Dear Dr.Santosh Helekar,
Here are the quotations from the four authors whom you have recommended to
read.
*See Robert Pollack: "This notion that your faith can be buttressed by
evidence is the difference between science as a human enterprise,
a "faith," if you will, and other faiths, which depend on equally strong
certainty emerging from within, but not testable by evidence"....
**Cf.Mark Noll: "The element of faith is certainly present in both
scientific endeavor related to origin and also in relationship to God and
the world. But it's a different kind of faith...I actually think,
historically considered, that there is a strong theistic presupposition or
theistic faith in the doing of science. When scientists believe that their
minds are able to grasp some aspects of the reality of the material world,
that is a kind of faith. But it's a different sort of faith than what
religious believers exercise. Our other panelists, particularly Francisco
Ayala, spoke well, I think, of the different tasks of scientists and people
of faith. They're not contrasting, they're not contradictory, but they're
different tasks. And it's just simply appropriate to think of different
inputs, different procedures, different results from scientific enterprise
and from religion".
*See Francisco Ayala: "First, the way in which the word "faith" is used by
the person who poses the question is quite different in science and in
religious beliefs. All scientific constructs or so-called theories are
constructs of the mind. In that sense, we accept them just in terms of
whatever evidence we can gather in their favor or against them. In the case
of scientific theories, what we do is to formulate them in such a way that
they can be used to make predictions about the states of affairs in the real
world"..."In the case of faith, we are accepting revelation or teachings
that we do not expect to corroborate in an empirical way. We corroborate
them or accept them in terms of the implications they may have, the effects
they may have for our own personal life and the life of other individuals".
***See again Arthur Peacocke: "I would like to point out that I don't think
there is, first of all, a real contrast between religion and science in the
sense of one being faith and the other being reason. I think both can be
reasonable. And it's interesting that in science, one often refers to the
best explanation, and the best explanation then often involves postulating
the existence of something you would never observe or ever could observe".
*Again, Francisco Ayala: " The reasons for the emergence of the curiosity
that generates evidence in science are similar, I think, to the reasons that
allow the emergence of religious faith. That is, we are a species that must
give meaning to our surroundings. But these -- science and religious
faith -- are different tools that generate different results because they
start from different premises. No serious religious person, I think, is a
believer because of the proof they have from nature; they are believers
because of the certainty they have in their hearts". "We certainly cannot
observe the evolution of humans from non-human ancestors, since it happened
millions of years in the past. But we accept that, because that theory --
the theory of evolution with respect to the origin of humans and chimpanzees
from common ancestors -- leads to the predictions that if we were to compare
the genetic material of humans and chimpanzees, the DNA, that it will be
very similar".
"Nobody can observe the Earth going around the Sun, and yet we accept the
Copernican theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun. Nobody has
observed atoms and molecules, yet we accept the molecular composition of
matter. In both cases, it's because we have corroborated these theories by
many observations which concern predictions or consequences of the theories
themselves".
***Again Arthur Peacocke: "Can, in general, a scientist be religious? I
think they clearly can. There have been many eminent scientists through the
history of science who have been believers in God, and they vary from
cosmologists right through to psychologists, as well as biologists and
chemists. So science in general is a quest for understanding the natural
world. And for many people, their understanding of the natural world
involves asking why is it there at all, and why does it have any laws in the
way that it does? And that leads them to believe in God as Creator, a being
who gives existence to all that is. So with regard to the general point
about science, I don't see any problem".
Bye. No more discussion on this point.
Regards.
Fr.Ivo
