Faith and Science
- Michael Haldas
- 14 minutes ago
- 3 min read
“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you…Remember, the notion being sold to the public is that science deals in fact and religion deals in faith. Yet science has its own tenets of faith, and real faith is based on facts…the “face-¬off between ‘religion’ and ‘science’ ” has a “strangely intra-¬mural quality…” (Werner Heisenber, Rice Broocks, Charles Taylor, James K.A. Smith)
“...natural science in itself is restricted to physical nature and human behavior. It is not concerned with metaphysical, spiritual, and divine things. It analyses, describes, and explains the manifold activities of physical and living things, including human beings with their unique characteristics and properties, but it says nothing about the origin, meaning, and destiny of that which it studies.” (Fr. Thomas Hopko)
“Although science can be said to have had its beginning in ancient pagan Greece, there is ample evidence that modern science arose largely from the insights and efforts of pious Christians, especially within Western Christian culture, with significant input from pious Muslims…Beginning in the 17th century, partly as a result of the many successes of the natural sciences, and partly as a result of the Wars of Religion, as well as several influential theological errors, many people came to have great faith—an almost blind faith—in the superior power of science, the scientific method, and reason in every area of knowledge, over against the power of religion and revelation. In a new version of the Epicurean view, it was also believed that it would be through reason, using the scientific method, that humanity would be enabled to control—or even dominate—nature, overcome its problems, including bringing an end to warfare and all kinds of violence, and create an earthly paradise.” (Dr. Mary S. Ford)
“Physical scientists of our day also believe that the universe had a beginning, a moment when it came to be “from nothing.” Our scientists also believe that from that first moment, the unfolding of order was guided according to natural laws that in a sense pre-exist the cosmos. Scientific laws are only made visible in nature, but they also control nature, and are not the same as the rest of nature in that way. In some sense, the natural scientific laws that physicists and mathematicians study are the midwives of nature, and are themselves born into nature from some place outside of it.” (Timothy G. Patitsas)
“While God is the creator of everything, God empowers the earth continually to bring forth vegetation. The earth itself is fertile and fecund. The earth is empowered by God to bring forth new life forms all of which are capable of reproducing themselves. God imbues the earth with a life-giving capacity. God commanded the earth synergistically to be fruitful – the earth does its part and brings forth vegetation of all kinds. God is pleased with what vegetation the earth brings forth. God commands His creation to be creative and to generate life forms. The earth obeys God’s command. And what the earth does we can study through science. Once God has given this life-giving power to the earth to bring forth vegetation, God places within creation powers and laws that we can study. The realm of science is to study creation and the scientific laws at work in it. While all the universe and its scientific laws are created by God, God has also given us the power of reason to study how creation works. This is why there need not be a rejection of science by the faithful.” (Fr. Ted Bobosh)
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