ORIGINAL RESEARCH |
https://doi.org/10.5005/jp-journals-11005-0078 |
Scientific and Religious Cognition: Conflict and/or Complementarity?
Catholic University of Croatia, Zagreb, Croatia
Corresponding Author: Stipe Kutleša, Catholic University of Croatia, Zagreb, Croatia, Phone: +385 91 5069544, e-mail: stipekutlesa1@gmail.com
Received: 03 April 2024; Accepted: 15 May 2024; Published on: 17 July 2024
ABSTRACT
Science, philosophy, and religion are ways of relating to the world and cognition of the world. Faith and science are interconnected. In this paper, theology and mathematics are compared. The role of facts in science is emphasized, and in this connection, the problem of inductive cognition is discussed, as well as a critical attitude toward the scientific method. In addition to the empirical and inductive way of cognition, there are other ways of cognition (deductive–axiomatic, intuitive, etc.). There are also elements of faith in science. The question is whether there is a place for God in science. In the end, the question arises as to how much religion, the Church, and science were in conflict, whether their conflict is of an essential nature or just a peripheral phenomenon, and who is actually hindering the development of science.
Keywords: Complementarity, Conflict, Dogma, Mathematics, Philosophy, (Pseudo)religion, Science, Scientism, Theology
How to cite this article: Kutleša S. Scientific and Religious Cognition: Conflict and/or Complementarity? Sci Arts Relig 2024;3(3–4):90–97.
Source of support: Nil
Conflict of interest: None
INTRODUCTION: BACONIAN IDEAL AND GOAL OF SCIENCE: THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD AS A RECIPE FOR KNOWLEDGE
When talking about science today, it is usually thought that the meaning and ultimate goal of science is to improve the standard of living by means of technical achievements. In the new age, technique and technology are associated with the progress of science. It is less and less thought that science primarily serves the knowledge of the world rather than that it has a practical purpose to benefit man. The modern Baconian thesis, which is increasingly present in today’s understanding of science, is that the main goal of science is not only to know the world but to manage and govern it on the basis of this knowledge, that is, the goal is to apply scientific knowledge practically.1 Today, science is thought of and spoken of as one of the most reliable ways of cognition. The power of science lies in its knowledge of the laws that govern nature, that is, in the world that surrounds us, and their application of technical inventions.
Science is the study of the material world and the laws by which it functions. At the same time, science uses the so-called ”scientific method,” that is, it gets its conclusions by using reason based on experience and sensory facts obtained by observation, measurement, and experimentation. It is a very widespread opinion that scientific truth is reached by starting from a multitude of empirical data that, on the basis of an inductive process of inference from individual things, a general proposition is reached, that is, a hypothesis is formulated that is proven and thus a scientific theory is reached, and this theory becomes the ”truth.” It seems as if there is a ”recipe” for discovering the truth, and that is the scientific method. It is, however, one of the myths or dogmas in science. There are no facts that would be outside some theoretical framework. On the basis of induction, it is logically impossible to reach a final and certain truth. The truth obtained in this way is only more or less probable, not necessarily certain. Science, therefore, is not as exact as it is often said to be. Instead of the empirical-inductive way of cognition in science, the so-called method of deduction, the creative act of a scientist, etc., are just as important, if not more important. Mathematics, as a science, is a model of certain knowledge, but it is not based on empirical facts and even less on an experiment. It represents an axiomatic-deductive system of cognition and starts from unquestionably true statements that mathematicians call axioms, from which all other statements, called theorems, are derived in a deductive manner by correct rational reasoning.2 Epistemologically speaking, the statements obtained in this way are absolutely true, and they do not change during history; the statements of real sciences are only current truths, so it is very likely that today’s scientific truths will be replaced by new truths, just as the truths of past science are replaced by the truths of today’s science.
Positivist scientists and philosophers were convinced that the empirical-inductive way of knowing would lead to a better and better understanding of the world and that science would, at some point, come to possess the absolute truth. The greatest scientists of the 20th century pointed out that this is a completely wrong way of thinking. Albert Einstein pointed out that ”the truly great advances in our understanding of nature originated in a manner almost diametrically opposed to induction... Every learned man knows that the greatest successes in the knowledge of nature... have come about in that way and that their foundations have an essentially hypothetical character.”5
He says: ”Our experience hitherto justifies us in believing that nature is the realization of the simplest conceivable mathematical ideas... I am convinced that purely mathematical construction enables us to find those concepts and those lawlike connections between them that provide the key to the understanding of natural phenomena. Useful mathematical concepts may well be suggested by experience, but in no way can they be derived from it. Experience naturally remains the sole criterion of the usefulness of a mathematical construction for physics. But the actual creative principle lies in mathematics.”5 To discover the principles themselves, there is no method that can be learned that would enable us to discover the principles. Einstein sees the task of physics in the search for general laws ”from which a picture of the world can be obtained by pure deduction.”5 The scientist must ”be content with describing the simplest events that can be accessible to our experience; all experiences of a more complex order are beyond the power of the human spirit...”5 If a scientific theory claimed that it could explain everything once and for all, then it would certainly not be a scientific theory but an ideology.
Many philosophers and scientists themselves have noticed that inductive knowledge does not have the status of certain but only probable truth. Today’s prevailing belief that knowledge in science moves from facts to their generalization up to scientific theory is very simplistic and questionable. William Whewell and Paul Feyerabend believed that the matter can be reversed, that is, it can be said that the starting point in scientific knowledge is not facts but theories and that theories do not depend on facts; on the contrary, facts depend on theories.5
PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE, FAITH, THEOLOGY, AND MATHEMATICS
However, philosophy has always sought to understand the external natural world as well as the internal world of man, his relationship with others, and his behavior and actions in the world. It is known that philosophy and science grew from the same root, or otherwise, science was a part of philosophy and remained associated with it for a long time. Therefore, it is not at all strange that the most prominent philosophers of the past were also top scientists. Let’s mention just a few of them: Albert the Great, Nicholas of Cusa, René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Isaac Newton, Leonhard Euler, Ruđer Bošković, Pierrere Simon de Laplace, Carl Friedrich Gauss, and others. In the 19th and 20th centuries, some scientists were also philosophers, or at least inclined to philosophical reflection, such as Ernst Mach, Henry Poincaré, Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, and others. All of them, namely, were interested in the philosophy of nature (or as it was called philosophia naturalis for a long time), which was synonymous with physics as the science of nature in the broadest sense of the word.
After the new ages, science somehow appropriated the objective research of nature to itself, while philosophy was left with all other traditional but also some new areas of reality. Without going neither into the differences or into some similarities between philosophy and science, let’s say just one thing: they have in common that they try to understand the world on the basis of a rational, logical approach, and science additionally in an empirical way of observing reality. Unlike science, philosophy also talks about other things that go beyond everyday experience. That is why sometimes the vocabulary used in philosophy is quite unusual and not completely understandable in everyday use. Among other things, philosophy talks about God as a transcendent being, a being that goes beyond our experience and knowledge. This is still not about religiosity, that is, about the religious understanding of God. Atheist and agnostic philosophers also talk about God, but they don’t always have to name and call him that way. They label it as the highest that can exist, as One, as the Absolute, as Being, Transcendence, etc., which are typical philosophical terms that do not mean much to the average person. In doing so, philosophers do not necessarily have to think of the God of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, or the God of any religion. Therefore, it is often said that it is necessary to distinguish between the God of philosophers and the God of faith or the God of believers.6-8
However, is there anything that goes beyond our perception and the power of our knowledge? Does God exist? What is faith? How do we imagine, experience, and know God? Do we believe, what do we believe, and how do we believe? Each of us has our own understanding and experience of faith. For some, the only thing that exists is this visible and sensible, material world, that is, what can be registered by the senses. Science is often cited as proof of this. What is faith in God? Does ”believing” mean only considering the statements of a religion to be true? In the Christian sense, ”to believe” means more than that, that is, to believe in someone, that is, in God as a personal being to whom a person surrenders in the literal sense of the word. Such faith is, above all, a personal act in which a person transcends himself by surrendering to another in whom he has absolute trust. That act is not completely rational. He is not even irrational; he is suprarational. Faith is, therefore, something ex-centric because the one who believes deprives himself of being the center of everything; a true believer, therefore, cannot be egocentric and selfish, and one who is only focused on himself cannot be a true believer either.9
Theology, as a speech or science about God, derives its knowledge about the supernatural source and the beginning of everything on the basis of natural abilities, that is, from reason, and to that extent, theology and religion should differ. It is also necessary to distinguish faith from religion. Put simply, faith is the internal relationship of man toward a transcendent being, that is, God, and religions are systems, institutions, and historical facts through which the relationship of communities toward the divine is manifested. While philosophy and theology try to know God in a natural way, that is, with the natural power of reason, faith tries to know him in a supernatural way. There is, therefore, also a kind of religious knowledge that can be intuitive and supernatural knowledge.
Does theology belong to some kind of science? The answer depends on who is answering the question about theology: a believer or an unbeliever. For believers, theology would be the science of God, but for nonbelievers, it would not be because, if God does not exist, then it would be talking about something that does not exist, and that would be meaningless. While the subject of science is some existence that is self-evident, namely nature, man, society, etc., to that extent, theology may have problems; some will not accept even the very object, content with which it primarily deals, that is, God. If there is no God, then theology as a science is meaningless, that is, impossible. But if there is a God and if God is everything, being itself, then theology is not only possible but is also the highest science. Atheists object that theology is not a science. To better understand the matter, let’s compare another science, namely mathematics, with theology.10
No one will question that mathematics is the most rigorous and reliable of all sciences. What kind of science is that? What creatures or objects does it deal with? The vast majority of both the less educated and the vast majority of highly educated academic citizens will say without much thought that mathematics is a natural science. The unexpected answer is that it is not a natural science. Why is it not a natural science? As it doesn’t deal with anything natural, it doesn’t deal with natural beings. The subjects of mathematics are not natural beings but numbers, geometric objects, etc., that is, abstract forms or objects that are not tangible, visible, etc., that is, not accessible to the senses. Some will defend their belief by saying that mathematics is applicable to the natural sciences and that they can hardly function without mathematics, especially in modern science. That is true. One could, however, ask unusual and too many absurd questions. That is why mathematics should not be a social science; it can also be applied to some social processes and behaviors. Psychology, sociology, and economics use mathematics to some extent; that is, mathematics is applicable to these social sciences and humanities. The application of mathematics to the natural or social sciences does not mean that mathematics is either a natural or a social science. Let’s go back to the question about the real existence of mathematical objects. Therefore, they do not exist either in nature or in society, nor can they be perceived by the senses. Isn’t theology in a similar position as mathematics? Its object, that is, God, is not accessible to the senses. John the Evangelist says that no one has ever seen God (Jn 1,18). Why, then, is mathematics as a science not at all questionable to anyone, while theology is to some people?
GOD, FAITH, AND SCIENCE: LIMITS AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF SCIENCE AND SCIENTISM
The question that can be asked is whether science can know God. If one accepts the most common definition of science, according to which only what is accessible to our senses and our human experience can be known, then the question arises whether science has anything to do with God. If there has not, then the further question is why some philosophers and scientists (in the past but also today) try to prove that there is no God. When they speak about God, they do not speak as scientists, although they hide behind their scientific authority, but speak as nonscientists (believers, ideologues, etc.).
Science, namely, talks about how the world works and how knowledge is gained about it, but it does not answer the question of ”why” things are the way they are. These are questions of meaning and purpose. Why is the world exactly the way it is, and why are natural laws exactly the way they are? Science cannot answer these questions. It answers the question ”how,” that is, how natural processes take place. So, for example, the theory of evolution describes how the living world developed, but nothing can say why it developed that way, nor does it have anything, for example, with the question of whether there is a God or not. The question ”why” is answered by philosophy, theology, religion, not science.
Even in purely scientific questions, there are some important internal limitations of science. Can we be completely sure that, for example, some scientific theory is absolutely true and that it will always be true? It is known in the history of science that there can be two theories about a phenomenon or a set of phenomena that explain the phenomenon, but neither one nor the other answers the question of whether it really is in reality as predicted by these theories. The expected requirement that any scientific theory should fulfill is that its claims agree with reality. If they do not agree, the theory is not acceptable. And what if we still don’t know if the theory agrees with reality? There have been such cases in the history of science. The most famous dispute is about geocentrism and heliocentrism, or the later dispute about the nature of light, or today about the big bang theory, etc. At a certain time or period, one cannot know the answer to which theory is true. It is the so-called issue of realism and instrumentalism (anti-realism) in science.5
However, science develops and replaces its current knowledge and theories with new knowledge and theories. Thus, for example, the so-called classical science, which developed from the 16th to the end of the 19th century, was based on the belief in the unlimited power of science. Scientific optimism consisted in the assertion that over time, science will reach all possible knowledge and that, thus, every other knowledge will be unnecessary. Religion will also disappear under the pressure of science. Some ideologies, such as the Marxist–materialist ideology, have made similar claims. There is also a kind of scientific ideology or scientific dogmatism called scientism. It believes exactly what was said, that is, that all knowledge is reserved for science. According to scientism, there are actually no other types of knowledge.
What was the scientific dogma about the unlimited power of science based on? In the mechanistic picture of the world, according to which the world (including man) is similar to a perfect machine in which everything takes place according to strict deterministic laws, by which it is possible to accurately predict and determine both the past and the future of the world and man. The only question is that all these laws are discovered, and science will certainly do that, and then there will be no secrets or limits to human knowledge. All questions will be answered. This is the naive scientific optimism of the 19th century. Is there a place for faith in God in such a world of science? There is none because everything can be strictly scientifically predicted and calculated, and God is unnecessary because deterministic science has taken his place. This kind of science was the basis of the enlightenment, Marxist, and materialistic worldview. Scientific determinism thus became the main paradigm or scientific picture of the world. The consistent conclusion was that faith is incompatible with science and that their conflict is necessary. If science is advanced, which no one doubts, then faith and every religion must be backward and conservative. However, science itself in the 20th century showed that the deterministic picture of the world is wrong: it is wrong both in the area of the microworld, that is, at the level of atomic and subatomic events, but also in the area of the macroworld where it was assumed that the deterministic worldview remained preserved. At the atomic level, science cannot and will never be able to fully know or predict the future states of a system, and the principle that limits this is called Heisenberg’s uncertainty relations. What quantum theory can do is give a statistical probability for a multitude of objects in the microworld or particles, but not for an individual particle. As all processes in nature and in the human body are based on the interaction between particles at the microscopic atomic and subatomic level, it will never be possible to predict the future states and behaviors of an individual human being. The determinism of classical science in the macroscopic area is limited by the theory of deterministic chaos, created in the second half of the 20th century, which studies nonlinear phenomena that exist to the greatest extent in nature and in living organisms. Science is thus fundamentally limited in its knowledge. Scientists are becoming more and more aware of this. Regarding this scientific optimism, Einstein said that it is possible that tomorrow, we will know a little more than we know today but that we will never know the real nature of things. And Ruđer Bošković’s also said that what we know is little, and what we don’t know is immeasurable.
The question that arises is why science and scientific theory cannot be comprehensive. Scientists are convinced that by studying parts, one can learn about more complex systems and even the whole. It is believed that a more complex system is nothing but a mechanical assembly of its constituent parts, for which the same laws apply as for a more complex system. When attention is drawn only to parts of the system and on the basis of that, a conclusion is drawn to the whole; then it is called reductionism. Accordingly, knowledge of the basic laws of physics would enable the explanation of all chemical and biological phenomena, as well as questions of consciousness, soul, freedom, religion, etc. This is another fallacy of mechanistic science that was rejected by the modern science of the 20th century, which showed that new properties of the system appear at higher levels that cannot be explained by the laws that apply to lower levels (emergence theory).11 The whole, therefore, is not a mechanical assembly of parts but also has other properties that the parts do not have. For example, table salt is salty, and its components, sodium and chlorine, do not have salty properties. Things are even more complicated when you go further to consciousness, such as problems of soul and body, etc. By rejecting reductionism, you also reject the scientific belief that science will be able to provide answers to all the important questions of man and the world.
Everyone agrees, except for supporters of scientism, materialists, and empiricists, that science does not encompass all of reality (the realm of the spirit, the question of God, etc., cannot be covered by science). Science is neither the only, nor perhaps the best, way of arriving at the truth. Therefore, it cannot answer the questions of meaning; science answers the question of how the world and things in it work, but it does not answer why the world exists. These questions and answers are the subjects of philosophy, theology, and religion. Natural science cannot prove God because it goes beyond its scope. God is above science, and scientific criteria cannot apply to his existence or nonexistence. Only if science were equal to God or above God then scientific criteria could be applied to him. It is philosophically unsustainable for anything to be above God, not even science; God is something supreme. And for the supreme thing (God), different laws can apply to it than to nature. Natural science deals exclusively with natural laws, and they are also God’s laws that apply to nature. But God’s laws are not exhausted in natural laws. That’s why miracles are not in any contradiction with science. Miracles are not irrational but a suprarational reality. They simply go beyond natural laws, not oppose them. The existence of supernatural laws does not contradict science at all, but it contradicts those who advocate scientism and who falsify the meaning and role of science.
The relationship between religion and science, faith and reason, is particularly relevant today. A superficial understanding of this relationship still prevails; the more knowledge there is, the less faith there is, and vice versa. Some are convinced that the increase in knowledge and the progress of science will make religion meaningless and superfluous and that religion will disappear and be replaced by science. It could be concluded from this that religion was and is now an obstacle to the development of science. Some believers also think so. Some believe that the one who believes more is less reasonable, even if he is unreasonable and irrational, so an American atheist scientist advises believers, when they enter the Church for mass, to leave their reason in front of the Church.12 This is a complete misunderstanding of faith and an insult to believers. The German Nobel laureate physicist Max Born once said: ”Those who say that the study of science makes a man an atheist must be rather silly.”13 Faith, however, is not a blind and uncritical acceptance of something about which nothing is known. Knowledge is an integral part of faith, without which faith would be credulity and superstition. The knowledge component in faith is essential for the believer who can never and must not give up reason and critical investigation of reality.
An unusual question could be asked: is there faith in science? Although many will say that there is no faith in science, it is based only on evidence, but things are not that simple. Scientists accept some assumptions that cannot be scientifically proven but must be believed. Thus, for example, scientists are convinced that the object of study of natural science is some objectively existing world in which there is some order, not disorder. Without this unproven but only assumed belief, science could not even exist. It studies those phenomena that take place according to some immutable discovered or as yet undiscovered laws called natural laws. No one doubts them, even when they are not known to us. Albert Einstein once said, ”that ultimately, belief in the existence of fundamental overarching laws also rests on a kind of faith... Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that some spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe, one that is vastly superior to that of man... The pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special kind, which differs essentially from the religiosity of more naive people.”5 Even today, when science is most developed, religion has not disappeared. In the so-called era of science, faith also exists.14
The next assumption, which is again not scientific but philosophical, is that the human mind has the ability to know such an ordered world. These claims are not scientific in themselves but a priori and metaphysical. Science rests on these and some other beliefs or ”dogmas” without the scientists themselves being aware of the dogmatic character of science, which dogmatism they very easily attribute to religion and theology. All scientists are essentially believers; they just don’t realize it or don’t want to admit it. Atheism is just a kind of faith, and atheists are really great believers because they strongly believe in the nonexistence of God, perhaps even more than believers believe in his existence. But neither of them can prove it scientifically. If science could scientifically prove God, then science would be above him. However, God, viewed both philosophically and theologically, is above everything and above all science because, according to one of the philosophical definitions, he is something above which nothing else can be thought nor can anything else exist.
CONFLICT OR COOPERATION
The Origin of Western Science: Science is (not) the Cause of Atheism
Therefore, all the theoretical objections of atheistic scientists that faith, religion, and the Church prevent the development of science must fall away. On the contrary, science as we know it today arose from Christianity to develop within the Western Christian cultural circle; it is the heritage of Christianity.13,15 Ancient Greek non-Christian philosophers and scientists became known to Europe thanks to medieval Christian church schools and universities where not only Christian theologians and philosophers were studied, but above all, pre-Christian ones. The European Christian Middle Ages is a historical period in which order prevails, and the approach to the world is rationalistic because everything is explained using reason. The sources of such rationalistic thinking should be sought in scholastic logic and theology. God created an ordered, not unordered, world, and the discovery of its lawfulness on the basis of reason is the beginning of the investigation of nature. Medieval Christianity skillfully connected the ancient Greek way of thinking and the pragmatism of Roman civilization. The best expression of this is Saint Benedict, the patron saint of Europe and Gregory the Great, and the Benedictine monasteries where spirituality and the acquisition of knowledge (science), as well as practical work (ora et labora–pray and work), were nurtured. From this, already in the Middle Ages and at the beginning of the new century, discoveries and inventions have stimulated the development of science. All these are elements that were important for the creation and development of science, and they arose from the Christian way of thinking and Christian mentality. This type of thinking is characteristic of science and is a mark of the European spirit. Only in such a spiritual atmosphere was the emergence and development of science possible. Therefore, it is no wonder that science as we know it today developed in European Christian culture and not in other non-European cultures. If the Christian Middle Ages is the ”Dark Middle Ages,” as the enlighteners completely wrongly called it, and this expression is still heard today, then science, as a product of that ”darkness,” could be called ”dark science,” which would also be completely wrong.
It is unquestionable that there are many Christian scientists who have contributed to the development of science.7 Albert the Great (from the 13th century) is considered the first natural scientist. Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa contributed significantly to natural philosophy. At the pinnacle of world science in the middle of the 16th century was the Polish Catholic priest Nicholas Copernicus, whose new world system Pope Clement VII enthusiastically accepted, and Copernicus’ work on the heliocentric system was dedicated to Pope Paul III. In the same 16th century, Pope Gregory XIII consulted not only with the Catholics but also with other most famous scientists of the time in connection with the proposal regarding the reform of the calendar. Based on scientific and not religious reasons, the old Julian calendar was replaced by the new Gregorian calendar. The founding of the first observatories and the opening of libraries such as the Vatican Observatory are works of the popes. Some of the great scientists and philosophers who were believers in Christianity were Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Robert Boyle, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. One of the greatest scientists in general, the English physicist Isaac Newton, was a great believer, and he considered that his greatest achievements were the theological interpretation of the Bible. The Croatian scientist and philosopher from the 18th century, Ruđer Bošković, a Jesuit, based his theory of forces and the structure of matter, which is more relevant today than in his time, on faith in God, who created exactly this kind of world that is man-sized. In the 20th century, the same idea was presented by representatives of the so-called anthropic principle, who believe that all natural laws are adapted to man. Other leading scientists in the 19th and 20th centuries were also believers, such as Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, and many others today. It is little known that the Catholic priest Gregor Mendel laid the foundations of modern genetics with his laws of inheritance. Today, the very popular theory of the Big Bang Big Bang or the theory of the origin of the universe was put forward by the Catholic priest George Lemaitre in 1927. It is possible that he was motivated by the religious view that the universe did not last forever but that it was created at some point and began to expand. After that, Einstein became a proponent of Lemaitre’s hypothesis about the expansion of the universe.
The question remains: would real scientists have to be atheists, as today's supporters of scientism claim? If that were the case, then we would have to forget almost the entire history of science. Namely, the greatest scientists in history were religious people, mostly Christians. So, for example, Einstein said: ”Those whose acquaintance with scientific research is derived chiefly from its practical results easily develop a completely false notion of the mentality of the men who, surrounded by a skeptical world, have shown the way to kindred spirits scattered wide through the world and through the centuries. Only one who has devoted his life to similar ends can have a vivid realization of what has inspired these men and given them the strength to remain true to their purpose in spite of countless failures. It is a cosmic religious feeling that gives a man such strength. A contemporary has said, not unjustly, that in this materialistic age of ours, the serious scientific workers are the only profoundly religious people... I belong to the most deeply religious people... The situation could be expressed in an image: Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”5 According to Werner Heisenberg, science and religion can do without each other, but man cannot do without one and the other. Niels Bohr said that ”religion contributes to the harmonization of the life of the community,” and Max Planck that ”between religion and natural science, we do not find any contradictions, but exactly complete agreement in decisive points. Religion and natural science are not mutually exclusive,... but complement each other and condition each other.”16
Therefore, atheism is not a consequence of the progress of science and technology, acceptance of science, and a scientific view of the world, but something completely different. This is recognized by some top atheist scientists. Religious scientists think that faith is a combination of reason and revelation. That’s why Christian theology (and faith) is thinking in the spirit, not just thinking with the mind. Just as in the historical course of science, new scientific theories surpass old ones by discovering new areas of reality and new truths, so faith surpasses science by discovering the possibility of supernatural reality and a different kind of legality. This is the reason that one can be a believer and at the same time engage in science and not see any contradiction in that. However, it would be more accurate to say that science leads to faith and religiosity rather than to atheism.
Many more examples could be listed that would show that neither the Church nor Christianity hindered the development of science. Science builds on itself, revises itself, or carries out the so-called scientific revolutions and thus advances, arriving at new truths.
The Case of Galileo
Where, then, do the ideas about the centuries-old conflict between ”advanced” science and backward, ”conservative” faith come from? These are inventions of the enlightenment of the 18th century, Marxism, communism, scientism and atheism, and then other forms of later ideologies that were based on atheism and materialism. With a lot of ideological elements, probably the most famous story about the conflict between science and the Church, first of all, the Catholic Church, and then between science and Christianity was created, which expanded to the general claim about the conflict between science and every faith and religion, which is the ”case of Galileo Galilei.” The enlightenment interpretation of Galilei as a victim of science was a true forgery.17 Without going into the details of the ”Galilei case,” it is still necessary to recall the most important elements in that case in order to correct the injustice of a completely wrong and malicious interpretation. In short, Galileo had no scientific evidence for his stubborn insistence on the Copernican system, and he could not have had it at that time. Undoubted scientific evidence for the motion of the Earth around the Sun dates back to 1838, that is, more than two centuries after Galileo claimed the motion of the Earth. That is why the German physicist, Nobel laureate Werner Heisenberg, quite rightly said that the decision of the Inquisition from 1616 to condemn Galilei ”can be justified.”5
The ”Galilei case” was not a conflict between science and Christianity, or even science and the Church, but above all, a combination of unfortunate personal human circumstances and the ecclesiastical and political circumstances in Europe at the time. Protestants believed that the ecclesiastical teaching of the Catholic Church was not authoritative in the interpretation of the Bible. In the absence of scientific arguments, Galilei resorted to theological arguments and thus interfered in the interpretation of the Bible. The Catholic Church could hardly allow the protestant objection that a Catholic layman was interfering in the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, so it acted by judging Galilei, which was certainly a mistake of the Church at that time, which was also recognized by Pope John Paul II. In addition, Galilei was not the only one who represented science at that time. There were also Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe, and others who disagreed with Galileo. Therefore, the Church was not in conflict with science. The myth that was created about him is a pure falsification: it is not true that the Inquisition tortured him, it is not true that he died as a prisoner and a martyr for science, it is not true that he said: ”It still moves” (Eppur si muove), etc. In addition, Galileo remained a good Catholic until the end of his life.
In most other cases, the conflict between science and religion did not exist either. Einstein said that in the last centuries ”it was widely held that there was an unreconcilable conflict between knowledge and belief. The opinion prevailed among advanced minds that it was time that belief should be replaced increasingly by knowledge. Any man with a sense of sophistication will quickly see how one-sided this view is.”5
SCIENTIFIC DOGMATISM: MEDICINE IS A DOGMATIC PROFESSION
Even though the science of the 20th century with the quantum theory, the theory of relativity, and the theory of complex systems—the theory of deterministic chaos, finally overthrew scientism and determinism both in the area of the microworld and in the area of the macroworld, there are still so-called ”new atheists” and scientists who tend to believe that science possesses all knowledge. When science closes in on itself, dogmatism can be more dangerous than religious dogmatism. Scientists are becoming more and more aware of the many examples that show that science is limited in its knowledge. And scientists, who can be distinguished researchers in their narrow fields of research, do not have to be competent in matters of religion. Moreover, they do not have to be more competent than the average person. Therefore, in order for a serious scientist to engage in a public debate on the relationship between science and religion, he would have to be well-versed in religion, theology, and philosophy. Most of today’s scientists have little or no knowledge of these areas.
In the end, the question can be asked: who actually hinders the freedom of scientific research and scientific knowledge? When theses about the backwardness, intolerance, and hostility of the Church toward advanced science are persistently spread, some cases are highlighted in order to ”prove” this claim. At the same time, it is completely silent about some other cases in science. Let us cite a few historical cases. Quantum theory and theory of relativity, created at the beginning of the 20th century, did not support the materialistic picture of the world, so for a time, they were banned and persecuted in the former communist and Bolshevik Soviet Union as dangerous for the ideological regime. Mendelian genetics was also persecuted between 1920 and 1961, and the main ideological persecutor was the atheistic scientist Trofim Lysenko, director of the Institute of Genetics of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Many who advocated Mendel’s theory of inheritance in the field of genetics were physically liquidated or, at best, ended up in the gulags. The situation was similar in countries that were under the political and ideological influence of the Soviet Union. All this confirms not that religion is incompatible with science but that atheism is actually incompatible with science. In principle, the situation is not much different in the so-called democratic West in the 21st century. The scientific tolerance of some Western ”democrats” is evidenced by the fact that Pope Benedict XVI was prevented from holding the inaugural lecture, which was scheduled for 17th January 2008, at the once papal, now state Roman University La Sapienza (which means wisdom) because several dozen teachers, among several thousands of them who teach at that university, signed a petition in which they want to prevent the pope’s lecture at the university. The reason for this was Ratzinger’s lecture in Parma in 1990, in which he only quoted the aforementioned Austrian philosopher of science, Paul Feyerabend, who claimed that in Galileo’s time, the Church was more faithful to science than Galileo himself and that the process against Galileo was reasonable and justified. Contemporary examples in science show the penchant of corrupt scientists for inquisitional methods.18
The most convincing example of a dogmatized profession is the so-called medical dogmatism and scientism. Unfortunately, medicine today is an extremely dogmatic discipline, judging by the large number of medical ”dogmatics” and the too few who dare to publicly say that they think otherwise. One can rightly ask the question: what kind of scientists are they who do not allow a fight against every dogma? Scientists should encourage this struggle and fight zealously against dogmas in science. However, in medicine, vaccination and COVID-19 vaccines have become dogma that should not be touched; it must not be thought of as anything other than a dogma, much less publicly questioned. You have to believe in dogma. Thus, medical dogmatism became a kind of pseudoreligion (false religion), more precisely, ”opium” for physicians. He is simply a lie because he portrays himself as working for the benefit of man and humanity. That is why it could become a dogma and a pseudoreligion for superficial and uncritical people. However, medicine, according to prominent medical experts, is not a science; it only uses the results of other sciences. The fact that medicine is not a science is not a value judgment. Medicine was originally a Hippocratic responsible skill, which in our time has metamorphosed into its opposite. That profession mostly violates the Hippocratic Oath and all positive laws. The majority of its representatives no longer deserve dignity and respect. Those few still strive to keep medicine a credible profession. By agreeing to censorship, scientific and medical dogmatism hinders the development of science.
CONCLUSION
The consideration of the relationship between religion, philosophy, and science and knowledge in them shows that the greatest scientists in the history of science did not have problems with science and belief in God, nor did their faith hinder them from advancing science. Harmonization and reconciliation of science and religion are primarily the result of a worldview and ideological approach. Therefore, an objective study of the relationship between science and religion requires thorough knowledge of science, philosophy, theology, faith, and religion.
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