Sundays Sermon Today-- Science and Religion

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Surce; https://patriotcommandcenter.org/forum/sundays-sermon-today-science...

“Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence: it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines” –Bertrand Russell

“The dogma of Christianity gets worn away before the advance of science…Gradually the myths crumble.”—Adolf Hitler

“Religion has been the most formative influence on virtually all historic civilizations.”---Alexander Rosenthal y Pubul

“Christianity was essential to the rise of science, which is why science was purely a Western civilization phenomenon.”---Rodney Stark

Science is best defined as a method used in organized efforts to formulate explanations of nature, always subject to modification and correction through systematic observation. It consists of 2 parts, theory and research. Abstract statements are scientific only if it is possible to deuce from them some definite predictions and prohibitions about what will be observed. Observations that are relevant to the theories empirical prohibitions and predictions. Science is not random discovery but involves intentional and sustained actions and that it seldom, if ever, is pursued in solitude.

Knowledge does not give birth to itself. Science is what animates it. As C. S. Lewis said: “Man became scientific because he expected Law in Nature. He expected Law in Nature because he believed in a Legislator.” And since all science must begin somewhere, it must begin with some attitude, some assumptions about nature of the world around us. As Prof George Simpson said: “All science is philosophical.”  It is founded on the acceptance of certain simple facts, such as the objective reality(1) of the world, the order and intelligibility of nature, and the ability of our minds to understand that order. Science is never neutral on the subject of reality, but is always based on a view of the world, and to that extent is grounded in philosophy.

Although science is a changing and growing collection of knowledge, characterized by transparency and testability, central to science is the concept of causality: effects have a cause is a principle(2) of science. And opening this first principle to examination is the beginning of making science fundamentally more rigorous in its method. This method, called the scientific method, is a process done by making observations, drawing inferences, and testing those inferences with further experimentation and observation and critically thinking about the results and the interpretation of it. Richard Feynman tells us that: “Scientific knowledge is an enabling power to do either good or bad—but it does not carry instructions on how to use it…even great forces and abilities do not seem to carry with them clear instructions on how to use them.” But knowledge in and of itself, is not a danger.

The view of science as an empirically and mathematically pure essence is tantamount to the notion that human beings are blank slates when they begin doing science. That view must ignore the reality of how we know the world. Furthermore, the empirio-mathematical method ascribes to the act of measurement something it does not have. Measurement does not precede understanding, but rather the opposite. Is it not foolish ignorance then to believe that what our senses report to us is to be accepted at face value rather than what is processed through our intellect, influenced by our worldview? In fact, isn’t that processing the most certain knowledge of the world we have and isn’t that also in agreement with the basis of science itself, which asserts that nature is understandable and that our minds are capable of that understanding?

One of the characteristics of modern liberalism is its attack on religion, justified on the grounds that religion is at odds with science. Certainly, as one of the Catholic Church’s major intellects--Thomas Aquinas-- knew, that whatever is in itself the object of religious faith will always escape finally from a completely satisfying rational explication. He thought it at least possible to do two things in favor of the object of his faith: to show that it did not contain any rational impossibility—nothing self-contradictory and then to refute the objections against the truths of his faith.

Still, this baseless and erroneous attack by modern liberalism on religion is pursued under false pretenses. This war on religion cannot be described as one between science and religion. Instead, it is more of a tug-of-war over the way science is to be henceforth used and the purposes to which science is harnessed, within a political context. The supposed incompatibility between religion and science is incongruent with concrete realities, as exemplified by the threat such overtly religious regimes, such as Islamic ones, pose from their work on WMD’s, a highly scientific venture. Rather, capitalism and individual freedom, fostered and nurtured under Christian religions, play a greater role in technological advancement for the betterment of humanity than science alone. Look to the former USSR for other recent evidence. Technological progress, in fact, offers no guarantees of a better world, no matter how strong one’s optimistic beliefs, aspirations, intentions or desires(3).

More so, the double standard involved in the evaluation of science vs. religion never asks whether science, having produced some nightmarish results over the recent past, has ever exceeded its usefulness. There is a direct causal relationship between science and its scientific method and the things that are “antithetical to our survival.” It should be obvious to any one who has paused to reflect that humanity has survived during millennia of religious faith, with thousands of diverse sects but, that we may not survive a mere 400 years of science, if the liberal alarmists are to be believed in their veritable witch’s brew of accelerating doomsday scenarios so faddishly accepted these days (i.e. manmade global warming, over-population, nuclear war, etc).(4)

It is not then the fault of religion itself when its presence is concurrent with major bad earthly things but, the use of religion by dictatorial elements for personal or political agendas. Attribute blame for the use of nefarious devices with those who actually use them. Nor does the fault lay with a combination of religion and science but, rather the combination of scientists and the scientific method that has created this panoply of mortal dangers to humanity(5). Attribute blame for the existence of nefarious devices with those who create them(6). The truth is that any advance in science depends still on the inscrutable soul of man as to whether it will mainly benefit or harm mankind(7). This is perhaps the strongest argument for a morality superior to materialism, and a religion that refuses to be bullied by science. “For mind as much as machinery depends for its good or evil not on its force, but on its direction.”---G. K. Chesterton

“Nearly all of the great religious scientists were not merely religious, but Christians” as Vox Day reminds us. In fact, the great leap forward into science (mistakenly described as without prior historical support) which occurred in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, were the work of Christian men, of which at least 60% of the significant scientists (52 in total) were devout.  And the significance of the fact that the Catholic Church has developed the most impressive educational infrastructure in the world, from Montessori schools to major universities, in nearly every nation across the globe, should not be overlooked nor underestimated.

Ages ago both, St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas demonstrated that faith and reason, when rightly used, are in harmony with each other. Christianity’s role then is that it should challenge scientists to pursue the truth with the greatest integrity, scrupulously avoiding duplicity, ambiguity, illogic, monetary allurements that plague it today. Ironically, it can be observed that the profession of science today, and not religion, is what is growing increasingly authoritarian and political, as can be seen with those who fail to fall in line with the consensus on subjects where the evidence is far from settled, or even contradictory to the prevailing view. Christianity does not threaten science so much as science threatens itself.

“The new atheists certainly do swallow a lot of strange, what they call scientific, concoctions in order to eliminate God. While science has nothing of value to say on the great and aching questions of life, death, love and meaning, what the religious traditions of mankind have said forms a coherent body of thought…A principle beyond selfishness appears at work in the cosmos…I do not now whether this is true.  I am certain that scientific community does not know that it’s false.”—David Berlinski

1.      Emmanuel Kant stated that we all live under the prodigious illusion that our knowledge gives us accurate information about reality, what we know is not in fact reality but the human way of interpreting reality—we only know phenomena. Kant however failed to explain how we can possibly know, let alone be sure, of that. When a conclusion destroys its founding assumption, in Kant’s industry that’s called “nonsense.” Editor’s note: The writer Heinrich von Kleist developed Kant’s view further and concluded life is meaningless, and then killed himself.

2.     The most fundamental first principles are that things exist, things have properties, things change and all change has a cause.

3.     For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in practice, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious.

4.     If, one were to argue that science has brought many benefits that outweigh the threat of annihilation of humanity, one would be arguing the logic equivalent of multiplying the number zero. If, one were to argue that the probability of dire systemic consequences from science is low, then surely one would have to apply the same logic standard to the same threat religion poses to humanity also. In other words “bad science” needs to be judged by the same standard “bad religion” receives.

5.      Almost all of the popes for the past century have decried the philosophical errors buried in secular science.

6.     Modern totalitarianism’s (who claimed the mantle of scientific) unprecedented atrocities were enabled precisely by the power bestow by modern science2 evoking and coexisting with the processes of spiritual, cultural and moral decline

7.     The fatally flawed belief in an optimistic account of human nature and a high confidence in the beneficence of science is exposed by the actual course of modern history, culminating, at least to date, in the carnage of the 20th century’s  war against Christianity. Such a belief fails to touch the depths of the human condition, to address the problem of evil, or give meaning and foundation to human values. Most of all it proved unable by itself to defend the value of humanity itself.