What do we get when science and faith interact?

Michael Panao
20 de ago. de 2016
2 min de leitura

The reason some people think there's a conflict between science and religion is the idea there should be a concordism. There's this short book by Zachary Hayes OFM "a window to the divine" which is a precious asset in Science and Faith.

Hayes says

"Concordism reflected the conviction that either certain claims of theology could be proven by science, or that the limitations of scientific knowledge could be filled out with information from the world of religion".

However, taking the insights of Michael Polanyi we should never forget that

"the presumed objectivity of the scientist in fact reflects a good deal of personal involvement and commitment that had been seen as characteristic of the theologian. A complete dichotomy between involvement and objectivity does not exist; there are only varying degrees of involvement and commitment to the pursuit of truth in the two disciplines. Thus Polanyi and others like him give reason to reject any absolute dichotomy between science and theology at the most fundamental levels that concern the nature of method and epistemology."

Thus, relatively to the relation between science and theology, Hayes concludes that

"Rather than fearing the ongoing discoveries of science, we can work with the conviction that scientific knowledge can enlarge and enrich not only our understanding of the world, but our view of God and of God's way of acting as well."

There are scientists that contemplating the fine-tuning in the Laws of Nature conclude the world evolved in such a way for humans to emergence.

It's the Anthropic Cosmological Principle.

I'm not fond of this principle because the universe story is far from finished.

One of the things observed in the universe is that time flows and history unfolds.

Instead of the Anthropic Cosmological Principle, I once heard the theologian John Haught speaking about the Narrative Cosmological Principle. In his "Resting on the Future" he says

"God acts presently with respect to evolution and the cosmos process by creating (and becoming incarnate in) the narrative loom on which an indeterminate and still-unfinished cosmic drama continues to be woven. The idea that God directly and simply engineers creation is inconsistent."

Well, I'm a Professor of Engineering and often we need to go beyond the mechanistic view of things to have actual innovative ideas and answer to engineering problems. We usually call it thinking out-of-the-box. The full potential of an idea about God and how He acts in the world's "interiority" is not in a designer, or Engineer, but in a _mystery of self-communicative love_.

And that's the problem.

We're so fascinated by what technology can do to our lives, and how things are designed in such a way that objects (smartphones, tablets, watches, etc.) become personalized, that we risk forgetting where the true fascination in God resides.

Love.

That's it.

Unless we discover what Love is in God, we'll fail to experience the great potential in the interaction between Science and Faith...