Faith and Science for 2019
A man came up to me at the end of the Mass. “You know, Father, the minute I heard a priest speaking about science, I said to myself: ‘Oh…
“The doctrine of original sin is the only empirically verifiable doctrine of the Christian faith.” — — Reinhold Neibuhr
Many years ago, I was preaching in Boston and began my homily with something about science. I actually do not remember which of my many homilies about science and/or evolution I spoke, but it is a common topic with me.
A man came up to me at the end of the Mass. “You know, Father, the minute I heard a priest speaking about science, I said to myself: ‘Oh, here we go.’ But you were dead on.” He was a researcher at nearby MIT.
I actually do not understand the conflict between faith and science, especially where it seems some within these disciplines try to disprove the others. I know that there are scientists who try to say that belief in God is naive and Christians who say that belief in science is idolatry, but neither is true. Faith begins where empiricism ends. As a Catholic, I do not believe in faith or reason, but faith and reason.
Science works in the realm of matter, in atoms and molecules and their properties all of which present empirical evidence of their existence and the laws of physics. Faith begins outside of the realm of matter.
If I believe in evolution in any form and Catholics do not believe, specifically, in random evolution, I am open to the possibility that there are realities in the universe that we have not evolved enough to see and/or comprehend.
This is the point of faith — the universe is bigger than our biological ability to perceive it.
We begin to understand such realities when we learn from Socrates to acknowledge what we don’t know and from Jesus when we stand humbly before the source of all wisdom.
Our faith helps us to understand how to live in this universe knowing that all we can perceive is not all that exists. If a scientist were to say to me that my premise is false, then I would tell him/her not to speak to me about evolution because my premise comes from the sciences of evolution. Otherwise, I have to believe that we are currently fully evolved and everything that we see is all that there actually is. I cannot logically accept that premise.
As a Catholic, do I believe in Jesus? Yes. Do I believe in His death and resurrection? Yes. I also believe in science and a growing understanding of the universe. If Jesus is who He says He is, then when He spoke and walked on the Earth, He spoke from a wealth of knowledge that includes all that no one can currently understand on his/her own, even in 2019, even down the street from MIT and surrounded by Harvard University, where I live and work. He even spoke from a full understanding of evolution. I embrace His teachings, not to dismiss ideas of science, but to embrace what is a bigger world view that includes science, but is not limited to it.
In fact, when I teach about the faith, I also recommend watching the movie Interstellar for exactly the same reason. Even though it is based exclusively in science; specifically in Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, it also hints that the universe is bigger than our current ability to comprehend it.
The concept of matter: atoms and molecules is older than the gospels. It originated from Aristotle who lived centuries before Jesus’ birth and outside the Hebrew territories. So, when Jesus walked on the Earth, people at the time would have been familiar in some way with atoms and molecules, certainly not protons and neutrons, but at least the concept of matter.
Jesus says in John 4:24 that God is spirit, therefore, not matter. We believe in a reality called spirit that is beyond atoms and molecules and currently beyond the scope of science.
This is the realm of faith, it is not anti-science by any stretch of the imagination, it is outside of science currently.
Some will protest that much harm has been done by religion, I will the say the same about science, but the argument is pointless. Science without faith can lead to the holocaust; faith without science can lead to the inquisition. It is not faith or science that is destructive, it is one exclusive of the other that has that greater potential for creating horrors.
As people of faith continue into 2019, there is no joy in believing that science will finally defeat faith or that faith will finally defeat science. It is more important that we come to a deeper understanding of ourselves and our universe within the realms of science and faith.