Pope Benedict XVI said cooperation between science and faith is necessary for world peace and man's destiny, as he addressed the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
“I am convinced of the urgent need for continued dialogue and cooperation between the worlds of science and of faith in the building of a culture of respect for man, for human dignity and freedom, for the future of our human family and for the long-term sustainable development of our planet,” he said in a speech given Nov. 8 at Clementine Hall.
“Without this necessary interplay, the great questions of humanity leave the domain of reason and truth and are abandoned to the irrational, to myth or to indifference, with great damage to humanity itself, to world peace and to our ultimate destiny.”
The Pope received in audience the participants in the plenary assembly of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, which took place Nov. 5-7. The theme was “Complexity and Analogy in Science: Theoretical, Methodological and Epistemological Aspects.”
About 70 scientists, philosophers and theologians, most of them members of the academy, participated in the plenary session, and many are joining in a Nov. 8-10 working group on “Neurosciences and the Human Person: New Perspectives on Human Activities.”
Pope Benedict said the topics of complexity and analogy in science point toward “a new vision of the unity of the sciences.” The gift of reason allows man to “constantly expand his knowledge of truth and order it wisely for his good and that of his environment.”
“An interdisciplinary approach to complexity also shows that the sciences are not intellectual worlds disconnected from one another and from reality,” he said, “but, rather, that they are interconnected and directed to the study of nature as a unified, intelligible and harmonious reality in its undoubted complexity.”
This, in turn, shows the complementarity of scientific study with philosophy and theology in the Christian tradition.
The idea of “participated being” in Christian thought is a “fruitful point of contact” with complexity and analogy in science.
Participated being holds that “each individual creature, possessed of its proper perfection, also shares in a specific nature, and this within an ordered cosmos originating in God’s creative word.”
“It is precisely this inbuilt 'logical' and 'analogical' organization of nature that encourages scientific research and draws the human mind to discover the horizontal co-participation between beings and the transcendental participation by the First Being.”
The assembly examined the intelligibility of nature from a variety of perspectives, ranging from physics and math to environmental sciences, free will and neuroscience, as well as the origins of the human mind.
Pope Benedict concluded by thanking the Pontifical Academy of Sciences for its efforts in strengthening the relationship between reason and faith and drew their attention to the Year of Faith.
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Religion and science don’t contrdict. As we’ve seen in a recent work by Michael Grinzaid (but it’s written in Russian by the way: http://m1kle.ru/library_scientists_religious_worldview.php) nearly all the founders of modern science were religious people. It’s very natural, for I belive naturalism contradicts science. If our brains just evolved from chaotic matter, why then do we believe them? It appears, if naturalism is true we’re obviously unable to do science. Our main instruments, our brains are broken then, but their work is defently central to all human rationality (which also in this case is under threat), not only science.
Sorry for my English, I’m from Russia.
“And God said, ‘Let there be light;’ and there was light. And God saw that the light was good.” (Genesis 1: 3-4). Obviously, the Pope’s comments are relevant to the direction and development of scientific creativity, inventiveness, and application. There is no real-practical separation of frames-of-reference or realms in the physical Universe, where Space-Time is in contemporaneous Continuum with Matter-Energy as they cycle under the controlling principles of the Laws of Thermodynamics. Matter-Energy “cycles” from one form to another as it undergoes Transformation. However, Human Life is uniquely differentiated from all other lower forms of existence. “Unified Continuum” between our Understanding (discovery of valid scientific laws) and the true physical-material structure, workings, and operations of the extant Universe, is inevitable, but not within the current unscientific evolutionist paradigm of chaos, anarchy, and chance that flagrantly contradicts the mathematical and scientific Orderliness that is inherent in both earth natural ecological processes and Space-Time solar system or galactic events. Do not Gravity, Space-Time, Electro-magnetism, and Matter-Energy, all, exist contemporaneously within the same material-physical Universe? Does not the atom aggregate with other atoms to form molecules that then coalesce with other molecules to then form greater bodies of Mass? Thus, we contemporaneously go from atom, to molecule, to planet, to Star, to Galaxy . . . . . Therefore, a biblically-based spiritual-moral perspective (“spiritual-scientific Faith”) that is congruent with a corresponding cause-and-effect paradigm as proven by laboratory and field experiments (the Scientific Method) whose main principles align with revealed, God-breathed and inspired eternal Truths, is validly scientific in addressing both physical reality (the Universe) and social reality (Human Living). God bless you all for your fervent Faith in Christ Jesus through God’s revealed Word of Truth in the Holy Bible. God bless the United States of America.
On this most important issue that must surely inform critical teaching in this Year of Faith, may I bring note of CARITAS AND THE PSYCHOSPIRITUAL WAY, published by TRIGON, in Prague, in June, (in English),devoted to bringing together Christian theological reflection (above all agape and faith) with an exploration of links with medicine.There was a time when the faith tradition was as much a mark of the physician as of the cleric and the living dialog between both was the way of wholesome living.
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