Archive for August 31st, 2006
by Thomas E. Brewton
From an intellectual viewpoint, there is no inherent conflict between religion and science. Trouble comes from the efforts of atheistic materialists to hijack science.
As noted in Science vs Religion, religion is obviously no impediment to scientific study of the natural world. All of the 17th century's groundbreaking discoveries and applications of mathematics to the natural world were the work of devout Christians. In only one case– Galileo – was there conflict with the church, and that was primarily a political matter.
Galileo's fight with the Church was not solely the result of his heliocentric theories. One of his personal friends, the local bishop, had supported publication of Galileo’s scientific work. But, after his friend became Pope, Galileo published a satirical work in which some church doctrine was presented as foolish. It was one thing to publish scientific papers, quite another to ridicule the Pope and the Church during the Reformation's spiritual and political warfare.
Religion looks at the big picture, science at particular natural instances. Mathematics is a bridge between the two: applicable to particulars, but drawing its theorems from extrapolations into the immateriality of mental constructs, as did Plato with his paradigm of Ideal Forms.
In the 17th century, when natural science emerged as a new paradigm, religion and science were understood to be equally valid ways to study God's creation. The laws of mathematics and natural science had, after all, been created by God as part of the whole universe.
The emerging paradigm of scientific experimentation was not conceived by seminal thinkers like Francis Bacon as replacing religion and classical philosophy. The physical sciences were, instead, to be a supplemental method to determine the nature of the physical world.