Friday, April 5, 2019

Great Need for Humility


A college professor working in quantum science writes in the Kyeongyang magazine an article titled: Humility. He recalls reading a few years ago that half of the Catholics who leave their religion, mentioned science as the reason. During the 20th century, the results of science and technology are overwhelming. Religious belief made little sense with this new reality, it was close to superstition.
 

Talking about science in a religious context seems to be dangerous and in the world of science, silence or opposition to religion is expected. Einstein said religion without science is blind and science without religion is crippled. Einstein was a Deist and did not believe in the afterlife. Pope St. John Paul II said faith and science are two wings in search of truth.
 

In the Bible, according to the writer we have the word wisdom appearing 522 times in the OT and 67 times in the NT.  The word love appears 285 times in the OT and 296 times in the NT. In the OT times until the appearance of science, we had the search for God in nature. Ecclesiasticus 1-1, " All wisdom is from the Lord, and it is his own forever." They believed that the laws that govern nature were made by the creator. Today, no need to go to God, does that mean that God does not exist?
 

We contrast intelligence and faith, science and religion, both in search of truth. Intelligence and science are looking for the 'how' and faith and religion are looking for the more basic 'why'.
 

Over half of the scientists consider themselves atheists. Richard Dawkins is one of the militant ones and is hostile to all religions they are all leading us to evil and gives the example of the tragedy of  9-11. Many are Deist: accepting a creator God but after creation is not interested in the creation and lets it run according to natural laws of evolution and life.
 

Many Protestant churches oppose evolution and insist on creation. Many accept the creation story literally and deny what the scientists propose. People like Dawkins think they bring ridicule on themselves.  According to our writer, 'creation science' has changed the packaging and call it 'intelligent design' but he considers this pseudoscience. Catholicism has no problem with evolution.
 

Francis Collins a director of the Human Genome Project in his book: The Language of God, creation science and intelligent design are both not science. Like Pope St. John Paul II, there is the acceptance of evolution and at the same time the providence of God in Biologos (God instigated evolution). Dependence on intelligent design is dangerous for when that fails our faith also will be harmed.
 

For a Catholic, God created the world and no matter how much science learns it will never destroy this belief. In faith, with great peace, the church desires the search for scientific truth with all eagerness, only in its application is there a need to consider God and morality.
 

Quantum physics, indeterministic unpredictability (chaos),  Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, are some of the ways in which science shows its limitations.

In society, politics, and finances we have Arrow's impossibility theorem that operates in social choices when there are three choices or more to chose from. It's impossible to make a rational and fair choice. We can be overly credulous. Science has given us much but limitations are there, consequently, the need for humility.
 

This is also true with those of faith and religion, humility is necessary. It's an important part of our faith life.