“Science discovers; religion interprets. Science gives knowledge and power to men; religion gives them wisdom and control. Science is about facts; religion is about values. The two are not rivals, they are complementary. Science makes religion not fall into irrationalism, fanaticism and paralyzing obscurantism. Religion prevents science from falling into the swamp of obsolete materialism and moral nihilism."
Rev. Martin Luther King
Science and technology as the new religion
A growing number of people have been replacing faith in the omnipotence of God with faith in the pseudo-omnipotence of science and technology. Science discovers, technology applies, and our lives become more comfortable from a material point of view. In addition to material, the human person is also spirit, a spirit that questions the whys and the meaning of life and of everything around him. Science will never have answers to these questions, but religion does.
The agnostic will say that no one cares to know the "why" and the "for what". It is true, as the atheists say, that man is the moment when nature became aware of itself. However, it is precisely from that moment on that the human being began to seek the meaning of his life. Every individual, at the moment when he becomes aware that he exists, around 6 or 7 years of age, begins to wonder where he comes from, where he is going and what is the meaning of life; only animals do not do so, and it is only because they are not aware that they exist.
There are more and more people who have abandoned God in order to idolize science and technology. The idea that religion is nothing more than an ignorant and primitive way of investigating the mysteries of the world has taken root in public opinions nowadays. The episode of Galileo's condemnation earned the Church the reputation of obscurantist that prevails even to this day.
Galileo was condemned, on the one hand because the obstinate Church leaders of the time had not yet realized that the Bible does not reveal scientific truths, but only truths concerning human nature. On the other hand, as some historians say, Galileo did not present evidence to confirm his theory. Because we are on Earth, we do not perceive its movement and hence from this point of view, it seems that it is the sun that moves; the same happens to us when we travel in a car or a train – we who are in motion seem to be still, and the landscape that is fixed seems to move before our eyes.
Einstein was also criticized by some scientists of his time because his theory of relativity lacked empirical proofs, as it was an intuitive elucubration of Einstein's mind. It is only now that empirical evidences are beginning to appear that show the veracity of his theory.
Faith and reason
If God exists, then He exists as the Creator of everything and everyone; as creatures created by Him, it is not logical that our mind can encompass the mind of God, that the part can understand the whole. God can never be the object of science; for that matter, the same is true of man. In fact, the mystery does not involve only God and man, it is common to all areas of knowledge.
No science or area of knowledge can boast of having already discovered everything there is to know in its field; the more one knows, the more there is to know; therefore, the true wise man considers himself ignorant. Nicholas of Cusa called it the learned ignorance: in the face of the immensity of what there is to know, all I know is that I know nothing.
Science investigates nature; religion also investigates nature but more specifically, the nature of God. True science knows that the more one knows, the more there is to know. Religion also knows that but keeps on investigating the mystery of God, knowing that it can never encompass it in its totality.
Historically, reason has been constituted and instituted as science, which is the process of determining the behaviour of matter or of the universe using observation, experimentation and reason. Historically, faith has been constituted and instituted as religion, which is an organized system of beliefs, ideas or answers about the cause, nature and purpose of the universe that are not and cannot be the object of science.
Faith does not live only in religion, nor does reason only live in science. Faith and reason are complementary and we need both in our daily life. Practically every act contains a bit of reason and a bit of faith. In life, reason analyzes, faith decides. Without reason we would decide prematurely and make more mistakes than we already do; without faith we would never make a decision, nor risk a solution to our problems, because we would always think that something could have escaped our analysis and we fall into immobilism.
When I accept a cheque for a service rendered, in good faith I trust that the cheque is covered, it would be rude and I could lose a friend if I refused to take it and ask for cash instead. When I board a plane, I believe that the airport security has done a good job in preventing someone from putting a bomb in their luggage, and I believe the pilots are well trained and well-intentioned.
When I sit down to eat in a restaurant, I trust that the food is safe to consume and I do not demand that it be analyzed in a laboratory before eating it; it is this lack of faith and the fear of being poisoned that the cook in Ethiopia is made to always taste the food in front of the guests before a meal.
To know and to love
To know means to dominate and to control. If I know the principle that regulates rain, I can make it rain, as in fact the Chinese did a few days before the opening of the Olympic Games, to prevent it from raining on the opening day. With God, one cannot know Him in the same way. One knows God as one knows the human person.
A person only reveals himself, only makes himself known if he is loved. In contrast, if it is an enemy who knows us, we become vulnerable to him. Like all people, God only makes himself known to those who love him. We can’t love God or a person without getting personally involved with him. We cannot put God or a human person inside a test tube. To love is to implicate oneself with the beloved; among humans, knowledge without love is manipulation and control.
Church, society and science
In the case of abortion, it is the Church that is on the side of science, and the sociopolitical world, cultured or uncultured, that is against it. There is no scientist who denies that human life begins at conception, when half-cell consisting of 23 chromosomes – sperm – joins another half-cell consisting of the same number of chromosomes – the egg – forming an indivisible union, a human cell of 46 chromosomes with a unique, never seen, genetic code in the history of the universe.
This human cell immediately subdivides into replicas of itself, because all the cells that make up the human body contain the same DNA. Many people, following their conveniences, not science, decide that this embryonic life is not yet a human life, as if time could transform something that is not human into something that is human, or something that is not yet human to become human after a short time. Do these ignorant lovers of science forget that they themselves went through this embryonic phase and were they themselves not human at the time?
Abortion is a legalized homicide, a convenience for some, and a business for others. There is no scientific, moral or human basis for this killing and yet the science that knows that human life begins at conception also shuts up for convenience. This is Galileo Galilei of society and science, hypocrisy taken to its highest level.
The Church does not fear science
Far from fearing science, the Church even promotes it. The 19th century Augustinian friar, Gregor Mendel, is known to be the father of modern genetics. The only acceptable theory about the beginning of the universe is authored by Georges Lemaître, a Belgian Catholic priest. According to him, the "Big Bang" marks the beginning of Time, Space and Matter.
Since in the universe as well as in nature nothing creates itself, it is perfectly plausible that it was God, someone outside of creation, the uncaused cause that by externalizing his creativity and love, caused an explosion of the atom he had previously created and, with this big explosion, created time, space and matter.
The Big Bang is the kick-off to an infinite succession of causes and caused, until it reaches the moment when a human being appears. Since the Church is not averse to science, Pope Pius XII, in his encyclical Humanae Generis, states that Darwin's theory of evolution of species is not in contradiction with the book of Genesis which, using mythological language, says that man was the last living being to be created. Whether it was created directly or as the end of an evolutionary process makes little difference.
The more science advances, the easier it is to believe. For centuries, the Bible and the Church have been ridiculed for speaking about the end of the world; today it is scientific to say that the universe had a beginning and will have an end. I firmly believe that science will never come to prove faith wrong, quite the contrary, the more science discovers, the easier and the more reasonable it is to believe than not to believe.
In which case not to believe will be reduced to a stubbornness that is more proud and ignorant than scientific or enlightened. We are not far from a time when we will be able to say, with all the scientific proof we have at our disposal, that only those who do not want to believe do not believe.
To speak of the miracles that Jesus did within the framework of Newton's mechanistic physics, according to which reality works like a perfect machine in the unalterable routine of a clock, is more difficult than to speak of the same topics in the framework of the theory of relativity and quantum physics, where there is no longer talks of fixed and absolute laws of nature, but of statistical probabilities. The Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle goes even further when it suggests that reality, far from being fixed and subject to routine, has a high degree of uncertainty and unpredictability.
For Einstein, matter is a form of energy, and energy is a form of matter; 95% of the universe is made up of dark matter that is invisible. How easy it becomes to speak about the resurrection, of the glorious body of Christ and of the spiritual body that we will possess after death!
Science tells us what the world is like and how it works; but the why of the world science can never find out because this is of another nature.
Conclusion: Science discovers, technology applies, and our life becomes more comfortable. Religion discovers the meaning of life, ethics the values that define human nature, spirituality shows us the way to self-realization and happiness as sons and daughters of God.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
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