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adawgj
Guest
How are science and faith connected and not separated? I’m confused especially with modern scientists claiming science and faith aren’t together.
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Charlemagne_II
Guest
They are connected by the fact that we have faith in the existence of a Creator, and science searches the mind of God to understand how the Creation works.
To put it another way:
“True science to an ever-increasing degree discovers God as though God were waiting behind each closed door opened by science.” Pope Pius XII
Example:
Carl Sagan in Cosmos, 1980 A.D.
“Ten or twenty billion years ago, something happened – the Big Bang, the event that began our universe…. In that titanic cosmic explosion, the universe began an expansion which has never ceased…. As space stretched, the matter and energy in the universe expanded with it and rapidly cooled. The radiation of the cosmic fireball, which, then as now, filled the universe, moved through the spectrum – from gamma rays to X-rays to ultraviolet light; through the rainbow colors of the visible spectrum; into the infrared and radio regions. The remnants of that fireball, the cosmic background radiation, emanating from all parts of the sky can be detected by radio telescopes today. In the early universe, space was brilliantly illuminated.”
Genesis, 1200 B.C. : “In the beginning God said: ‘Let there be light.’”
To put it another way:
“True science to an ever-increasing degree discovers God as though God were waiting behind each closed door opened by science.” Pope Pius XII
Example:
Carl Sagan in Cosmos, 1980 A.D.
“Ten or twenty billion years ago, something happened – the Big Bang, the event that began our universe…. In that titanic cosmic explosion, the universe began an expansion which has never ceased…. As space stretched, the matter and energy in the universe expanded with it and rapidly cooled. The radiation of the cosmic fireball, which, then as now, filled the universe, moved through the spectrum – from gamma rays to X-rays to ultraviolet light; through the rainbow colors of the visible spectrum; into the infrared and radio regions. The remnants of that fireball, the cosmic background radiation, emanating from all parts of the sky can be detected by radio telescopes today. In the early universe, space was brilliantly illuminated.”
Genesis, 1200 B.C. : “In the beginning God said: ‘Let there be light.’”
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fnr
Guest
I like to think that science and faith are two paths to truth. Two truths cannot contradict one another, which sets our challenge in better understanding both faith and science.
To me, science has helped to deepen my understanding of the historical Catholic faith. For example, in probing the findings of cognitive psychology and neuroscience, I’ve learned that many American Christians, particularly Dispensationalists but including many Catholics, hold to a Gnostic view of the afterlife wherein our souls, which are portrayed as “our true selves” escape from the corrupt decay of our material existence to dwell forever in Heaven. Reading and listening to popular science, I started to fear that “science had killed the soul.” But then I read 1 Corinthians 15, which tells us that our end state is not just a disembodied spiritual existence, but a spiritualized physicality like the body of Christ after his resurrection and before his ascension. And that led me to Romans 8:18-27, which talks about how our salvation and resurrection is just part of the New Creation. That led me to John 20, where the resurrection is described on the first day of the week, Sunday, which is the day when God started creation, making the resurrection the first day of new creation. And that led me to Revelations 21, in which our ultimate destiny is described, with the New Jerusalem descending from heaven (not our leaving earth to go to Heaven) and with God dwelling in our midst, establishing his shekinah (indwelling) that he promised the Israelites in the Pentateuch and in the Prophets after the Babylonian captivity. All that came from trying to reconcile faith and science, and it connected me scripture and to genuine Catholic teaching.
Overall, I think science helps to identify those elements of our understanding that are actually a form of idolatry – elements that previously may have been understood to be necessary to faith (e.g., the earth being 6,000 years old), but now are shown to be not literally true. This helps us to understand our true faith better.
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XndrK
Guest
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edwest2
Guest
Science, as it is practiced today, does not recognize any supernatural force. It is dominated only by the observable and what we can detect with our instrumentation. Individual scientists may have religious views, but the scientific method does not and cannot examine God, the soul or supernatural events like miracles, except in terms of causes and effects that can only be called impossible, with no implication of any outside agent that could do something like that.
Science and faith should be complementary but on various issues, those who hold science above what God can do post here on a regular basis to tell us that this or that is scientifically impossible, therefore, it did not happen. Or those who say that God established certain laws that lead to certain outcomes. What is missed, too often, is the one who made them can break them. Jesus raised the dead, gave sight to the blind and cleansed the lepers. How is that possible without science or technology - he’s God and can do things only God can do.
Peace,
Ed
Science and faith should be complementary but on various issues, those who hold science above what God can do post here on a regular basis to tell us that this or that is scientifically impossible, therefore, it did not happen. Or those who say that God established certain laws that lead to certain outcomes. What is missed, too often, is the one who made them can break them. Jesus raised the dead, gave sight to the blind and cleansed the lepers. How is that possible without science or technology - he’s God and can do things only God can do.
Peace,
Ed
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inocente
Guest
Don’t know any scientists who say that, rather they say some beliefs are contradicted by evidence. Some people have faith in fairies or telepathy or fad diets but all the evidence is against them.
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grannymh
Guest
Divine Revelation trumps.
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1AugustSon7
Guest
Our word science comes from the Latin scientia, which means knowledge. Classically the best and wisest philosophers - those who, for example, discovered that the world must be round by using only reason, and also determined that God could not be anything remotely like what the pagan mythologies would ascribe to Him - taught that in life or reality there is a law that basically makes it that true wisdom (or understanding) can only be had through ethics or by being ethical: i.e., that in life there is a law that true knowledge and understanding is bound up to and with (for man) being truly ethical or moral. Hence classically ethics or the virtues were considered of first and primary instruction before proceeding to considerations of the physical world or nature. Scripture agrees with this:
1 Cor 8.1 : …] We all know, to be sure, what is the truth about it: but knowledge only breeds self-conceit, it is charity that binds the building together. 2 If anybody claims to have superior knowledge, it means that he has not yet attained the knowledge which is true knowledge; 3 it is only when a man loves God that God acknowledges him.
Notice that no one associates having a physics degree with being a good man or with a better character; however, traditional or classical philosophy was usually associated with moral or character improvement. Take, for example, Socrates’ life and, so to speak, his conversion (to philosophy) as being a paradigm case of this. Socrates learned humility (indirectly by divine revelation / an oracle, as it happened) and this very humility lead him to discovering and exposing the sophistry (pretense to knowledge or wisdom) of his contemporaries who claimed to be wise but really understood nothing. This began the philosophical revolution in Greece that would climax in the life and works of Plato and Aristotle.
You can fill a man’s head with ‘raw knowledge’, however, this will not necessarily improve his character: teaching a bunch of convicts advanced physics probably only lead most of them them to producing new weapons and inventing news ways of killing eachother and their guards. In other words, it would probably only make them worse. It would not necessarily lead to improvements in their character or the prison society as a human society. Still, insofar as there is truth in science, that truth will tend to lead to moral reformation and conversion. That is a sign of truth: it tends to wisdom and understanding and the betterment of man - not only physically or technically in terms of skill, but in terms of his soul as well. It tends to a kind of enlightenment that is associated with interior change or conversion: a reorganization of priorities and what is important and meaningful in his life.
This is why the Bible is in the first place concerned with moral instruction. Morality teaches us humility and helps us to make good use of knowledge; without morality knowledge cannot make man or human society any better; in fact, it could make it worse by producing ever more advanced means of dominating, exploiting and killing human beings. God blest man and told him to subdue the earth: this blessing has not failed or been in vain, as we clearly see today, in spite of man’s sins, spite and evil. From this we have a concept of progress: that things tend to improve over time, especially technically or vis-a-vis our control of the earth. However, we can clearly see that all this progress has been a mixed bag, so to speak, with unspeakable crimes and horrors being unleashed in warfare and crimes against, e.g., a government’s own people via technological terrors or manipulation of the people using advanced psychological means, etc.
Science is good, but the Scriptures are correct for insisting in the first place on the primacy of God and morality / His Commandments: without these everything tends to nothingness, to disintegration and chaos even if we progress technologically or in our science - our knowledge.
Prov 9.10 : True wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord; he best discerns, who has knowledge of holy things.
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Charlemagne_II
Guest
August
:clapping:
:clapping:
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shoe
Guest
I think that science is basically the study of the attributes of the One God who has revealed Himself to us through His creation, in the pages of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and through His Son, Jesus Christ. The founding fathers of modern science such as Faraday, Newton, Pasteur, Boyle, Keppler, Ramsey, and Pascal were all devout Christians who simply believed that since the God of the Bible is a logical Being and the source of all truth, then the universe is also a logical creation. It was the Christian faith of these early pioneers (inventors) of modern science that made it possible for them to realize and understand that the laws of nature logically had to conform with the logical Being of God, thus giving rise to their great thoughts. Without the Christian faith we would not have modern science: They exist together and are linked to each other.
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Abu
Guest
That’s only because THEY are confused and unaware of history and/or unable to understand rational thought.
Alfred North Whitehead, F.R.S., knew that Catholic theology was essential for the rise of science in the West, while stifled elsewhere. He explained: “The greatest contribution of medievalism to the scientific movement [was] the inexpugnable belief that …there is a secret, a secret which can be unveiled. How has this conviction been so vividly implanted in the European mind?..It must come from the medieval insistence on the rationality of God, conceived with the personal energy of Jehovah and with the rationality of a Greek philosopher. Every detail was supervised and ordered: the search into nature could only result in the vindication of the faith in rationality.” [E.L. Jones, 1987; in *The Victory of Reason, Rodney Stark, Random House, 2005, p 15].
In Science and Creation Father Stanley Jaki lists seven great cultures in which science suffered a “stillbirth” – Arabic, Babylonian, Chinese, Egyptian, Greek, Hindu, and Maya – they did not have the Catholic conception of the divine. Fr Jaki emphasises that “nature had to be de-animized” for science to be born. (Creation and Scientific Creativity, Paul Haffner, Christendom Press, 1991, p 41). “During the twelfth century in Latin Europe those aspects of Judeo-Christian thought which emphasized the idea of creation out of nothing and the distance between God and the world, in certain contexts and with certain men, had the effect of eliminating all semi-divine entities from the realm of nature.” (How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, Dr Thomas E Woods, Regnery, 2005, p 93).
Science consists of an organized effort to explain natural phenomena. Why did this effort take root in Europe and nowhere else? Because Christianity depicted God as a rational, responsive, dependable, and omnipotent being, and the universe as his personal creation. The natural world was thus understood to have a rational, lawful, stable structure, awaiting (indeed, inviting) human comprehension.
Christians developed science because they believed it could—and should—be done. Alfred North Whitehead, the great philosopher and mathematician, co-author with Bertrand Russell of the landmark Principia Mathematica, credited “medieval theology” for the rise of science. He pointed to the “insistence on the rationality of God,” which produced the belief that “the search into nature could only result in the vindication of the faith.”
“The rise of science was not an extension of classical learning. It was the natural outgrowth of Christian doctrine: nature exists because it was created by God. In order to love and honor God, it is necessary to fully appreciate his handiwork. Because God is perfect, his handiwork functions in accord with immutable principles. By the full use of our God-given powers of reason and observation, it ought to be possible to discover these principles.
“These were the crucial ideas that explain why science arose in Christian Europe and nowhere else.” The Victory of Reason, Rodney Stark, Random House, 2005, p 22-23].
Two good books for you would be *How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization *by Dr Thomas E Woods, Regnery 2005, and *The Victory of Reason *by Dr Rodney Stark, Random House 2005.
rtforum.org/lt/lt99.html
Here we see that science is certified knowledge of reality as such. Empirical science is certified knowledge of observable reality as such. Philosophical science is certified knowledge of natural reality beyond the merely material. Historical science is certified knowledge of past reality as such. And theological science is certified knowledge of revealed reality as such.
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Charlemagne_II
Guest
Abu
**“The rise of science was not an extension of classical learning. It was the natural outgrowth of Christian doctrine: nature exists because it was created by God. In order to love and honor God, it is necessary to fully appreciate his handiwork. Because God is perfect, his handiwork functions in accord with immutable principles. By the full use of our God-given powers of reason and observation, it ought to be possible to discover these principles.
“These were the crucial ideas that explain why science arose in Christian Europe and nowhere else.” **
I agree with Whitehead. I would only add that I think the Crusades had a good deal to do with the stimulation of science in the West. It is no accident that the great pioneer of Western science, Roger Bacon, lived about the same time that the Crusaders were transporting copies of Aristotle’s works in science to Europe from the Islamic world.
**“The rise of science was not an extension of classical learning. It was the natural outgrowth of Christian doctrine: nature exists because it was created by God. In order to love and honor God, it is necessary to fully appreciate his handiwork. Because God is perfect, his handiwork functions in accord with immutable principles. By the full use of our God-given powers of reason and observation, it ought to be possible to discover these principles.
“These were the crucial ideas that explain why science arose in Christian Europe and nowhere else.” **
I agree with Whitehead. I would only add that I think the Crusades had a good deal to do with the stimulation of science in the West. It is no accident that the great pioneer of Western science, Roger Bacon, lived about the same time that the Crusaders were transporting copies of Aristotle’s works in science to Europe from the Islamic world.
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Abu
Guest
There is nothing “true” about any scientific theories until they stand the test of reality and then are part of God’s design. Imagining science as a god is self-defeating. Though of great mind, Aristotle was faulty on many counts in science.
Pierre Duhem, A.C. Crombie and Edward Grant have argued that the condemnations of the Bishop of Paris (1277) forced thinkers to break out of the intellectual confinement of Aristotelian presuppositions, from the restrictions of Aristotelian science and to adopt new thinking to the physical world.
Aristotle had denied the possibility of a vacuum, and the condemnations “seem definitely to have promoted a freer and more imaginative way of doing science.” (Dales, The De-Animation of the Heavens in the Middle Ages, p 550).
Another condemned Aristotelian proposition was that “the motions of the motion of the sky result from an intellectual soul,” and prompted new approaches to the central question of the behaviour of the heavenly bodies.
The denigration of the Church’s role in the development of science had been prevalent until the early twentieth century when historian Pierre Duhem underlined the Church’s crucial role and more and more historians have recognised this fact. (How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, Thomas E Woods Jr., Regnery Publishing, 2005, p 75).
It was the Christian scholastics, not the Greeks, Romans, Muslims, or Chinese, who built up the field of physiology based on human dissections. Once again, hardly anyone knows the truth about dissection and the medieval Church. Human dissection was not permitted in the classical world (“the dignity of the human body” forbade it), which is why Greco-Roman works on anatomy are so faulty. Aristotle’s studies were limited entirely to animal dissections, as were those of Celsius and Galen. Human dissection also was prohibited in Islam.
With the Christian universities came a new outlook on dissection. The starting assumption was that what is unique to humans is a soul, not a physiology. Dissections of the human body, therefore, have no theological implications.
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Charlemagne_II
Guest
Abu
Even so, it’s difficult to find much scientific work being done in Europe until the revival of interest in the ancient sciences. The negative reaction to some of Aristotle’s views that that you cite was instrumental, a spur if you will, to more empirical studies of nature. Roger Bacon, a Franciscan priest, was among the most notable scientific minds of the 13th century. Although a contemporary of Aquinas, you would hardly ever hear of them both being mentioned in the same sentence in their own day. Bacon may not have even heard of Aquinas, and vice-verse.
Bacon recognized the connection between mathematics and science. As he said, "All science requires mathematics. The knowledge of mathematical things is almost innate in us. This is the easiest of sciences, a fact which is obvious in that no one’s brain rejects it; for laymen and people who are utterly illiterate know how to count and reckon.”
In many other ways Bacon was, like Leonardo da Vinci, a man born centuries ahead of the day when his talents would have greatly flourished and borne fruit. For examples, Bacon imagined a great ship being operated by one man without the need of oarsmen (steamships) and also a machine that would make possible the walking of men along the ocean floor (the diving bell). He also imagined a vehicle operating at high speeds without the need of any living creature (the car), and a machine with a mechanical device in it that would make it fly above the earth. Like the future Isaac Newton, Bacon became absorbed in the science of optics. He theorized that “Someday we may read the smallest letters at an incredible distance, we may see objects however small they may be, and we may cause the stars to appear wherever we wish” (microscopes and telescopes). As for a new technology of light, there may sometime in the future appear “that device by which rays of light are led into any place that we wish and are brought together by refractions in such fashion that anything is burned which is placed there” (laser technology). These inventions would all take six to seven more centuries to materialize.
What these facts about Bacon show is that he not only had a scientific mind, but that science is large based on experiment and imagination. Imagination is at the heart of science, as it is at the heart of philosophy and theology and all the arts. No scientist worth an ounce of salt would imagine that he could be a good scientist without having a good imagination.
Even so, it’s difficult to find much scientific work being done in Europe until the revival of interest in the ancient sciences. The negative reaction to some of Aristotle’s views that that you cite was instrumental, a spur if you will, to more empirical studies of nature. Roger Bacon, a Franciscan priest, was among the most notable scientific minds of the 13th century. Although a contemporary of Aquinas, you would hardly ever hear of them both being mentioned in the same sentence in their own day. Bacon may not have even heard of Aquinas, and vice-verse.
Bacon recognized the connection between mathematics and science. As he said, "All science requires mathematics. The knowledge of mathematical things is almost innate in us. This is the easiest of sciences, a fact which is obvious in that no one’s brain rejects it; for laymen and people who are utterly illiterate know how to count and reckon.”
In many other ways Bacon was, like Leonardo da Vinci, a man born centuries ahead of the day when his talents would have greatly flourished and borne fruit. For examples, Bacon imagined a great ship being operated by one man without the need of oarsmen (steamships) and also a machine that would make possible the walking of men along the ocean floor (the diving bell). He also imagined a vehicle operating at high speeds without the need of any living creature (the car), and a machine with a mechanical device in it that would make it fly above the earth. Like the future Isaac Newton, Bacon became absorbed in the science of optics. He theorized that “Someday we may read the smallest letters at an incredible distance, we may see objects however small they may be, and we may cause the stars to appear wherever we wish” (microscopes and telescopes). As for a new technology of light, there may sometime in the future appear “that device by which rays of light are led into any place that we wish and are brought together by refractions in such fashion that anything is burned which is placed there” (laser technology). These inventions would all take six to seven more centuries to materialize.
What these facts about Bacon show is that he not only had a scientific mind, but that science is large based on experiment and imagination. Imagination is at the heart of science, as it is at the heart of philosophy and theology and all the arts. No scientist worth an ounce of salt would imagine that he could be a good scientist without having a good imagination.
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Kamaduck
Guest
This may be oversimplifying it, but science is a process. At the most basic level, science is using obsevation and experimentation to help us understand and explain how the natural world works. It does not and cannot answer any questions about the supernatural. That’s what faith is for.
When used properly, they will both lead you to the truth. However, they will lead you to different kinds of truths. Simply having faith in God will not allow you to understand the inner workings of an atom (or at least, not usually). Most of us need science to understand that. But science can’t tell us why the atom is there, what the meaning and purpose of a chunk of matter is. It might be able to tell you how it got there and where it’s going, but it can’t give you a reason. Many scientists make the mistake of thinking that this is because there is no reason, and that’s just silly. They’re trying to use science to make a claim that science cannot support.
Since science is a way of understanding the natural and faith is a way of understanding the supernatural, and both come from God, the findings of one should never conflict with those of the other. If they do, it’s always because of human error.
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