Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

The scientific method looks to evidence to settle questions, so perhaps it would be fair to look at evidence to answer the question whether the Catholic Church is opposed to science and reason. If the Catholic Church were opposed to science, we would expect to find no or very few Catholic scientists, no sponsorship of scientific research by Catholic institutions, and an explicit distrust of reason in general and scientific reasoning in particular taught in official Catholic teaching. In fact, we find none of these things.

Historically, Catholics are numbered among the most important scientists of all time, including Rene Descartes, who discovered analytic geometry and the laws of refraction; Blaise Pascal, inventor of the adding machine, hydraulic press, and the mathematical theory of probabilities; Augustinian priest Gregor Mendel, who founded modern genetics; Louis Pasteur, founder of microbiology and creator of the first vaccine for rabies and anthrax; and cleric Nicolaus Copernicus, who first developed scientifically the view that the earth rotated around the sun. Jesuit priests in particular have a long history of scientific achievement; they
"contributed to the development of pendulum clocks, pantographs, barometers, reflecting telescopes and microscopes, to scientific fields as various as magnetism, optics and electricity. They observed, in some cases before anyone else, the colored bands on Jupiter's surface, the Andromeda nebula and Saturn's rings. They theorized about the circulation of the blood (independently of Harvey), the theoretical possibility of flight, the way the moon affected the tides, and the wave-like nature of light. Star maps of the southern hemisphere, symbolic logic, flood-control measures on the Po and Adige rivers, introducing plus and minus signs into Italian mathematics — all were typical Jesuit achievements, and scientists as influential as Fermat, Huygens, Leibniz and Newton were not alone in counting Jesuits among their most prized correspondents."

The scientist credited with proposing in the 1930s what came to be known as the "Big Bang theory" of the origin of the universe was Georges Lemaitre, a Belgian physicist and Roman Catholic priest. Alexander Fleming, the inventor of penicillin, shared his faith. More recently, Catholics constitute a good number of Nobel Laureates in Physics, Medicine, and Physiology, including Erwin Schrodinger, John Eccles, and Alexis Carrel. How can the achievements of so many Catholics in science be reconciled with the idea that the Catholic Church opposes scientific knowledge and progress?

Yeah, what you think of as science is actually political rhetoric then.

Christian fundamentalism, also known as fundamental Christianity or fundamentalist Christianity, is a movement emphasizing biblical literalism. In its modern form, it began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries among British and American Protestants as a reaction to theological liberalism and cultural modernism. Fundamentalists argued that 19th-century modernist theologians had misinterpreted or rejected certain doctrines, especially biblical inerrancy, which they considered the fundamentals of the Christian faith.

This conclusion does not logically follow from my observation.

A central tenet of the new atheism is that Christianity and reason are antithetical, and that throughout history Christians have held back progress in science. Atheist historian Dr. Richard Carrier has promoted similar views in his contributions to essay collections such as The Christian Delusion and Christianity Is Not Great. He suggests that, but for the rise of Christianity, the ancient Greeks would have enjoyed a scientific revolution so that the “Dark Ages” never would have happened. However, the truth is very different. The science of the ancient Greek pagans was intended to reinforce their ethical and philosophical positions, rather than to be an objective study of nature. Admittedly, when Christians came to develop their own science in the Middle Ages, they were not being objective either. For them, science was the study of God’s creation. But the metaphysical assumptions of Christianity, unlike those of the Greeks or even Muslims, turned out to be extremely conducive to uncovering true knowledge about nature. They weren’t trying to, but it was Christians who laid the foundations for modern science.

Your observation could possibly be wrong?

Faith and reason are in perfect harmony.

Your inability to grasp science is not a valid argument against it.

Your inability to grasp that he actually said "faith and reason are in harmony" is not science.

You are unable to grasp that the objective analysis of words, their meaning, and how they are used does not even purport to be "science".

I just wanted to clear up your misunderstanding of hingehead's response. It wasn't supposed to be "science".

The science hingehead speaks of is just an idealized opinion of how science should be.

Science is the study of the natural world.
Religion concerns the supernatural world.

Religion types don't use rules of science to dictate their studies. These are two distinct disciplines. This is why they are in harmony.

Or by this logic, math and art are at war with each other. How absurd. The artist might occasionally use a ruler or compass to make cleaner lines, but they also plop paint on their fingers or paint with their own blood or whatever creative things strike their fancy.

Separate disciplines are not at war, nor is ir reasonable to suggest that religion think like science. It doesn't. It's a different way of seeing the world. Not an opposed one.

This is a sleight of hand. Atheism and religion (mostly Christians) are at war with each other. Atheism = science they say, so "science" is at war with religion.

But how scientific is atheism? The answer, not very. When pressed on scientifixc laws that actually suggest that nothing can come without cause (read some of the laws of thermodynamics, you can't just "create" heat, it goes from source to sink, dispersing as it goes), they simply ignore them! Their pet theory that all of this is random is true, billion of years of directed evolution be damned. They say it's an accident we evolved from lower primates. No, it's progress. They say the Big Bang happened on its own, even though before there was a universe, the fundamental laws (gravity, momentum, magnetism, force) did not exist. There wasn't just a bang, there was essentially the laws and energy inserted into the system to make it work. But the atheist continually says that it happened on its own.

But it's the conflation of "atheism is 'scientific ', so atheism is science" fallacy that I object to.

Science is a discipline of study. Theology is also a field of study. I studied science all through college until the last year (I figured out that I hated organic chemistry, and since it was required for a horticulture minor, I switched over using History of Religion class to supplement two requirements). I am living proof there needn't be any conflict between religion and science. Every Sunday, I went to church. Every Tuesday and Thursday, they had science labs. I just realized I wasn't good at testing but very good at written exams and essays. Bye bye studying for tests, and hello to about four essays for the last year. I had to write about 20-30 pages in one night, because I procrastinated. I did graduate but probably not with any honors.

What I am "babbling on about" is that there is a distinction between scientific study, and "scientific" dogma. Dogma is teaching that one is expected to follow or not be considered a real scientist. But dogma is part of religion. When scientists demand that people stick to a rigid idea of how the universe developed, or how man developed, or tell people that " no true scientist" is an atheist, they are asserting dogma and being just like a religion. That's not science. That is in conflict with religion, because it's an atheistic sciency-sounding faith.