Fr Michael's Presentation : Church and Science

Note: The first 15 min of the presentation were not recorded due to technical error.

The Foundation of Science

•Christian tradition (and Jewish) envisaged a rational God and a rational creation

•Creation is informed by natural laws

•Science arose in the West, not the East. Coincidence?

•Significant Catholic Scientists:

–St. Albert the Great

–Copernicus -heliocentrism

–Galileo –Copernican system

–Bl. Nicholas Steno –Geography

–The Jesuits –Founders of Seismology

–Louis Pasteur

–GregorMendel –MendelianGenetics

–George Lemaitre –The Big Bang

Galileo

•“I have been received and shown favor by many illustrious cardinals, prelates, and princes of the city.” Letter of Galileo to friend, 1611

•Church instructed Galileo to teach heliocentrismas a theory, not fact. Galileo refused

•Galileo insisted that Scripture must be reinterpreted

•Stellar Parallax –little scientific proof for his theory

•Reduced dynamic process into static geometry

•Placed under house arrest –in a villa. His daughter did his penance for him

•Bottom Line… GROSS HISTORICAL IGNORANCE! Or, intentional malice!

Quantum Theory

•The motion of subatomic particles

•Wave-Particle Duality

•Demonstrated that our knowledge of particles is only probable

–Then how do we arrive at certainty, which science purports to know?

–The position of the observer

–The observer must have a non-material faculty enabling judgment

Substance vsRelations

•Scientism and material reductionism

–Sees only discreet isolated particles

–Doesn’t recognize relations between particles

•Relations are just as real as particle substances (Trinity)

•Relations are not material

–Relations have real consequences

–The existence of forms

–Terminate in Primary Natural Units (ends)

Entropy

•Processes tend to go in one direction

•From organized to unorganized; usable to non-usable

•Demonstration that the universe is not eternal

•Conversion into heat

•The Eucharist

Evolution

•There is nothing in organisms that explain the direction of evolution; it requires history

•“Those who dedicate themselves to the purpose of proving there is no purpose constitute an interesting object of study.”

•Levels of dependency in evolution

–Genetic mutations, environmental changes

–Changing material things cannot explain their own movement. Principle of Causality

•Cambrian explosion

–5 million years

References

•Chance or Purpose? Creation, Evolution, and a Rational Faith –Cardinal ChristophSchonborn

•Modern Physics and Ancient Faith –Dr. Stephen M. Barr

•How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization –Dr. Thomas E. Woods, Jr.

•Science and Creation: From Eternal Cycles to an Oscillating Universe –Rev. Stanley Jaki

•HumaniGeneris –Pius XII