they cover the earth.”

Psalm 148:5-6 “for the Lord commanded and they were created, Assigned them duties forever, gave them tasks that will never change.”

Jeremiah 5:24 “Let us fear the Lord, our God, Who gives us rain early and late, in its time; Who watches for us over the appointed weeks of harvest.”

Jeremiah 31:35-36 “Thus says the Lord, He who gives the sun to light the day, moon and stars to light the night; Who stirs up the sea till its waves roar, whose name is Lord of hosts; If ever these natural laws give way in spite of me, says the Lord, Then shall the race of Israel cease as a nation before me forever.”

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Janet S:

They are overlapping. The argument can be made that science comes from faith.

I think you are using the term ‘faith’ here to mean the Church community. As for science coming from the Church community, I will read your article when I get back. However science had its roots in the thinking of Aristotle which predated the Church.

Now the cites which you give are valid, but they too predate the Church.

It might be useful to look at the Pythagorean Y: Jewish thought meeting Greek thought at the junction of Christ and then merging into Christian thought. Another thread perhaps.

Now Truthstalker has still another thread which deals with Aristoteleanism in the Church: Philosophy: Null-A and the Catholic Church

Catchya later.

 

[Seamus_Sully]

I believe that one should add love to the list.

I believe it should deal with love, faith and science.

God is love.

Our love gives life to faith.

Our love gives energy to faith.

Or, in other words, faith is animated by love.

Love is heard by faith.

Therefore love must be included into the agruments.

An example of this: What is the most loving action one can do for one’s unborn baby?

Again, our love is where faith is rooted.

Again, our love (which is God’s love poured into our hearts) is the foundation of faith.

Again, our love is that on which our faith is hung.

Well, I believe love is the most important and wanted to share it.

Thanks for letting me share.

 

[Seamus_Sully]

To add a thougth: Love is the bridge between faith and science.

Again, I want to thank you for the chance to express that which I believe.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Seamus Sully:

I believe that one should add love to the list.

Yes. Philosophy means love of wisdom. Nice catch, Seamus.

And your explanation is refreshing and stimulating. Thank you for this.

 

[Truthstalker]

Science and faith are both upheld by a provident love. Not simply connected.

 

[Janet_S]

I think you are using the term ‘faith’ here to mean the Church community. As for science coming from the Church community, I will read your article when I get back. However science had its roots in the thinking of Aristotle which predated the Church.

Now the cites which you give are valid, but they too predate the Church.

It might be useful to look at the Pythagorean Y: Jewish thought meeting Greek thought at the junction of Christ and then merging into Christian thought. Another thread perhaps.

Now Truthstalker has still another thread which deals with Aristoteleanism in the Church: Philosophy: Null-A and the Catholic Church

Catchya later.

In my previous post, when I used the word “faith” I didn’t mean so much a “community” as I meant a “worldview” or “philosophy.”

Here is a link of a summary of the most notable work of Fr Stanley Jaki:

columbia.edu/cu/augustine/a/science_origin.html

This article addresses some of the issues you brought up including the Jewish religion and Aristotelian philosophy and their effect on the development of science.

Jaki gives four reasons for modern science’s unique birth in Christian Western Europe:

1. “Once more the Christian belief in the Creator allowed a break-through in thinking about nature. Only a truly transcendental Creator could be thought of as being powerful enough to create a nature with autonomous laws without his power over nature being thereby diminished. Once the basic among those laws were formulated science could develop on its own terms.”
2. “The Christian idea of creation made still another crucially important contribution to the future of science. It consisted in putting all material beings on the same level as being mere creatures. Unlike in the pagan Greek cosmos, there could be no divine bodies in the Christian cosmos. All bodies, heavenly and terrestrial, were now on the same footing, on the same level. this made it eventually possible to assume that the motion of the moon and the fall of a body on earth could be governed by the same law of gravitation. The assumption would have been a sacrilege in the eyes of anyone in the Greek pantheistic tradition, or in any similar tradition in any of the ancient cultures.”
3. “Finally, man figured in the Christian dogma of creation as a being specially created in the image of God. This image consisted both in man’s rationality as somehow sharing in God’s own rationality and in man’s condition as an ethical being with eternal responsibility for his actions. Man’s reflection on his own rationality had therefore to give him confidence that his created mind could fathom the rationality of the created realm.”
4. “At the same time, the very createdness could caution man to guard against the ever-present temptation to dictate to nature what it ought to be. The eventual rise of the experimental method owes much to that Christian matrix.”

 

[Truthstalker]

Jaki’s article (I skimmed it) reminds me a lot of Francis Schaeffer.

 

[rwoehmke]

Faith, a virtue, is not in the same category as science. To compare one needs to compare religion/theology and physical science. Both are sciences in the sense of being organized bodies of knowledge. Both start with observation, but religion/theology depends in some cases on divine revelation in addition to observation. Both are organized bodies of knowledge and have a philosophical component. Religion does not verify science and science does not verify religion. Conclusions drawn by human beings sometimes pose contradictions between religion and science which having the same source, the Creator, cannot actually be in contradiction. Contradiction implies that something in our knowledge of one or the other is lacking in some way. Both seek truth.