Just attended Catholic mass and was really impressed. Accordingly my first concerns have been where is the church today. I have been wondering where they stand on the pervasive issues posed by fundamentalists and creationism and have delightfully found them to be opposed to it. Hence I found this
The Church Opposes Science: The Myth of Catholic IrrationalityCHRISTOPHER KACZOR
Many people believe that faith and reason, or religion and science, are locked in an irreconcilable war of attrition against one another.
One must choose to be a person of learning, science, and reason, or choose to embrace religion, dogma, and faith alone. On this view, the Church opposes science, and if one embraces science, then one ought to reject the Church.
The scientific method looks to evidence to settle questions, so perhaps it would be fair to look at evidence to answer the question whether the Catholic Church is opposed to science and reason. If the Catholic Church were opposed to science, we would expect to find no or very few Catholic scientists, no sponsorship of scientific research by Catholic institutions, and an explicit distrust of reason in general and scientific reasoning in particular taught in official Catholic teaching. In fact, we find none of these things.
Historically, Catholics are numbered among the most important scientists of all time, including Rene Descartes, who discovered analytic geometry and the laws of refraction; Blaise Pascal, inventor of the adding machine, hydraulic press, and the mathematical theory of probabilities; Augustinian priest Gregor Mendel, who founded modern genetics; Louis Pasteur, founder of microbiology and creator of the first vaccine for rabies and anthrax; and cleric Nicolaus Copernicus, who first developed scientifically the view that the earth rotated around the sun. Jesuit priests in particular have a long history of scientific achievement; they
contributed to the development of pendulum clocks, pantographs, barometers, reflecting telescopes and microscopes, to scientific fields as various as magnetism, optics and electricity. They observed, in some cases before anyone else, the colored bands on Jupiter's surface, the Andromeda nebula and Saturn's rings. They theorized about the circulation of the blood (independently of Harvey), the theoretical possibility of flight, the way the moon affected the tides, and the wave-like nature of light. Star maps of the southern hemisphere, symbolic logic, flood-control measures on the Po and Adige rivers, introducing plus and minus signs into Italian mathematics — all were typical Jesuit achievements, and scientists as influential as Fermat, Huygens, Leibniz and Newton were not alone in counting Jesuits among their most prized correspondents. [1]
The scientist credited with proposing in the 1930s what came to be known as the "Big Bang theory" of the origin of the universe was Georges Lemaitre, a Belgian physicist and Roman Catholic priest. Alexander Fleming, the inventor of penicillin, shared his faith. More recently, Catholics constitute a good number of Nobel Laureates in Physics, Medicine, and Physiology, including Erwin Schrodinger, John Eccles, and Alexis Carrel. How can the achievements of so many Catholics in science be reconciled with the idea that the Catholic Church opposes scientific knowledge and progress?
One might try to explain such distinguished Catholic scientists as rare individuals who dared to rebel against the institutional Church, which opposes science. However, the Catholic Church as an institution funds, sponsors, and supports scientific research in the Pontifical Academy of Science and in the departments of science found in every Catholic university across the world, including those governed by Roman Catholic bishops, such as The Catholic University of America. This financial and institutional support of science by the Church began at the very birth of science in seventeenth-century Europe and continues today. Even Church buildings themselves were not only used for religious purposes but designed in part to foster scientific knowledge. As Thomas Woods notes:
Cathedrals in Bologna, Florence, Paris, and Rome were designed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to function as world-class solar observatories. Nowhere in the world were there more precise instruments for the study of the sun. Each such cathedral contained holes through which sunlight could enter and time lines (or meridian lines) on the floor. It was by observing the path traced out by the sunlight on these lines that researchers could obtain accurate measurements of time and predict equinoxes. [2]
In the words of J. L. Heilbron of the University of California, Berkeley, the "Roman Catholic Church gave more financial aid and social support to the study of astronomy over six centuries, from the recovery of ancient learning during the late Middle Ages into the Enlightenment, than any other, and probably, all other institutions." [3] This financial and social support extended also to other branches of scientific inquiry.
Such support is not only consistent with official Catholic teaching but is enthusiastically endorsed. On the Church's view, science and faith are complementary to each other and mutually beneficial. In 1988, Pope John Paul II addressed a letter to the Director of the Vatican Astronomical Observatory, noting, "Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish." [4] As Nobel Laureate Joseph Murray notes, "Is the Church inimical to science? Growing up as a Catholic and a scientist — I don't see it. One truth is revealed truth, the other is scientific truth. If you really believe that creation is good, there can be no harm in studying science. The more we learn about creation — the way it emerged — it just adds to the glory of God. Personally, I've never seen a conflict." [5] In order to understand the complementarity of faith and science, indeed faith and reason more broadly, it is important to consider their relationship in greater depth.
A sign hung in Albert Einstein's office at Princeton University that read: "Not everything that can be counted counts; not everything that counts can be counted." Faith cannot be quantified and counted, like forces in physics or elements in chemistry, but that does not mean that faith is insignificant. Faith helps us to answer some of the most important questions facing mankind. As important as scientific discoveries can be, such discoveries do not touch on all of the inevitable questions facing us: What should I do? Whom should I love? What can I hope for? To answer questions such as these, science alone is not enough because science alone cannot answer questions that fall outside its empirical method. Rather, we need faith and reason operating together to answer such questions and to build a truly human community.
One reason that people view faith and science as in opposition is that they often view faith and reason more generally as in opposition. Our culture often pits faith against reason, as if the more faith-filled you are, the less reasonable you are. Faith and reason in the minds of so many people are polar opposites, never to be combined, and never to be reconciled. In this way, our culture often offers us false alternatives: live either by faith or by reason. To be religious is to reject reason; to be reasonable is to reject religion. But like other false alternatives, e.g., "Did you stop beating your wife this week, or last week?" such thinking artificially limits our freedom. Rather than choosing between faith and reason, the Church invites us to harmonize our faith and our reason because both are vitally important to human well-being.
A sign hung in Albert Einstein's office at Princeton University that read: "Not everything that can be counted counts; not everything that counts can be counted."
Developing a long tradition of Catholic reflection on the compatibility of faith and reason, Pope Benedict XVI seeks to unite what has so often become divided, by championing the full breadth of reason (including but not limited to scientific reasoning) combined with an adult faith. Rather than pitting faith against reason, the pope is calling for a reasonable faith and a faithful reason. From a Catholic perspective, the truths of faith and the truths of reason (including science) cannot in principle ever be opposed, because God is the ultimate Author of the book of Grace (revelation) as well as the book of Nature (philosophy and science). One ought not, therefore, choose between faith on the one hand and reason on the other, but rather one should seek to bring both faith and reason into a more fruitful collaboration.
In a Catholic view, since faith and reason are compatible, science — one particular kind of reasoning — and the Catholic religion are also compatible. Nevertheless, it is a commonly held view that one must choose between science and faith. Why is this? There are several core issues that drive this misunderstanding. First, Genesis claims that God created the world in seven days, but science indicates that the universe, including the earth, developed over billions of years. Secondly, Genesis talks about the first man, Adam, and the first woman, Eve, being created by God, as well as all the animals being created by God. Science indicates that all life — including human life — evolved over millions of years. Third, Bible stories are rife with miracles, but science has shown that miracles are impossible. Fourth, and most famously, the Catholic Church condemned Galileo. Finally, the Church's opposition to stem cell research is seen as anti-science. Each of these objections is commonly used to justify the claim that the Church opposes science.
First, let's consider the claim that in Genesis God created the world in seven days but science indicates that the universe, including the earth, developed over billions of years. In the Catholic tradition, the creation accounts in Genesis have been interpreted in a wide variety of ways. Both literal and figurative readings of Genesis are theologically acceptable for Catholics. Some theologians, such as Saint Ambrose, understood the Genesis account of creation in a literal way. But for the most part, Catholic theologians, including Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Blessed John Henry Newman, Pope John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI, have interpreted Genesis as teaching the truth about creation in a nonliteral, nonscientific way. [6] Pope John Paul II puts the point as follows:
The Bible itself speaks to us of the origin of the universe and its make-up, not in order to provide us with a scientific treatise, but in order to state the correct relationships of man with God and with the universe. Sacred Scripture wishes simply to declare that the world was created by God, and in order to teach this truth it expresses itself in the terms of the cosmology in use at the time of the writer. [7]
Dr. Scott Hahn has pointed out that we might misunderstand the point of the seven days spoken about in Genesis, if we do not understand that the ancient Hebrew word for seven is the same word used for "making a covenant". So, when it is said that God created the world in seven days, the text is communicating to its original readers that God has created the world in a covenantal relationship with the Divine. [8] Indeed, it was this idea — that the world is an orderly creation from an intelligent God — that led to the beginnings of science. For if the world is not intelligible and orderly, there would be no point in trying to understand its laws of operation, the laws of nature which scientific investigation seeks to discover.
Secondly, the incompatibility of Genesis and the evolution of species causes some people to think that religious belief is incompatible with science. If the first man, Adam, and the first woman, Eve, were created by God, as well as all the animals, then all life — including human life — did not evolve over millions of years. If all life evolved over millions of years, then there could not be a first man, Adam, a first woman, Eve, or a creation of animals directly by God. As noted, the Catholic Church does not generally require that individual Scripture verses be interpreted in one sense rather than another. Individual believers and theologians may come to different understandings of a particular passage but remain Catholics in good standing. So, one could believe with Saint Ambrose that Genesis provides a play-by-play account of exactly how God did things over seven 24-hour days. Or, one could believe with Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Blessed John Henry Newman, Pope John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI that Genesis is not properly interpreted in this literalistic way. If one interprets Genesis in the ways suggested by the nonliteral view, then there is no contradiction in believing both in Genesis and in evolution as a way for accounting for the physical development of man provided one believes in a first man and first woman, from whom mankind descended and inherited original sin (see Humani Generis, no. 27). [9] Of course, the Catholic Church does not require that Catholics believe in evolution or any other view taught by any given scientist. However, if one believes in evolution, then one can also — as did Pope John Paul II — remain a faithful Catholic. [10]
A third problem that gives rise to difficulties for some people is that miracles are found in the Bible, but science is incompatible with belief in miracles. By miracle, I mean a supernatural intervention by God into the normal course of events. Is belief in miracles incompatible with science? To answer this question, it is important to distinguish science or the scientific method from what is called philosophical naturalism. The scientific method looks for natural causes to explain things that have happened. Philosophical naturalism, a philosophicaltheory, not a scientifically justified view, holds that there are only natural causes and no supernatural (divine) causes. Scientists can conduct their scientific investigations with or without a belief in philosophical naturalism. If God the Creator exists, then naturalism is false because a Creator God is a supernatural cause. If there is a Creator with power over the entire universe, then miracles are possible, for God could intervene in his creation. Indeed, science could only prove that miracles cannot happen, if it proved that there is no God. But science has not and cannot prove such a claim, since the realm of science is limited to the empirically verifiable, and God — at least as understood by most believers — is not a material being but a spiritual being.
this HTML class. Value is http://www.catholice
The Church Opposes Science: The Myth of Catholic IrrationalityCHRISTOPHER KACZOR
Many people believe that faith and reason, or religion and science, are locked in an irreconcilable war of attrition against one another.
One must choose to be a person of learning, science, and reason, or choose to embrace religion, dogma, and faith alone. On this view, the Church opposes science, and if one embraces science, then one ought to reject the Church.
The scientific method looks to evidence to settle questions, so perhaps it would be fair to look at evidence to answer the question whether the Catholic Church is opposed to science and reason. If the Catholic Church were opposed to science, we would expect to find no or very few Catholic scientists, no sponsorship of scientific research by Catholic institutions, and an explicit distrust of reason in general and scientific reasoning in particular taught in official Catholic teaching. In fact, we find none of these things.
Historically, Catholics are numbered among the most important scientists of all time, including Rene Descartes, who discovered analytic geometry and the laws of refraction; Blaise Pascal, inventor of the adding machine, hydraulic press, and the mathematical theory of probabilities; Augustinian priest Gregor Mendel, who founded modern genetics; Louis Pasteur, founder of microbiology and creator of the first vaccine for rabies and anthrax; and cleric Nicolaus Copernicus, who first developed scientifically the view that the earth rotated around the sun. Jesuit priests in particular have a long history of scientific achievement; they
contributed to the development of pendulum clocks, pantographs, barometers, reflecting telescopes and microscopes, to scientific fields as various as magnetism, optics and electricity. They observed, in some cases before anyone else, the colored bands on Jupiter's surface, the Andromeda nebula and Saturn's rings. They theorized about the circulation of the blood (independently of Harvey), the theoretical possibility of flight, the way the moon affected the tides, and the wave-like nature of light. Star maps of the southern hemisphere, symbolic logic, flood-control measures on the Po and Adige rivers, introducing plus and minus signs into Italian mathematics — all were typical Jesuit achievements, and scientists as influential as Fermat, Huygens, Leibniz and Newton were not alone in counting Jesuits among their most prized correspondents. [1]
The scientist credited with proposing in the 1930s what came to be known as the "Big Bang theory" of the origin of the universe was Georges Lemaitre, a Belgian physicist and Roman Catholic priest. Alexander Fleming, the inventor of penicillin, shared his faith. More recently, Catholics constitute a good number of Nobel Laureates in Physics, Medicine, and Physiology, including Erwin Schrodinger, John Eccles, and Alexis Carrel. How can the achievements of so many Catholics in science be reconciled with the idea that the Catholic Church opposes scientific knowledge and progress?
One might try to explain such distinguished Catholic scientists as rare individuals who dared to rebel against the institutional Church, which opposes science. However, the Catholic Church as an institution funds, sponsors, and supports scientific research in the Pontifical Academy of Science and in the departments of science found in every Catholic university across the world, including those governed by Roman Catholic bishops, such as The Catholic University of America. This financial and institutional support of science by the Church began at the very birth of science in seventeenth-century Europe and continues today. Even Church buildings themselves were not only used for religious purposes but designed in part to foster scientific knowledge. As Thomas Woods notes:
Cathedrals in Bologna, Florence, Paris, and Rome were designed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to function as world-class solar observatories. Nowhere in the world were there more precise instruments for the study of the sun. Each such cathedral contained holes through which sunlight could enter and time lines (or meridian lines) on the floor. It was by observing the path traced out by the sunlight on these lines that researchers could obtain accurate measurements of time and predict equinoxes. [2]
In the words of J. L. Heilbron of the University of California, Berkeley, the "Roman Catholic Church gave more financial aid and social support to the study of astronomy over six centuries, from the recovery of ancient learning during the late Middle Ages into the Enlightenment, than any other, and probably, all other institutions." [3] This financial and social support extended also to other branches of scientific inquiry.
Such support is not only consistent with official Catholic teaching but is enthusiastically endorsed. On the Church's view, science and faith are complementary to each other and mutually beneficial. In 1988, Pope John Paul II addressed a letter to the Director of the Vatican Astronomical Observatory, noting, "Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish." [4] As Nobel Laureate Joseph Murray notes, "Is the Church inimical to science? Growing up as a Catholic and a scientist — I don't see it. One truth is revealed truth, the other is scientific truth. If you really believe that creation is good, there can be no harm in studying science. The more we learn about creation — the way it emerged — it just adds to the glory of God. Personally, I've never seen a conflict." [5] In order to understand the complementarity of faith and science, indeed faith and reason more broadly, it is important to consider their relationship in greater depth.
A sign hung in Albert Einstein's office at Princeton University that read: "Not everything that can be counted counts; not everything that counts can be counted." Faith cannot be quantified and counted, like forces in physics or elements in chemistry, but that does not mean that faith is insignificant. Faith helps us to answer some of the most important questions facing mankind. As important as scientific discoveries can be, such discoveries do not touch on all of the inevitable questions facing us: What should I do? Whom should I love? What can I hope for? To answer questions such as these, science alone is not enough because science alone cannot answer questions that fall outside its empirical method. Rather, we need faith and reason operating together to answer such questions and to build a truly human community.
One reason that people view faith and science as in opposition is that they often view faith and reason more generally as in opposition. Our culture often pits faith against reason, as if the more faith-filled you are, the less reasonable you are. Faith and reason in the minds of so many people are polar opposites, never to be combined, and never to be reconciled. In this way, our culture often offers us false alternatives: live either by faith or by reason. To be religious is to reject reason; to be reasonable is to reject religion. But like other false alternatives, e.g., "Did you stop beating your wife this week, or last week?" such thinking artificially limits our freedom. Rather than choosing between faith and reason, the Church invites us to harmonize our faith and our reason because both are vitally important to human well-being.
A sign hung in Albert Einstein's office at Princeton University that read: "Not everything that can be counted counts; not everything that counts can be counted."
Developing a long tradition of Catholic reflection on the compatibility of faith and reason, Pope Benedict XVI seeks to unite what has so often become divided, by championing the full breadth of reason (including but not limited to scientific reasoning) combined with an adult faith. Rather than pitting faith against reason, the pope is calling for a reasonable faith and a faithful reason. From a Catholic perspective, the truths of faith and the truths of reason (including science) cannot in principle ever be opposed, because God is the ultimate Author of the book of Grace (revelation) as well as the book of Nature (philosophy and science). One ought not, therefore, choose between faith on the one hand and reason on the other, but rather one should seek to bring both faith and reason into a more fruitful collaboration.
In a Catholic view, since faith and reason are compatible, science — one particular kind of reasoning — and the Catholic religion are also compatible. Nevertheless, it is a commonly held view that one must choose between science and faith. Why is this? There are several core issues that drive this misunderstanding. First, Genesis claims that God created the world in seven days, but science indicates that the universe, including the earth, developed over billions of years. Secondly, Genesis talks about the first man, Adam, and the first woman, Eve, being created by God, as well as all the animals being created by God. Science indicates that all life — including human life — evolved over millions of years. Third, Bible stories are rife with miracles, but science has shown that miracles are impossible. Fourth, and most famously, the Catholic Church condemned Galileo. Finally, the Church's opposition to stem cell research is seen as anti-science. Each of these objections is commonly used to justify the claim that the Church opposes science.
First, let's consider the claim that in Genesis God created the world in seven days but science indicates that the universe, including the earth, developed over billions of years. In the Catholic tradition, the creation accounts in Genesis have been interpreted in a wide variety of ways. Both literal and figurative readings of Genesis are theologically acceptable for Catholics. Some theologians, such as Saint Ambrose, understood the Genesis account of creation in a literal way. But for the most part, Catholic theologians, including Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Blessed John Henry Newman, Pope John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI, have interpreted Genesis as teaching the truth about creation in a nonliteral, nonscientific way. [6] Pope John Paul II puts the point as follows:
The Bible itself speaks to us of the origin of the universe and its make-up, not in order to provide us with a scientific treatise, but in order to state the correct relationships of man with God and with the universe. Sacred Scripture wishes simply to declare that the world was created by God, and in order to teach this truth it expresses itself in the terms of the cosmology in use at the time of the writer. [7]
Dr. Scott Hahn has pointed out that we might misunderstand the point of the seven days spoken about in Genesis, if we do not understand that the ancient Hebrew word for seven is the same word used for "making a covenant". So, when it is said that God created the world in seven days, the text is communicating to its original readers that God has created the world in a covenantal relationship with the Divine. [8] Indeed, it was this idea — that the world is an orderly creation from an intelligent God — that led to the beginnings of science. For if the world is not intelligible and orderly, there would be no point in trying to understand its laws of operation, the laws of nature which scientific investigation seeks to discover.
Secondly, the incompatibility of Genesis and the evolution of species causes some people to think that religious belief is incompatible with science. If the first man, Adam, and the first woman, Eve, were created by God, as well as all the animals, then all life — including human life — did not evolve over millions of years. If all life evolved over millions of years, then there could not be a first man, Adam, a first woman, Eve, or a creation of animals directly by God. As noted, the Catholic Church does not generally require that individual Scripture verses be interpreted in one sense rather than another. Individual believers and theologians may come to different understandings of a particular passage but remain Catholics in good standing. So, one could believe with Saint Ambrose that Genesis provides a play-by-play account of exactly how God did things over seven 24-hour days. Or, one could believe with Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Blessed John Henry Newman, Pope John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI that Genesis is not properly interpreted in this literalistic way. If one interprets Genesis in the ways suggested by the nonliteral view, then there is no contradiction in believing both in Genesis and in evolution as a way for accounting for the physical development of man provided one believes in a first man and first woman, from whom mankind descended and inherited original sin (see Humani Generis, no. 27). [9] Of course, the Catholic Church does not require that Catholics believe in evolution or any other view taught by any given scientist. However, if one believes in evolution, then one can also — as did Pope John Paul II — remain a faithful Catholic. [10]
A third problem that gives rise to difficulties for some people is that miracles are found in the Bible, but science is incompatible with belief in miracles. By miracle, I mean a supernatural intervention by God into the normal course of events. Is belief in miracles incompatible with science? To answer this question, it is important to distinguish science or the scientific method from what is called philosophical naturalism. The scientific method looks for natural causes to explain things that have happened. Philosophical naturalism, a philosophicaltheory, not a scientifically justified view, holds that there are only natural causes and no supernatural (divine) causes. Scientists can conduct their scientific investigations with or without a belief in philosophical naturalism. If God the Creator exists, then naturalism is false because a Creator God is a supernatural cause. If there is a Creator with power over the entire universe, then miracles are possible, for God could intervene in his creation. Indeed, science could only prove that miracles cannot happen, if it proved that there is no God. But science has not and cannot prove such a claim, since the realm of science is limited to the empirically verifiable, and God — at least as understood by most believers — is not a material being but a spiritual being.
this HTML class. Value is http://www.catholice
