Faith can never conflict with reason. The Pope's statement on Galileo and science/scripture conflicts.
In fact, the Bible does not concern itself with the details of the physical world, the understanding of which is the competence of human experience and reasoning. There exist two realms of knowledge, one which has its source in Revelation and one which reason can discover by its own power. To the latter belong especially the experimental sciences and philosophy. The distinction between the two realms of knowledge ought not to be understood as opposition.The Pope's 1996 statement on evolution. Physical evolution is not in conflict with Christianity. Excerpts:
It is necessary to determine the proper sense of Scripture, while avoiding any unwarranted interpretations that make it say what it does not intend to say. In order to delineate the field of their own study, the exegete and the theologian must keep informed about the results achieved by the natural sciences.Today, almost half a century after the publication of the Encyclical, fresh knowledge has led to the recognition that evolution is more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favour of this theory.
Prof Collins is a brave man, and koodos to him.
Still, he should not so quickly dismiss all of ID as merely 'God of the Gaps' type knee-jerk.
There are still many gaps to our scientific knowlege and many gaps that have been 'filled' still fall into the miraculous category (IMO) despite science slapping a name onto it. The Big Bang for instance had matter/energy moving at faster-than-light speeds for a while shortly after everything in the cosmos came into existance from nothing within a milisecond. How is that NOT miraculous? How does scinece defining and labeling it rob it of its exemplifying Gods power?
Evolution is the same thing. It shows how finely tuned the entire universe is toward the existance of life, and has been from its inception.
That design speaks far more persuasively to me than some trivial reduction to 'God did it.' That isnt sciencel it is a slogan.
Science needs more than slogans.