SCIENCE AND DIVINE REVELATION

When for the first time, after the Fall, man became aware of its existence in the world, he sought ways to understand and explain it. He may have asked himself something like Blaise Pascal (2002, p.67) asked: "who put me here? By the work and order of whom this place and this moment were destined for me?" Discussing this issue, in my book The Man in Search of Himself [1], I present these means. Initially mythology and religion, then more elaborated means based on reason and experience: philosophy and science. And finally, a meam that is not exactly human: divine Revelation. 

Science, along with mythology and religion, was one of the first means man created to understand the world. According to the British historian of science, Hart-Davis (2016, p.18), it emerged among sumerian priests four thousand years before Christ. But it was only after the scholar Francis Bacon (15th century) suggested introducing induction and experimentation into his method that it presented great development, to the point of resolving complex issues that religion and philosophy, needlessly, tried (MONDIN, 2012, p.129).   

Today, trust in it is such that scientific knowledge is regarded as the only one capable of reaching the truth about man and the universe. However, important philosophers of science understand that things are not quite like that. For these scholars, it can obtain, at most, an approximation of truth and not absolute knowledge. Karl Popper, considered one of the greatest philosophers of science of the twentieth century, says that "there are excellent reasons to say that what we have in science is to describe and (as far as possible) explain reality. We do so with the help of conjecture theories; that is, theories that we hope are true (or close to the truth), but which we cannot firm as certain [...]" (POPPER apud ZILLES, 2016, p. 209). 

Thus, although science has its merits and constitutes an important human effort to understand the mysteries of man and the world, it is, however, a precarious and incomplete mean. The scientist is like someone looking for a needle in a haystack. He doesn't fully understand the elements he handle. Although there are Christian scientists, many others, however, does not accept Revelation. This fact is understandable, because science produces a mechanistic and materialistic view of the world. Science deals with concrete, with what human perception is capable of capturing. But it does not reach the immaterial instances of the human being. 

But Revelation can be perceived implicitly in the theoristic sets of mythology, religion, philosophy, and science. It exists because of the Fall. By turning away from God, by a personal decision, man had his essence altered. Body, soul and spirit have gone into a mismatch of existence and progress on a trajectory that culminates in death. A process of alienation has been established in his being so that he has alienated himself from God, from neighbor and from himself, and now see himself lost in an immense universe, a world marked by violence, sin, and idolatry [2]. 

"Revelation is the miracle in which the Transcendent lightly touches the physical world and becomes immanent in it. Despite the astonishment and magnitude of this process, it constitutes only a tangency to the world of matter, because human reality does not contain the splendor of the one who reveals himself. Thus, knowledge from Revelation has to be covered with human categories to be understood and assimilated, because it speaks of concepts that transcend the reality of the material world" [3]. Revelation is a movement of God's love toward man, whose climax occurs in the person of the Son, Jesus Christ, in whom "the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden" (Colossians 2.3).

Antônio Maia - M. Div.

Copyright

HART-DAVIS, Adam et. al. O Livro da Ciência. São Paulo: Globo, 2016.

[1], [2], [3] MAIA, Antônio. O Homem em Busca de Si. amazon.com.br, Brasil.

MONDIN, Batista. Curso de Filosofia – volume 3. São Paulo: Paulus, 2012.

PASCAL, Blaise. Pensamentos. Ed Abba Press, São Paulo, 2002

ZILLES, Urbano. Panorama das Filosofias do Século XX. São Paulo: Paulus, 2016.