The response of a Varazze
Science and religion are incompatible?
For the third consecutive year the Foundation Professor Paul Michael Heir, based in Genoa, has launched a competition with the intention of young scholars to reflect on a topical issue. This year's theme is Atatà place in the form of a question: science and religion are incompatible? Among those attending was Mark Damonte, our treasurer, who sent a paper entitled with wonder at the reality , earning it the second prize. We met the neo-PhD in Philosophy (discussed his PhD thesis on 31 March) to try to understand the gist of his thoughts, assured that his "titles" have the task easier.
MD Almost the opposite, instead! Academic research is likely to close in a sort of ghetto for the initiated, with an incomprehensible language and with too many items for granted. The competition in which I participated, on the contrary, wanted to use a language that is accessible and informative: this is not always easy if you want to avoid being banal or repeat clichés.
TM dry Question: So science and religion are incompatible?
MD Dry response: I have tried to support a negative answer, showing how science and religion, despite some friction, there are points of contact and convergence. The one without the other loses something and do not buy anything. A science that it is considered self-sufficient, like a religion that it brought into ridicule the achievements of science, would like Polyphemus, a giant with one eye, a beacon unable to grasp the depths and facets of the real.
TM But science has no need of religion!
MD Without a religious dimension, understood as opening the absolute, infinite, or simply as a desire to know the reality in its totality and in its deepest truth, science is likely to twist on itself and become a technology in the service economy. When science becomes arrogant and wants to rule the world disasters are at hand: just think, as one example, pollution. But above all, a revelation as the Bible is an encouragement to the work of science. It presents a world created by an intelligent God in a rational order that man has the ability to investigate, since it was created in the image and likeness of God himself.
TM The religion derives benefit from science?
MD I would say so. The risk fundamentalism, that is, to interpret the scriptures literally and not as the revealed message, is always present, and science helps us to stay away.
TM But this is not the prevailing thought today.
MD Certainly not: we are immersed in a scientific culture, where you think that science will sooner or later will solve all problems. Science, medicine, first and foremost, has helped us and allows us to live better. But science alone is "blind", must find its purpose and its meaning somewhere else.
TM 's view that the current relationship between science and faith is conflicted: bioethics, the Galileo case opposition between evolution and creation ...
MD are just three warhorses of scientism. But just remember that belonging to the Catholic hierarchy have promoted scientific development and have engaged in it, such as the Blessed Nicholas Steno, bishop and father of geology, monaco Gregor Mendel discovered the laws of genetics, the cleric Nicolaus Copernicus who proposed the heliocentric theory and the priest Georges Lemaître, a pioneering proponent of the theory of Big Bang, or, finally, that modern science would probably be born in the West thanks to the de-sacralization of nature and the concept of secularism tied to Christian revelation.
TM No conflict, then?
MD I would say no, especially because science and faith are two distinct ways to explore the world. Each legitimate in its own sphere. The first is outstretched to describe and provide explanatory models for particular situations, and the second is committed to providing a comprehensive system of interpretation on the world of life. In ask ourselves the same event, both approaches show their difference and their complementarity. When a person falls in love tends to describe his state as a desire leaning toward the other person, the ability to interact with it, to give oneself, to accept and be accepted, but would be useless to dwell on synaptic pulses, the hormone levels of its physical and chemical reactions in your body unconsciously. To force such a distinction could still say that science deals with the how things happen, while religion deals with the because occur.
TM opposition to the distinction ... is there something more?
MD course. Undoubtedly speak of complementarity: we could say that one works as critical agency to another and vice versa. Without science, religion is in danger of superstition endorse. Religion, thanks to science, can learn the beauty of natural phenomena that God created and wanted that man could discover the right to give Him Him.
TM When two things are complementary, means cha have points in common, but perhaps this is not CentraStar placed over the distinction between religion and science?
MD The disciplines remain distinct, what is in common is an attitude toward reality. Both religion and science need faith, rationality and wonder.
TM of faith?.
MD Scientist Should not trust of his intelligence up to date it to him to ask who? Should not trust the scientific tradition and the results achieved by his colleagues?
TM of rationality?
MD The believer should not perhaps be able to give an account of his speraza?
TM Of meraiglia?
MD An observer incapable of wonder will only see what others have seen him before and can not contribute in any way to mine the depths of reality. Small wonders daily recall the wonder in the face of complex natural phenomena and this opens itself to the surprise, thanks to which we ask the religious questions: the wonder that the world exists, that there is something rather than nothing, it can be seen as a miracle. The English writer Chesterton warned: the world shall perish not for lack of wonders, but for lack of wonder . The brutality of the head bent only on immediate interests, or the banality of things to have, off the very life of the soul.
TM But today we still have this ability to surprise us?
MD In our society, the urgent seems to have taken the place of the important, the habit of wonder; addiction, wonder and the desire to possess, the difficulty of the conquest, the consumption of 'admiration' s used of enjoyment, erotic love, love Agapito. Perhaps some of these factors or indeed their simultaneous presence resulted in the expulsion from both churches, as the scientific faculties. Both are empty and have been replaced by substitutes such a vague spiritualism irrational and bulimia technology. The move away from institutional religion has not approached the science, but the New Age, extremism and increased the use of so-called wizards. Only wonder leads to contemplation.
TM A joke to end.
MD addition to solving the problems posed by science, you have to listen to the problems that humans are the most pressing existential. The all of the problems that human reason can arise and can not be reduced to investigate the questions to which science aspires to respond. What we urgently need is to remain free to make us devoted to a cause beyond individualism, far opinion. Only then will we still have great scientists and great teachers of spirituality.
TM An original point of view, but I do not know if everyone would agree ...
MD My goal is to offer food for thought, I do not claim the consent of anyone.
TM other ideas, I imagine, will be offered during the award ceremony to be held Friday, May 14, 2010 at 17:30 in Palazzo Tursi, seat of the Municipality of Genoa on Via Garibaldi 9 . I take this opportunity to invite the readers.
MD Thank you for your attention, counting on support Varazze ". In any event refreshments will follow ...!
Thomas Metonda
FURTHER INFORMATION ON THE INTERNET AND PICTURES ON THE SITE www.fondazione-erede.org
0 comments:
Post a Comment