Honest Science and Christian Faith

In his talk at the conference celebrating 30 years of Touchstone, Professor Thomas S. Buchanan addressed the relationship between science and Christianity.  (The text of his talk can be found online at http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=30-05-021-f, but a subscription is required.)

Buchanan pointed out that the media often use the word "scientist" to refer to any researcher, including those in art history, for instance.  This makes it hard to understand the nature of science and what distinguishes it from engineering and other fields.  Buchanan then described actual science:

 The first step is to make observations: What do I see in nature? The observations can come from my own experiences or from thoughts or readings. The next step is to think of interesting questions, such as, Why does a particular pattern occur? Next, I formulate hypotheses that might explain the general causes of the phenomenon I am pondering. Then I develop testable ways to predict whether the hypotheses are true or not. If a hypothesis is true, I can develop a study that will expect a certain type of outcome. Next, I gather data to test my predictions. This allows me to verify or falsify my hypotheses. If they are shown to be wrong, I can refine, alter, expand, or reject my hypotheses and then go back and develop new testable predictions. If the hypotheses are proven to be true, I can then move forward to develop general theories that are consistent with what I have learned. From there, I begin again, closing the loop and applying the new knowledge to other observations in the future.

After describing examples of activities that are not true science, he proposed that Christians should reclaim honest science:

Good scientists think like good theologians do: they believe in universal truth—that what holds true in the lab is true in the world. This is good thinking. Hence, they ought to make good allies for Christians.  We need to train Christian scientists, starting when they are young, teaching them what is real science and what is nonsense. We should also teach students not to venerate scientists, but to respect science and seek after truth, in natural laws as well as theological ones.

Newman's sermon on faith and reason

"The Philosophical Temper, First Enjoined by the Gospel" is a sermon that John Henry Newman preached at Oxford University.  He was, at the time, an Anglican priest.  In this sermon, Newman addressed the concept that Christianity is hostile to science.  Christians who confuse the realms of faith and science may have unwittingly fueled this position by their reaction to scientific discoveries: “To feel jealous and appear timid, on witnessing the enlargement of scientific knowledge, is almost to acknowledge that there may be some contrariety between it and Revelation.”

But faith and reason both pursue truth and follow some of the same principles.  For example, “Science and Revelation agree in supposing that nature is governed by uniform and settled laws.”  Moreover, certain virtues are useful to scientists: “some of those habits of mind which are throughout the Bible represented as alone pleasing in the sight of God, are the very habits which are necessary for success in scientific investigation.”  In particular, Newman mentioned modesty, patience, and caution but acknowledged that scientists who possess these virtues only in part can still be successful and that scientists have forgotten the roots of their discipline due to their success.  Still, “Scripture was, in matter of fact, the first to describe and inculcate that single-minded, modest, cautious, and generous spirit, which was, after a long time, found so necessary for success in the prosecution of philosophical researches.”

Newman chastised scientists who go beyond what their evidence supports: “From seeing but detached parts of the system of nature, they have been carried on, without data, to arrange, supply, and complete. They have been impatient of knowing but in part, and of waiting for future discoveries; they have inferred much from slender premises, and conjectured when they could not prove.”

Elizabeth Li described how this sermon is related to his other works [1]:

Whereas, in the rest of the sermons, Newman defends the faith of the simple, he attempts to defend the faith of the learned in Sermon I. He discusses whether it is possible for educated, intellectual people, and especially scientists, to be Christians or whether the Christian faith impedes intellectual and scientific pursuits.

[1] Li, Elizabeth, "Reason and Faith in John Henry Newman’s Sermons and Poetry,"

http://open.conted.ox.ac.uk/sites/open.conted.ox.ac.uk/files/resources/Create%20Document/VIDES%202014%20section%20032%20Elizabeth%20Li.pdf

Views of Evolution

Because it provides an explanation of our origins, the scientific theory of evolution has provoked a variety of reactions.  Some have denied it, some have accepted it, and some have extended it beyond its domain.  A brief summary of some key positions:

Young-earth creationism: Evolution did not occur.  God created the universe in six days, and humans are descended from Adam and Eve.

Theistic evolution:  Evolution is an acceptable scientific explanation, and God doesn’t intervene with the material process.  “God, eternally foreseeing all the products of evolution, uses the natural process of evolution to work out his creative plan,” according to Avery Cardinal Dulles [1].  Pope Benedict proclaimed, “We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary” [2].

Intelligent Design: Evolution can explain some aspects of life, but not all.  God produced irreducibly complex organs that a sequence of small random mutations, under the laws of evolution, could not produce.

Teleological evolution: Evolution is an acceptable scientific explanation, and it has a purpose.  According to Cardinal Dulles, “Biological organisms cannot be understood by the laws of mechanics alone. The laws of biology, without in any way contradicting those of physics and chemistry, are more complex. The behavior of living organisms cannot be explained without taking into account their striving for life and growth” [1].  Evolution is a process that is not complete; God activates new classes of life within that process; and through it God will unite the whole universe in Himself.

Neo-Darwinism:  Evolution not only explains the origin of life but also shows that God does not exist and the universe has no purpose.  

1. Avery Cardinal Dulles, "God and Evolution," First Things, October 2007.

2. Pope Bendict XVI, homily, Inauguration Mass, April 24, 2005, https://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/homilies/2005/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20050424_inizio-pontificato.html.

Is faith reasonable? (Vatican I)

What is the relationship of reason and faith? 

The First Vatican Council answered this question in their Decrees. Session 3 (Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith), Chapter 3 (Of Faith and Reason) declares the following: 

There is a twofold order of knowledge, distinct both in principle and in object: in principle, because our knowledge in the one is by natural reason, and in the other by divine faith; in object, because, besides those things to which natural reason can attain, there are proposed to our belief mysteries hidden in God, which, unless divinely revealed, cannot be known.

 Reason can partially understand the mysteries of God, but it can’t understand them completely (as it can material things).  Still, there is no conflict: 

There can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason; since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, and God cannot deny Himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth.

 Moreover, 

they are of mutual aid one to the other: for right reason demonstrates the foundations of faith, and, enlightened by its light, cultivates the science of things divine; while faith frees and guards reason from errors, and furnishes it with manifold knowledge.

Richard John Neuhaus wrote the following about this document:

[It] corrected both the underestimation (in fideism and radical traditionalism) and the overestimation (in rationalism and ontologism) of reason’s natural capacities. Vatican I taught that faith and reason, revelation and the natural knowledge of God, are distinct but inseparable.  (From https://www.firstthings.com/article/1998/12/a-passion-for-truth-the-way-of-faith-and-reason)

 Thomas Joseph White wrote this summary:

[It] insisted, against secular reason, on the infallibility of divine revelation: Revelation is a gift that human rationality cannot procure for itself. Yet it also underscored the high natural capacities of human reason, our philosophical capacity to know of the existence of God and to cooperate with divine revelation. Against the reductive tendency of modern thought that so quickly rejects appeal to divine authority, that council sought to underscore the existence of a fruitful, liberating interaction between sacred theology and human rationality. The two are not at war, but may mutually interact with one another in peace and liveliness. Revelation is a gift to human reason seeking perspective. Reason seeking meaning can arrive at the threshold of the question of God and can therefore admit the possibility of divine revelation.  (From https://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/11/the-tridentine-genius-of-vatican-ii)