Five contemporary issues in science and religion

1
Should Science Make You Lose Faith in God?

• Five contemporary issues in science and religion

2
Visit Our Webpagewww.SaintAnselmOregon.org
3
Week 1 Science and Religion The History of
Conflict
4
IntroductionModes of engagement

• The Battle of the fundamentalists wart hogs and
  boa constrictors the new atheism and
  intelligent design
• No contact No conflict non-overlapping
  magisteria
• Constructive Criticism the role of evolution in
  Christian theology
• Creative Tension

5
Four Dialogs

• Can there be a theology of evolution?
• Quantum Mechanics What are we to make of the
  otherworldly nature of quantum reality? What
  about the implicate order?
• Cosmology what is our place in the universe? Why
  is the universe so exquisitely tuned to our
  existence?
• Emergence How does order and intelligence arise
  out of primordial chaos?

6
From The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

• Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the
  unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of
  the galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
  Orbiting this at a distance of roughly 96 million
  miles is an utterly insignificant little
  blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms
  are so amazingly primitive that they still think
  digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

7
Matthew Arnold Dover Beach
The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and
round earths shore Lay like the folds of a
bright girdle furld But now I only hear Its
melancholy, long withdrawing roar, Retreating, to
the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast
edges drear And naked shingle of the
world. . And we are here as
on a darkling plane Swept with confused alarms of
struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies
clash by night.
1867
8
The New Atheism

• Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
• Sam Harris, The End of Faith and Letter to a
  Christian Nation
• Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great How
  Religion Poisons Everything

9
The Templeton Prize

• 1.5 million dollars gt Nobel Prize
• To a living person who has made an exceptional
  contribution to affirming lifes spiritual
  dimension, whether though insight discovery, or
  practical works outstanding individuals who have
  devoted their talents to expanding our vision of
  ultimate purpose and reality.
• Recent winners Charles Townes, Freeman Dyson,
  Paul Davies, John Barrow, Michael Heller, Ian
  Barbour, John Polkinghorne

10
Science in Ancient Greece

• Pythagoras, sixth century BCE
• Science and religion are inextricably
  interrelated.
• Aristotle, 384-322 BCE
• Theology Science of God

11
St. Augustine 354 430 CE

• When the question is asked what we are to
  believe in regard to religion, it is not
  necessary to probe into the nature of things, as
  was done by those whom the Greeks call physisi
  nor need we be in alarm lest the Christian should
  be ignorant of the force and number of the
  elements the motion and order and eclipses of
  the heavenly bodies and a thousand other things
  which those philosophers either have found out or
  think they have found out It is enough for the
  Christian to believe that the only cause of all
  created things, whether heavenly or earthly
  is the goodness of the Creator, the one true God.

12
More quotes

• St. Augustine. Nothing is to be accepted save on
  the authority of Scripture, since greater is that
  authority than all the powers of the human mind.
• Martin Luther. I hold that the animals took
  their being at once upon the word of God, as did
  the fishes in the sea.
• John Calvin speaking about those who reject
  literal interpretation of scripture, They
  basely insult the Creator, and should expect a
  judge who will annihilate them.

13
Galileos Confession (1633)

• I Galileo, being of my seventieth year, being a
  prisoner and on my knees, and before your
  Eminences, having before my eyes the Holy Gospel,
  which I touch with my hands, abjure, curse, and
  detest the error and the heresy of the movement
  of the earth.

14
More commentary

• Martin Luther (1483-1546). This fool wishes to
  reverse the entire science of astronomy but
  sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded
  the sun to stand still, and not the earth.
• Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560). Now it is want
  of honesty and decency to assert such notions
  publically, and the example is pernicious.
• John Calvin (1509-64), Who will venture to place
  the authority of Copernicus above that of the
  Holy Spirit?

15
On Witches

• Thou shall not suffer a witch to live, Exodus
  2224
• John Wesley (1768) The giving up of witchcraft
  is in effect the giving up of the Bible.