Let Science Be Science and Faith Be Faith

Fox News ^ | March 12, 2009 | Father Jonathan

[Alex Murphy]

Charles Darwin may have smiled last week. Why? Because last week in the Vatican’s flagship Gregorian University, scientists, philosophers, and theologians of international renown — both believers and non-believers  in a divine Creator — gathered to mark the 150^th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s “Origin of the Species”. An outside observer might have called it a contemporary inquisition, where men and women of distinct academic fields seek understanding from each other on how and why current life forms have come to be.

Participants of this congress seemed well aware that we are living in peculiar times where rapid scientific discovery is curiously accompanied by increasing bickering over what this information means to queries about the origin of the world and our place in it. I say curiously, because it would seem logical that more empirical evidence about biological evolution would translate into greater unity of thought. Not so. In America we can’t even agree on if and how theories of evolution should be taught in our schools.

The Vatican’s middle-of-the-road approach hasn’t been met with cheers from everyone. Staunch Darwinists claim the Vatican is hijacking and perverting Darwin’s teachings by leaving room in evolutionary theory for belief in God. Creationists, on the other hand, are scandalized by the Vatican’s general acceptance of biological evolution as scientific fact.

If Darwin was smiling last week it was because he knew this motley crew of clerics and academics actually had a fighting chance to reverse a trend toward myopic, tribal thinking. It’s a trend in which the norm is for secularists and religious people of faith to speak to each other only in order to call the others blind. But at least for one week, this trend was changed–the winds of discord yielded to a spirit of collaboration.

[Alex Murphy]

From later in the article:

I know for certain this exclusion of ID spokespersons was no accident; it was methodological. “Intelligent Design” recognizes evolution as a scientific fact, but it goes further. It says because it is impossible to explain the complexity of evolution as a “blind” and “undirected” process of numerous, successive, slight modifications (Darwin’s theory), the only logical answer is to claim the force of a divine design.

[Zionist Conspirator]

Ping.

[a fool in paradise]

If Darwin was smiling last week it was because

There is eternal life. Otherwise he's worm excrement and nothing but.

[DogBarkTree]

Both sides are right and wrong. One side is off on the time frame of creation and the other is off on the intent.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

"Bottom line: During this week of study a consensus grew that scientists of evolutionary theory must avoid Darwin’s pitfall of making definitive philosophical or theological statements about the absolute randomness of the natural world. And likewise, that philosophers and theologians must respect the role of science in showing us how the natural world has developed, well, naturally (even if God is the ultimate cause). Is it too much to ask our schools to teach science, and science alone, in the science classroom? I don’t think so. Religion is only worthwhile if it is based in truth. And truth is something we should never be afraid of."

Yes, it is "too much to ask" because they don't teach the science teachers philosophical cosmology, metaphysics, or philosophy of science where these kinds of questions are addressed so they don't even understand when they are making philosophical claims in science classes. Claims about a universe or life without meaning or divine purpose are beyond the abilities of the NEA and Deweyite ideologues seeking this kind of authority in the classroom since they lack the philosophical and theological background required to deliberate on such questions. The dorks of scientism can't address these. And they don't even know that they don't know. Empiricism and scientific materialism do not have answers for these questions.

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

"Is it too much to ask our schools to teach science, and science alone, in the science classroom? I don’t think so."

It is, if the science in question is making theological statments.

Besides, there is no principle of "separation of faith and whatever else" in Catholic education.

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

Deweyite ideologues

Speaking of Dewey, please read this:

The Influence of Darwin, John Dewey.

[Varda]

"there is no principle of "separation of faith and whatever else" in Catholic education."

Such a Catholic education would be faulty-

"(36)...Indeed whoever labors to penetrate the secrets of reality with a humble and steady mind, even though he is unaware of the fact, is nevertheless being led by the hand of God, who holds all things in existence, and gives them their identity. Consequently, we cannot but deplore certain habits of mind, which are sometimes found too among Christians, which do not sufficiently attend to the rightful independence of science and which, from the arguments and controversies they spark, lead many minds to conclude that faith and science are mutually opposed." Gaudium Et Spes

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

Faith and reason are cognitively distinct but the idea of a separate discipline which claims to determine truth and is separated from questions of divine purpose is a modern invention. Modern "science" (scientism) is a social and political movement. As has become clear with recent statements by the current ignoramus president about "restoring science" and so forth. There is no logical reason to separate the study of nature from addressing questions about design or divine purpose (other than political and anti-religious ones). Fr. Morris doesn't discuss philosophy of nature or metaphysical cosmology which would involve teleological issues or questions of purpose and design. Certainly in the Catholic and Aristotelian-Thomistic traditions both philosophically and theologically. There is no logical reason to give scientific materialism any priority or authority on these since they can't be adequately addressed by that ideology. This is the problem with scientism and materialism. It claims to answer questions which it doesn't have the capacity to answer. There is no lab experiment or fossil which proves there is no God or that the universe does not have a created design. That whole agenda is silly.

But since philosophy, theology, and philosophical cosmology are not generally taught in the Deweyite NEA-dominated American educational system, these absurd debates continue to be posed as if the claims of scientism should be taken seriously. No dork with an artistic graph of imaginary prehistoric ape men or swamp monsters knows when or how life began or what it means. There is a power motive behind their narrative which extends to Hiroshima, embryonic stem cells, eugenics, cloning, down to the spinster in the local high school with the monkey charts collecting for UNICEF. There is a reason Velma takes up with the prehistoric hairy ape-men monster mythology and it has little to do with science.

[onedoug]

Let Science Be Science and Faith Be Faith

They work too well for me together.

[Force of Truth]

And let's be clear: Darwinism is a religion, not science.