The Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion helps restore the natural
union that always existed between science and religion. (March 11 news
article "Physicist fuses science, religion"). The foundation of modern
science was laid down by devout Christians (Galileo, Kepler, Newton,
Maxwell, Planck, etc.) who studied nature to know more about its Creator. It
was the extension of the evolutionary ideas of Darwin to an atheistic
worldview that accentuated the false antagonism between science and
religion.
The advent of new technologies has pushed science into areas replete
with ethical questions. Theoretical physicists are asking fundamental
questions that lead to deep ontological questions that were normally dealt
with by philosophers and theologians. The subject matter of science and
religion are becoming one and the same.
Science alone cannot explain all human experience. Theories in physics,
the prototype of all sciences, deal with matter and not at all with human
beings. In fact, data acquisition is done entirely by means of mechanical
devices. On the other hand, man emerges from nonliving matter in theories of
origins. But man is a "detector" of God and the spiritual and such things,
contrary to the claims of some psychologists, are not illusions.
Advances in science will expand the notion that the heavens are the
work of His hands and thus learn that man shall not live on bread alone.
Herein lies the fusion of true science with true religion.
MOORAD ALEXANIAN
Wilmington