Q: “Angels and Demons” presupposes a natural hostility between the Christian faith and modern science. What do you think about this?
Father Wauck: It’s relatively easy for people to see that a lot of the great art of the Western World — music, painting, sculpture, literature, architecture — is the product of a Christian culture, often inspired by the faith or even funded by the Church. That seems obvious. But what people don’t realize is that something similar is true of the sciences.
Think about it. Universities are an invention of the Church. Copernicus was a Roman Catholic cleric, and he dedicated his book on the heliocentric universe to the Pope. The calendar we use today is the Gregorian Calendar, because it was promulgated by Pope Gregory XIII, who was working with the best astronomers and mathematicians of his time. Galileo himself always remained a Catholic, and his two daughters were nuns. One of the greatest Italian astronomers of the 19th century was a Jesuit priest, Angelo Secchi. The father of modern genetics, Gregor Mendel, was a Catholic monk. The creator of the “Big Bang” theory was a Belgian priest, Georges Lemaitre.
In short, the idea that there is some natural tension between science and the Church, between reason and faith, is utter nonsense.
The only tension comes those who want to substitute science for religion. I saw a wonderful comment (here or Standfirm) that pretty well summarized the issue in my view. To paraphrase, religion explains the “why” and “what” while science explains the “how” and “when”. Those that want science to explain all are the ones that create the tension.
A few more items from history …
1. Rievaulx Abbey in Yorkshire has a primitive type of blast furnace
up and running at the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
Theirs differed from earlier ones, already in widespread use, in
that it was close to the stage of development where it could
produce cast iron on a mass basis. Here’s a link to a 2002 article
about this, the thinking being that Henry VIII nipped the
Industrial Revolution in the bud …
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1397905/Henry-stamped-out-Industrial-Revolution.html
If so, technological progress may have been delayed about
two centuries by Henry’s actions against the Church.
2. Marin Mersenne, a French Catholic cleric, originated the
concept of Mersenne primes, which are useful in various
types of computer work.
3. The Gregorian calendar, now the most widely used in the
world, was promulgated in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII.
It was not accepted in ‘advanced’ countries such as Great
Britain and the Scandinavian lands until much later. They
apparently were afraid that the calendar was some sort of
a popish plot.
Trotting out the tired old Church v. Galileo or Church v. Bruno
does little to convince when a more thorough ( inclusive ! )
reading of history would greatly blunt the notion the Church
is anti-science.
The charge against the Church that she is obscurantist is sensational,but not serious. The real harmful charge is the philosophical move that says that Faith is subjective and doesn’t say anything about the world outside our heads.
I do not believe there is any hostility between the Christian Faith and the sciences. God created the Universe. It is what it is, and its history is what it is. It is man’s ability to understand the mysteries of the Universe and its history that changes over the course of time. An ability which results from brains given to us by God. Nonetheless it is undeniably true that for most of recorded history there has been significant hostility between specific religious groups, Christian and nonchristian, and the sciences.
While it is true “Copernicus was a Roman Catholic cleric, and he dedicated his book on the heliocentric universe to the Pope.” It is equally true the Roman Catholic Church had him imprisoned for writing the book and expressing a correct heliocentric theory of the universe and that they used his imprisonment as a threat to all scientist of the time who might think of exploring this theory.
Mitchell, that is not true at all, Copernicus was never imprisoned nor faced with any other censure or rebuke. What is your source for making such a claim?
You are correct. Senior moment. I was thinking of Galileo who was forced to recant his support of Copernicus’s theory and spent the rest of his life under house arrest.
My daughter has a science teacher who spends a good deal of his time bashing the “irrationality” of the religious mindset and how much better the scientific mind is for coping with ‘reality’.
So don’t tell me that there is no hostility from science towards religion. 🙂
PS my daughter is going for the grade so she does not publiclly object, except once:
The teacher said “Science can find the bones of dinosaurs which lived millions of years ago. But Christians can’t even find the bones of Jesus”
To which she replied:
“But if they fund the bones of Jesus, then that would disprove Christianity.”
his reply, “Huh” and went on.
fund = found. sorry.