Ghost of Galileo
So, one thing that was kind of stirring just before Lent started (and that I continued to see during Lent) was this very stressful tension between science and religion. The way I see it, you’ve got 3 groups in this mess. On the one side, you’ve got the ultra-scientific (aka The Atheists). On the other side, you’ve got the ultra-Biblical (aka The Truly Christian). And in the middle you’ve got everybody else.
Really, though, this mess isn’t a new fight or new tension. It’s hang-over from the days of Galileo. The days where Galileo was able to amass a wealth of evidence that, indeed, the Earth was not the center of the universe. However, he was not able to demonstrate or disprove a number of theorems that said if the Earth were NOT the center of the universe, then we should be able to observe a number of phenomenon.
So Galileo had it half-right during his time – he was on the right track, he had enough evidence to demonstrate some level of skepticism against the prevailing theories, but he quite admittedly didn’t have all the evidence needed to disprove the prevailing theories. So, why did Galileo get in trouble? Well, essentially, because he wanted to. He wanted to force the Church to give assent to his theory that the earth was not the center of the universe. The Church had no real reason to do so. And it became demagoguery from there on out, and, of course, the person with the bigger stick wins in demagoguery.
Now, if you’re paying attention at home lately, we see something of this kind of religion/science battle going on right now in our own backyards. Namely, Intelligent Design vs Evolution. In this case, Evolution is the prevailing theory. It’s the prevailing theory because it’s (1) to some degree observable (2) to some degree demonstratable (3) simple and unifying (i.e. explains a lot of things based on simple rules with few to no exceptions) and most importantly (4) useful – a lot has been done based on our understanding of genetic development based on an evolutionary model. Intelligent Design on the other hand (1) may be forensically observable (2) but is not demonstratable (3) is not unifying (i.e. there’s no telling what has been designed, what has evolved, and how the two interplay) and (4) so far not very useful. And until such a time that Intelligent Design becomes demonstratable, unifying, and useful, it doesn’t deserve the street credential it’s asking for from the scientific community just like Galileo didn’t deserve the kind of affirmation he was seeking during his time.
But the Ultra-Scientific and the Ultra-Biblical will not stop long enough to give this any kind of serious attention or reasonable answer. Instead, they will march on in their demagoguery, trying to swade each of us to their side.
Me, I’m just glad I’m Catholic. The Church made it’s boo-boo with Galileo. Science isn’t to be considered the enemy of the Church, whatever it may explain or expose. Nor should theology be used to explain the detailed workings of the physical world and vice versa. Rather, the Church should be influencing Science, helping to establish the moral boundaries of where mankind should venture and experiment. And, of course, the Church always marvels at the creative power of God that Science reveals.
God bless the resting soul of Galileo, king of night vision, king of insight.
You’re wrong in your definition of atheist – an atheist is someone who simply does not believe in god. However, he can believe all sorts of other nonesense. He could believe he is the master of a superior race destined rule the planet.
There are socially accepted delusional people (Christians, Muslims, G. Bush etc…) and there are socially unacceptable delusional people – eg: Hitler.
Intelligent Design is not science. It is whishful and simplistic thinking. Religion has always tried to twist the facts to fit with within it’s system.
I wasn’t defining atheists but rather characterizing those who fall into the Ultra-Scientific crowd.
Intelligent Design isn’t acceptable science, but it does attempt to mimick the scientific process. It has a hypothesis: that elements of biology are designed rather than evolutionarily developed. It has an experiment: demonstrate that some biological elements can not be dissected into smaller, primitive, functional biological elements that could have evolved into the present form. It’s questionable as to what was observed in the natural world that lead to the hypothesis, however.
I’d contend that it’s simplistic thinking because, really, it attempts to keep aspects of evolution around. But what aspects it wants to keep around and the extent to which it wants to keep them around is a bit of an unanswered question.
I’d agree it is wishful thinking: it’s wanting to have its cake and eat it, too. It wants to sneak God empirically into biological development but keep evolution around, too, and it admittedly uses what are considered gaps in the current understanding of evolutionary history as evidence. And even while we’ve seen two gaps filled this past 2 months (i.e. fish with legs; a prehistoric, chimp-like human), it doesn’t cause them to bat an eye. In fact, there’s just 4 more gaps.
I really don’t think the Catholic Church is (or many other large religions are) attempting to twist any facts in this case (or in the case of Galileo). There’s nothing that science can demonstrate that would undo the dogma’s of the Church.