ASA/CSCA Newsletter
Index

Two fundamental planks in a Christian world view are the Doctrines of Creation and Providence.  While these doctrines are widely held beliefs, the details continue to vex theologians and scientists alike as each seeks to make sense of the world around us

Creation

A report from the ASA Commission on Creation (2000) offers a General Statement on Creation which it was felt to reflect the general thinking of the ASA community and several more statements representing narrower views on the details of creation.  One might think that biblical and scientific scholars could have gotten together and forged a definitive statement on origins rather than a grocery list but the issues are too complex to achieve accord. at this time. We can agree on the who and perhaps the when but the how is speculative. We see patterns in nature and marvel at its detailed interworkings, harmony, and beauty as those created in the image of God but the details elude us.

__________________________________

Creation in the Creeds and Confessions  

Belgian Confession of 1561 ...Article 2: The Means by Which We Know God

First, by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe, since that universe is before our eyes like a beautiful book in which all creatures,  great and small,  are as letters  to make us ponder  the invisible things of God:  his eternal power  and his divinity,  as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20. All these things are enough to convict men and to leave them without excuse.

Second, he makes himself known to us more openly by his holy and divine Word, as much as we need in this life,
for his glory and for the salvation of his own.

Irish Articles Of Religion (1615)

Catholic Catechism

ARTICLE I:   "I BELIEVE IN GOD THE FATHER ALMIGHTY, CREATOR OF HEAVEN AND EARTH" Paragraph 4. The Creator 279 "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."116 Holy Scripture begins with these solemn words. The Profession of Faith takes them up when it confesses that God the Father almighty is "Creator of heaven and earth" (Apostles' Creed), "of all that is, seen and unseen" (Nicene Creed). We shall speak first of the Creator, then of creation and finally of the fall into sin from which Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came to raise us up again. 280 Creation is the foundation of "all God's saving plans," the "beginning of the history of salvation"117 that culminates in Christ. Conversely, the mystery of Christ casts conclusive light on the mystery of creation and reveals the end for which "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth": from the beginning, God envisaged the glory of the new creation in Christ.118

Providence

Providence involves the question of Gods relation to the World; it is the most comprehensive and difficult in the compass either of theology or of philosophy. The World, meaning thereby the universe of created beings, includes the world of matter and the world of mind. The doctrine of providence concerns, first, the relation of God to the external or material universe; and secondly, his relation to the world of mind, or to his rational creatures.

Providence in the Creeds and Confessions

The Nature and Practice of Science

Ask a scientist friend to define science and you will be surprised by the response. What seems easy to explain and obvious to anyone takes many twists and turns when one is active in scientific research or engages in "philosophical analysis" about how science works.

Here is a  discussion of the nature  of science by Dr. Helen Quinn, a theoretical physicist at SLAC in Physics Today, July 2009.

Here are a few thoughts from other authors:

The stumbling way in which even the ablest of the scientists in every generation have had to fight through thickets of erroneous observations, misleading generalizations, inadequate formulations, and unconscious prejudice is rarely appreciated by those who obtain their scientific knowledge from textbooks.

Regardless of the diverse ways that scientists describe their task and the ways this plays out in their own experience, it is clear that science is both understanding and doing - making sense of nature and making "better things for better living" as the former du Pont slogan proclaimed. The interweaving of medical research to discover the mechanism of a disease and the search for a cure illustrate the complexity of the scientific enterprise.

Many of us take our ideas about the nature of science from Francis Bacon- who lived four centuries ago. For Bacon, science is the objective pursuit of reliable knowledge. Although one might "know" something through authority, faith, or intuition, scientific method is distinct in that it must be possible for other investigators to ascertain the truth of scientific theories. It is founded on objective observation, the formulation of hypotheses that fit the data and predict other possibilities, repeatable experiments that can fail as well as succeed, and analysis and review by the scientific community. Baconian science rests ultimately on pure, objective dispassionately collected observational data followed by the application of special logical procedures to those data in order to produce scientific theories. This set of stringent procedures constituted the 'scientific method.' - something you learned by 8th grade.

This view of science achieved dominance, becoming practically the official conception by the early 20th century, and still underlies many popular ideas about science. But however attractive its promises, Baconian inductivism is in fact irreparably defective, disintegrating at nearly every point when examined by philosophers. Among its many problems are these: (a) There simply is no form of logic by which theories, laws, and the like can be inferred from empirical data; and (b) empirical procedures cannot confer certainty upon any scientific theory.

The following summary of an article by Philosopher of Science, Del Ratzsch sets forth the current situation:

The only way to test proposed theories or hypotheses was to deduce experimental or other observational predictions from the theory or hypothesis (hence the term hypothetico-deductivism), then see whether or not the predictions matched observed reality, thereby confirming or contradicting the theory. Hypothetico-deductivists believed that although theories could not be proved true, they could at least be empirically confirmed.

Not everyone agreed, A number of people (claiming to follow Karl Popper) concluded for technical, logical reasons that theories could not even be confirmed, much less proved. But in their view, science could at least prove specific theories to be false by uncovering empirical data contrary to predictions of those theories. Unfortunately, even this modest claim turned out to be too strong.

Historically, it was almost universally believed that perception was neutral, in the sense that genuinely honest and careful observation was unaffected by beliefs, presupposition, philosophical preferences, or similar factors. This neutrality guaranteed the objectivity and utter trustworthiness of empirical data, which constituted the secure foundation of science. But that perceived neutrality came under attack in the mid-20th century. Thomas Khun, for example, argued that perception itself was an active--not a passive--process, deeply colored by the broader conceptual matrices, or paradigms, to which one had prior allegiances.

This view not only destroyed the allegedly rigid, logical structure of science, but also threatened the pure objectivity of its foundation. Furthermore, paradigms influenced not only perception, but also theory evaluation and acceptance, conceptual resources, normative judgments within science, and a host of other consequential matters. And, according to Kuhn, paradigms were partially defined by, among other things, metaphysical commitments and values. Thus, non-empirical, human-suffused perspectives had seeped into the no-longer-inviolable scientific method at all levels, from empirical bedrock to theoretical pinnacle. One consequence of under-determination was that no amount of (even pure) empirical data could point to just one theory among competitors.

Thus, if one adopted a realist stance toward theories, claiming that some specific scientific theory was actually true, rather than merely a useful model, the selection of that specific theory had to involve (at least implicitly) factors beyond just the empirical. Kuhn's own list of operative non-empirical principles was relatively tame--simplicity, fruitfulness, measurability, accuracy, and the like. But some postmodernists went much further, claiming, for instance, that the very heart of science contained political agendas, social biases, dominance hierarchies, gender prejudices, and so on. But what can no longer be denied is that a science with utter objectivity, absolute logical rigidity, and purely empirical foundations is not an attainable ideal. Most contemporary mainline commentators argue that despite the unavoidable dependence of science upon resources other than just empirical data and reason, scientific results can still claim significant rational justification and epistemic legitimacy.

Rigor, objectivity, and warrant may be less than absolute, even less than many fervently hope, but science can still get at theoretical truth. A tempered realism still seems defensible. Realist claims are plausible only if we have grounds for confidence in the human perceptual and cognitive structures that, inescapably, function within science.

[Editorial Comment] Further, the principle of underdetermination of theory by data indicates that science requires a conceptual environment extended beyond the merely empirical. Historically, that indispensable confidence and conceptual richness was drawn from religious principals. Some current historians argue that without the broader Christian conceptual matrix, modern science might never have arisen. Ideally, a worldview should be a unified, integrated whole. But for much of the 20th century, many people thought that religion and science were simply irrelevant to each other. At worst, religion was seen as fighting a rearguard action against the seemingly inexorable advance of a science destined to conceptually engulf everything it touched.

There are many who insist on some version of methodological naturalism--that whatever the ultimate metaphysical reality, genuine science as science must (either definitional or practical) be completely detached from everything other than the purely natural.

        __________________________________________________________________________ 

Jitse M. van der Meer, "The Struggle Between Christian Theism, Metaphysical Naturalism And Relativism,: How To Proceed In Science? Pascal Centre, Redeemer College Ancaster, Ontario Canada 1995. A thesis arguing that Christians are mistaken in their belief that material reality can be understood without reference to non-material created causes, such as mind, or to non-material uncreated causes, such as God.

Conclusion:

One of the enjoyable aspects of relating science and Christianity is the ever-changing challenge of new discoveries. Environmental questions, medical advances, astronomy, neuroscience, and the social sciences offer new challenges for reflection. None of us can be an expert on everything, but we can cultivate ways of thinking and attitudes that allow us to be a productive part of the discussions .

"There is a clear analogy between the limitations on the scientist and those on the theologian. The scientist must submit his mind to the data of experiment, the theologian must submit his to the data of revelation. The word “data” means “the things that are given.” Both the religious person and the scientist accept givens. The givens may perplex. They may seem difficult to bring into harmony with each other or with what is known on other grounds. They may throw all our theories into confusion. But accepting the data must come before progress in understanding. That is why the words of St. Augustine apply, in a way, to the scientist as much as to the theologian: credo ut intelligam, “I believe in order that I may understand.”

"So we see in science something akin to religious faith. The scientist has confidence in the intelligibility of the world. He has questions about nature. And he expects—no, more than expects, he is absolutely convinced—that these questions have intelligible answers. The fact that he must seek those answers proves that they are not in sight. The fact that he continues to seek them in spite of all difficulties testifies to his unconquerable conviction that those answers, although not presently in sight, do in fact exist. Truly, the scientist too walks by faith and not by sight."- Stephen F. Barr

We close this page with several useful articles and materials on science and a number of short autobiographies of ASA members.

A recent web site from our British cousins, Scibel seeks to reach the younger generation.