SCIENCE AND FAITH

Although the incredulity reigns today, it is a fact that there are still Christian scientists and other, even non-Christians, who believe in the existence of God. However, the great project of science is a world without God. Most scholars in this field of human knowledge do not consider God in their equations. Three reasons may explain this fact: one is the desire for autonomy of the fallen and dead man, from the spiritual point of view; another, perhaps, is the lack of reasonableness of religions created by man without God; and the third is that science is incapable of examining God and spiritual reality. 

In fact, according to the Bible, it was the desire for an autonomous life that led the first man not to obey God. After the step that resulted in the Fall, the human being died spiritually and therefore does not discern spiritual reality. Far from God, but desirous of Him, man created religions, but his praxis often drives sensible people away from God. Many religions alienate the human being from the real world and others are responsible for wars and cruelties against man in the name of God. Science, on the other hand, because of its method, only reaches analyses of the natural world, of concrete reality. 

It was not meant to be so, for science was born and remained associated with religion for many centuries. According to Hart-Davis... et al (2016, p.18), in ancient Mesopotamia, still in the fourth millennium BC "The Sumeian priests studied the stars and recorded the results on clay tablets. They have left no records of their methods, but a tablet dated 1800 BC demonstrates knowledge of the properties of right triangles". Aristotle (1938, p.50), in his metaphysics, recorded that there were, among egyptian priests, experts in the mathematical arts. 

Also the British, William Bynum (2014, positions 10 and 17), historian of medicine, states that "the first scientists (although not called that at that time) were probably priests" and that, for much of history, science was used in conjunction with magic, religion and technology to understand and control the world. Note, then, that science is born associated with religion. Mondin (2011, p.60) states that this association of science with religion only came to an end in the early Modern Age, when Francis Bacon and Galileo Galilei proposed changes to the scientific method that led to major discoveries. 

Today, most scientists and people in general place great trust in science and openly deny the existence of God and spiritual reality. But science was not seen as the enemy of faith. Galileo, author of a new physics, which replaced Aristotelian, was christian. Isaac Newton, the father of modern physics was also a Christian theologian. Nicholas Copernicus, who revolutionized the world by proving that the Earth moved around the Sun and not the other way around and that it was not the center of the universe, was religious Catholic. And the important theory, current, which explains the origin of the universe, the Big Bang, is authored by the Belgian Father, Georges Lemaître.  

It is merely an illusion to think that man can come to the truth through science. The important German philosopher Kant stated that "man is not capable of absolute knowledge... he does not know the object as it is in itself, as a thing in itself, but only as it manifests itself, it appears, that is, as a phenomenon" (KRASTANOV, 2013, P.48). It is also relevant to say that science has a limit. "This limit is not what science says, but what science does not say and can never say. Scientific knowledge is partial, while it does not reach deep existence, but superficial existence" (MORRA, 2004, p.47). 

There is no incompatibility between science and faith. It is a blessing in the service of humanity that helps to understand, in part, the world and improve living conditions in it. But the fallen, arrogant, and conceited mind can use it for evil and as a platform to deny God. For them, however, is the word that God spoke to Job: "Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. 'Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions?... Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep? Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the Earth? Tell me, if you know all this? (Job 38:3,4,5,16,18).

Antônio Maia – M.Div.

Copyright

KRASTANOV, Stefan Vasilev. Metafísica II. Batatais: Claretiano, 2013.

MORRA, Gianfranco. Filosofia Para Todos. São Paulo: Paulus, 2004.