Crisis of Faith in Science

The Crisis of the Faith in Science

The resistance of creation to its manipulation by men has become a new factor in the intellectual situation in the last decade. It is impossible to evade the question of the limits of science and of the criteria it must follow. The change in the way in which the case of Galileo is evaluated seems to me characteristic of the change of climate. This event, to which little attention was paid in the seventeenth century, was elevated in the following century to nothing less than the my of the Enlightenment: Galileo appears as the victim of the medieval obscurantism in which the Church persists. Good and evil stand in a distinct confrontation: on the one side, we find the Inquisition as the power of superstition, as the opponent of freedom and knowledge; on the other side stand the natural sciences, represented by Galileo, as the power of progress and of the liberation of man from the fetters of ignorance that kept him powerless vis-à-vis nature. The star of the modern period arises over the darkness of the Middle Ages.

Strangely enough, Ernst Bloch with his romantic Marxism was one of the first to oppose this myth openly and to offer a new interpretation of the events. For him, the heliocentric world-system, just like the geocentric system, rests on unprovable presuppositions, including above all the supposition of motionless space, which has since been shattered by the theory of relativity. He states:

Consequently, since an empty motionless space no longer exists, no movement toward it occurs, but merely a relative movement of bodies toward one another, the determination of which depends on the choice made of the body that is to be taken to be at rest. Thus, if it were not for the fact that the complexity of the calculations involved makes this appear infeasible, the earth could continue to be taken as stable and the sun as moving. [E. Bloch, Das Prinzip Hoffnung (frankfurt am Main, 1959), 920]

According to this view, the advantage of the heliocentric system over the geocentric does not consist in a greater degree of objective truth but merely in an easier calculability for us. Up to this point Bloch is doing no more than expressing the insight of the modern natural sciences; but the conclusion he derives from this now is astonishing:

Since the relativity of the motion is beyond doubt, an older man-centered Christian reference system does not indeed have the right to involve itself in the astronomical calculations and their heliocentric simplification; but it does have its own methodological right to hold fast to the earth as far as the question of the importance of mass is concerned and to impart an ordered structure to the world around what happens and has happened on the earth. [Bloch, 920f.]

The two methodological spheres are clearly distinguished from one another here, and the rights, as well as the limitations, of each are acknowledged. But the summary of the skeptical agnostic philosopher P. Feyerabend sounds much more aggressive when he writes:

The Church at the time of Galileo kept much more closely to reason than did Galileo himself, and she took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo's teaching too. Her verdict against Galileo was rational and just, and the revision of his verdict can be justified only on grounds of what is politically opportune. [P. Feyerabend, Wider den Methodenzwang (Against Method) (Frankfurt am Main, 1976, 1983), 206.]

C. F. von Weizäcker (to take one example) goes even one step farther in considering the prictical effects when he sees a "perfectly straight path" leading from Galileo to the the atomic bomb. To my surprise, when I was interviewed recently about the case of Galileo, I was not asked (for instance) why the church had presumed to hinder the knowledge of the natural sciences but, quite to the contrary, why the Church had not taken up a clearer position against the disasters that were bound to result when Galileo opened Pandora's box. It would be foolish to construct an impulsive apologetic on the basis of such views; faith does not grow out of resentment and skepticism with respect to rationality, but only out of a fundamental affirmation and a spacious reasonableness; we shall come back to this point. I mention all this only as a symptomatic case that permits us to see how deep the self-doubt of the modern age, of science and of technology goes today.

—Then-Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, A Turning Point for Europe, pg. 95-98 (Cf. "Ratzinger's 1990 remarks on Galileo")

Academic Freedom

Many still believe today, due to a nineteenth century myth that the Church is at war with science, "that the uncritical acceptance of religious doctrine not only inhibits, but even destroys the life of intelligence," yet

inasmuch as this conception of intellectual and academic freedom is based on the principle of free inquiry—i.e. the position that every doctrine is subject to critical examination and possible rejection—it is suitable (and hardly unfair) to examine critically the general principle itself. If it claims to be a dogma, the only dogma immune to criticism, by what right does it claim its exemption from the general principle? Or, on the other hand, if it too is open to question, by what principle are we to justify our examination of it? Not by the principle of free inquiry, for it is presently under judgment and therefore in suspense. [...] A further difficulty is that the principle of free inquiry would be nullified by the achievement of its stated purpose. As long as a man is ignorant, it is consistent with his condition to remain open to both the affirmative and negative answers to the issue in question. But when and if he comes to know (which is the purpose of his investigation) the matter ceases to be doubtful to him, and his mind closes to the possibility that the opposite might be true. He is no longer free to doubt, except willfully. Thus by the assumed definition ignorance makes free, while knowledge enslaves. A reply to this objection might assume that knowledge is simply unattainable, inasmuch as all things are in all respects always changing, or inasmuch as our minds, not being omniscient, cannot reach the certain truth about anything. But this, as before, would base the principle of free inquiry on particular and controversial philosophical theories, which as a consequence would be immune to criticism under the principle.

—St. Thomas Aquinas College Founding Document: III. Academic Freedom

This mirrors the argument against the relativism of truth, and indeed many universities no longer consider science the pursuit of an absolute truth nor do they submit themselves to any absolute authority, except maybe the self-contradicting dogma of free inquiry and endless argument-forming. According to the notable historians of science David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers,

The notion that any serious Christian thinker would even have attempted to formulate a world view from the Bible alone is ludicrous. For example, contrary to popular belief (which White's [A History of the] Warfare [of Science with Theology in Christendom] has helped to shape), the church did not insist on a flat earth; there was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did not acknowledge its sphericity and even know its approximate circumference. [...] Galileo argued that God spoke through both scripture and the "book of nature," that the two could not truly conflict, and that in physical matters authority should rest with reason and sense. [...] Galileo never questioned the authority of scripture, merely the principles by which it was to be interpreted. [...] It was not a matter of Christianity waging war on science. All of the participants called themselves Christians, and all acknowledged biblical authority.

—Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 39.3:140-149 (9/1987)

Why did scientists submit themselves to an authority? They recognized that academic freedom is not the aimless and chaotic but directed and ordered pursuit of truth. This direction and order originates from the wisdom, laws, doctrines, and dogma of the Church, ultimately from the authoritative founder of the Church, Christ Himself, Who said "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. [...] And you shall know the truth: and the truth shall make you free." (John 14:6, 8:32).

These words contain both a fundamental requirement and a warning: the requirement of an honest relationship with regard to truth as a condition for authentic freedom, and the warning to avoid every kind of illusory freedom, every superficial unilateral freedom, every freedom that fails to enter into the whole truth about man and the world. Today also, even after two thousand years, we see Christ as the one who brings man freedom based on truth, frees man from what curtails, diminishes and as it were breaks off this freedom at its root, in man's soul, his heart and his conscience.

—Pope John Paul II Redemptor Hominis 12.

Points of Contact

There are points of contact between science and the Catholic faith, as Pope John Paul II's encyclical Fides et Ratio and these condemned propositions from Pope Pius IX's Syllabus of Errors show:

I. PANTHEISM, NATURALISM AND ABSOLUTE RATIONALISM

1. There exists no Supreme, all-wise, all-provident Divine Being, distinct from the universe, and God is identical with the nature of things, and is, therefore, subject to changes. In effect, God is produced in man and in the world, and all things are God and have the very substance of God, and God is one and the same thing with the world, and, therefore, spirit with matter, necessity with liberty, good with evil, justice with injustice. —Allocution "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1862.
2. All action of God upon man and the world is to be denied. —Ibid.
3. Human reason, without any reference whatsoever to God, is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood, and of good and evil; it is law to itself, and suffices, by its natural force, to secure the welfare of men and of nations. —Ibid.
4. All the truths of religion proceed from the innate strength of human reason; hence reason is the ultimate standard by which man can and ought to arrive at the knowledge of all truths of every kind. —Ibid. and Encyclical "Qui pluribus," Nov. 9, 1846, etc.
5. Divine revelation is imperfect, and therefore subject to a continual and indefinite progress, corresponding with the advancement of human reason. —Ibid.
6. The faith of Christ is in opposition to human reason and divine revelation not only is not useful, but is even hurtful to the perfection of man. —Ibid.
7. The prophecies and miracles set forth and recorded in the Sacred Scriptures are the fiction of poets, and the mysteries of the Christian faith the result of philosophical investigations. In the books of the Old and the New Testament there are contained mythical inventions, and Jesus Christ is Himself a myth.

II. MODERATE RATIONALISM

8. As human reason is placed on a level with religion itself, so theological must be treated in the same manner as philosophical sciences. —Allocution "Singulari quadam," Dec. 9, 1854.
9. All the dogmas of the Christian religion are indiscriminately the object of natural science or philosophy, and human reason, enlightened solely in an historical way, is able, by its own natural strength and principles, to attain to the true science of even the most abstruse dogmas; provided only that such dogmas be proposed to reason itself as its object. —Letters to the Archbishop of Munich, "Gravissimas inter," Dec. 11, 1862, and "Tuas libenter," Dec. 21, 1863.
10. As the philosopher is one thing, and philosophy another, so it is the right and duty of the philosopher to subject himself to the authority which he shall have proved to be true; but philosophy neither can nor ought to submit to any such authority. —Ibid., Dec. 11, 1862.
11. The Church not only ought never to pass judgment on philosophy, but ought to tolerate the errors of philosophy, leaving it to correct itself. —Ibid., Dec. 21, 1863.
12. The decrees of the Apostolic See and of the Roman congregations impede the true progress of science. —Ibid.
13. The method and principles by which the old scholastic doctors cultivated theology are no longer suitable to the demands of our times and to the progress of the sciences. —Ibid.
14. Philosophy is to be treated without taking any account of supernatural revelation. —Ibid.

Godless Human Reason and the One True Church

Pope Pius IX's encyclical Quanta Cura condemns "naturalism" or the "liberty of perdition," specifically paragraph 2 of section 3 which includes a condemnation of this:

liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way.

He continues by asserting it is not just religious freedom that is the problem but also the worship of human reason, which is something very prevalent at universities:

But, while they rashly affirm this, they do not think and consider that they are preaching "liberty of perdition;" and that "if human arguments are always allowed free room for discussion, there will never be wanting men who will dare to resist truth, and to trust in the flowing speech of human wisdom; whereas we know, from the very teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, how carefully Christian faith and wisdom should avoid this most injurious babbling."

His Syllabus of Errors, which accompanies the encyclical, condemns indifferentist and latitudinarian propositions which deny the absolute truthfulness of only the Catholic Church:

III. INDIFFERENTISM, LATITUDINARIANISM

15. Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true. —Allocution "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1862; Damnatio "Multiplices inter," June 10, 1851.
16. Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation, and arrive at eternal salvation. —Encyclical "Qui pluribus," Nov. 9, 1846.
17. Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ. —Encyclical "Quanto conficiamur," Aug. 10, 1863, etc.
18. Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion, in which form it is given to please God equally as in the Catholic Church. —Encyclical "Noscitis," Dec. 8, 1849.

However, Pope Pius IX's encyclical and Syllabus seem to contradict the Vatican II document Dignitatis Humanæ, which is subtitled in seeming direct contradiction to condemnations of "religious freedom" (i.e., "Declaration on Religious Freedom — On the Right of the Person and of Communities to Social and Civil Freedom in Matters Religious Promulgated by His Holiness Pope Paul VI on December 7, 1965"). Although one cannot deny the Vatican II council's authority, it seems that Dignitatis Humanæ advocates separation of Church and state, relativism, humanism (i.e., a trust in human reason without the Church and the Catholic faith as its guide), the inutility of the Church in salvation, and the subjection of the Church to state, among other things. Yet it does not. Its audience is the world, including non-Catholics; and its message is that the Church does not and will not force converts. Nevertheless, the Catholic faith is still the only true one (Dominus Iesus).