The problematic common root of Church and Science

[Jonesboy]

Conjecture:
The Church is commited to the disastrous idolatry that objective facts are one of the sources of revelatory knowledge.

I propose an alternative:

Science and the Church share the same belief about natural objects. They both insist that objects exist independently. That is why Science can say that objects themselves, like brains, have thoughts and functions, and why the Church can say that objects themselves, like bursting dams, are evils.

I think the Church should abandon this belief it shares with science. Rather than concern itself with factual minutiae and squabble over what objective facts are true or not, the Church should simply abandon the belief on which such squabbles are based - the belief that objects exist independently.

By severing its common root with Science, the Church would then not be commited to the disastrous idolatry that objective facts are one of the sources of revelatory knowledge.

 

[Acapiteadcalcem]

Hi Jonesboy;

Your proposal is problematic for a number of reasons. First of all, all revelation has as its source God and not some abstract ‘objective fact’. As Pope John Paul II notes in Fides et Ratio, “Underlying all the Church’s thinking is the awareness that she is the bearer of a message which has its origin in God himself.” Since all our knowledge begins in the senses by necessity we first encounter the means by which we come to know God in the world around us, although knowledge is not limited to sense experience: “Sensitive knowledge is not the entire cause of intellectual knowledge. And therefore it is not strange that intellectual knowledge should extend further than sensitive knowledge.” (see Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1a, q84, a6).

Your proposal also relies on an assumption that an instrumental cause of knowledge is equal to the ultimate or first cause. I may learn, for example, through a book that Ottawa is the capital of Canada, but the book is not the source of this reality.

Finally, your proposal amounts to fideism. There is no conflict between faith and science because there is only one truth. There is not ‘scientific truth’ and ‘Catholic truth’ anymore than there is a distinction between scientific oxygen or Catholic oxygen. There is only one truth, and various truths can be arrived at in various ways. ‘Science’ is simply a word that described one kind of method of discovering truth. The physical sciences (biology, chemistry, physics) arrive at an understanding of truth limited to their own methodologies. Theology however is also a science, as is philosophy, though they are sciences of a different kind and derive their principles differently but not in opposition to one another.

The compatibility and complementarity between faith and science and between faith and reason is one the Church has long defended and with good reason. To follow your advice would cast us into pure fictionalism (and, ironically, the real cause of idolatry) in reference to the tenets of our faith.

As I mentioned, Bl Pope John Paul II explains all of this very well in the encyclical Fides et Ratio.

Thanks for the very interesting post!

 

[babylonsfalling]

Conjecture:
The Church is commited to the disastrous idolatry that objective facts are one of the sources of revelatory knowledge.

I propose an alternative:

Science and the Church share the same belief about natural objects. They both insist that objects exist independently. That is why Science can say that objects themselves, like brains, have thoughts and functions, and why the Church can say that objects themselves, like bursting dams, are evils.

I think the Church should abandon this belief it shares with science. Rather than concern itself with factual minutiae and squabble over what objective facts are true or not, the Church should simply abandon the belief on which such squabbles are based <—REALLY…WHY!! I believe the earth is round…if that belief becomes the basis of a squabble so what? Why is that a reason to “abandon the belief”? the belief that objects exist independently. <—Independently of God? Has the Church said that?

By severing its common root with Science, the Church would then not be commited to the disastrous idolatry that objective facts are one of the sources of revelatory knowledge.

Do YOU abandon YOUR beliefs if they produce a “squabble”?

The idea that you abandon a belief merely because it makes for a squabble is kind of ridiculous. Even if the squabble is that big of a problem for you, you can still maintain the belief and just not have the squabble. Nobody lives that way…and if anything it shows a weakness of belief.

 

[Jonesboy]

Do YOU abandon YOUR beliefs if they produce a “squabble”?

The idea that you abandon a belief merely because it makes for a squabble is kind of ridiculous. Even if the squabble is that big of a problem for you, you can still maintain the belief and just not have the squabble. Nobody lives that way…and if anything it shows a weakness of belief.

The squabble over which facts are true in the world are irrelevant to faith.

 

[Jonesboy]

Hi Jonesboy;

Your proposal is problematic for a number of reasons. First of all, all revelation has as its source God and not some abstract ‘objective fact’. As Pope John Paul II notes in Fides et Ratio, “Underlying all the Church’s thinking is the awareness that she is the bearer of a message which has its origin in God himself.” Since all our knowledge begins in the senses by necessity we first encounter the means by which we come to know God in the world around us, although knowledge is not limited to sense experience: “Sensitive knowledge is not the entire cause of intellectual knowledge. And therefore it is not strange that intellectual knowledge should extend further than sensitive knowledge.” (see Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1a, q84, a6).

Your proposal also relies on an assumption that an instrumental cause of knowledge is equal to the ultimate or first cause. I may learn, for example, through a book that Ottawa is the capital of Canada, but the book is not the source of this reality.

Finally, your proposal amounts to fideism. There is no conflict between faith and science because there is only one truth. There is not ‘scientific truth’ and ‘Catholic truth’ anymore than there is a distinction between scientific oxygen or Catholic oxygen. There is only one truth, and various truths can be arrived at in various ways. ‘Science’ is simply a word that described one kind of method of discovering truth. The physical sciences (biology, chemistry, physics) arrive at an understanding of truth limited to their own methodologies. Theology however is also a science, as is philosophy, though they are sciences of a different kind and derive their principles differently but not in opposition to one another.

The compatibility and complementarity between faith and science and between faith and reason is one the Church has long defended and with good reason. To follow your advice would cast us into pure fictionalism (and, ironically, the real cause of idolatry) in reference to the tenets of our faith.

As I mentioned, Bl Pope John Paul II explains all of this very well in the encyclical Fides et Ratio.

Thanks for the very interesting post!

I call objects “revelatory” if they are employed as articles of faith. An employment on purely physical grounds I call “disastrous” and “idolatrous” as such an employment supposes that gross physicality itself is the bearer of spiritual truths. In the science’s psychology, evolutionary theory, IT, AI, among others, follow similar beliefs. I advocated abandoning the flawed principle of the hegemony of independent objects, in favour of a proposal that began with Kant but has been misunderstood by those who, to this day, entirely miss the point of his “transcendental idealism”.

Fideism, like supernaturalism and fictionalism, are incoherencies that have been constructed, owned, promoted and denied by a number of incompetent “rationalist” mischief-makers. No-one gives these ideas credence unless he subscribes, blindly, or instinctively I should say, to their obscure “reasoning”.

No study is less likely to present a coherent account of rationalism or of what it is to be rational than science. It is not between faith and science that a proper exchange is to be found, rather, it is between philosophy and religion that we ought to find an intellectually mature exchange, for even the logicians are lost without the philosopher, as modern philosophy shows.

Unfortunately, many philosophers are driven by the chariot of science, and bigger fools for it. It is not the Church’s business to place bets on their races.

 

[lazurm]

Science methodology precludes the methodology of faith based religion by definition. Scientific conclusions, which may change as new observations conflict with the latest explanations (theories) and change in ways that fine tune these newer theories to incorporate the new data, must adhere to experimentation that is repeatable, have predictive value, and be upheld or confirmed by peers is in stark contrast to faith based religions which do not denote repeatable experimentation, aren’t based on objectively obtained data, has little to no predictive value and has a history that indicates major splits in thought, resulting in many new religious beliefs that sustain themselves over time, regardless of the division.

As far as the natural world, the stark differences between scientifically derived explanations and faith based ones display equally major differences in their track records, where science, via its understanding of nature, has been able form the basis for thousands of inventions, establish real cures for disease, predict the future of numerous events and so on, faith based religions have done next to little in this regard. Let the results prove the points made here and it becomes clear which “philosophy” has the better understanding of the natural world. Science isn’t perfect of course, nor does it claim to be, but it has proven to be the best way mankind has had to understand the workings of nature. It doesn’t claim a knowledge of everything natural but, rather, it has proven to be the best at peeling nature’s secrets away, layer upon layer.

As such, there is a difference between scientifically defined oxygen and Catholic oxygen. Scientific explanations of oxygen results in understanding atomic theory and its implications while Catholic understandings of oxygen would have left us in the 15th century, permanently.

Hi Jonesboy;

Your proposal is problematic for a number of reasons. First of all, all revelation has as its source God and not some abstract ‘objective fact’. As Pope John Paul II notes in Fides et Ratio, “Underlying all the Church’s thinking is the awareness that she is the bearer of a message which has its origin in God himself.” Since all our knowledge begins in the senses by necessity we first encounter the means by which we come to know God in the world around us, although knowledge is not limited to sense experience: “Sensitive knowledge is not the entire cause of intellectual knowledge. And therefore it is not strange that intellectual knowledge should extend further than sensitive knowledge.” (see Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1a, q84, a6).

Your proposal also relies on an assumption that an instrumental cause of knowledge is equal to the ultimate or first cause. I may learn, for example, through a book that Ottawa is the capital of Canada, but the book is not the source of this reality.

Finally, your proposal amounts to fideism. There is no conflict between faith and science because there is only one truth. There is not ‘scientific truth’ and ‘Catholic truth’ anymore than there is a distinction between scientific oxygen or Catholic oxygen. There is only one truth, and various truths can be arrived at in various ways. ‘Science’ is simply a word that described one kind of method of discovering truth. The physical sciences (biology, chemistry, physics) arrive at an understanding of truth limited to their own methodologies. Theology however is also a science, as is philosophy, though they are sciences of a different kind and derive their principles differently but not in opposition to one another.

The compatibility and complementarity between faith and science and between faith and reason is one the Church has long defended and with good reason. To follow your advice would cast us into pure fictionalism (and, ironically, the real cause of idolatry) in reference to the tenets of our faith.

As I mentioned, Bl Pope John Paul II explains all of this very well in the encyclical Fides et Ratio.

Thanks for the very interesting post!