Comments on: A Church That Wants to Teach Science

By: David Spakes

David Spakes — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 01:11:18 +0000

I was grateful when a friend pointed me at this article. Twenty years ago, we were both undergraduates. She went on to earn her PhD in Biology. I took the shorter path to gainful employment and have worked as a Software Engineer for nearly eighteen years. I am anticipating a career change to full-time Christian service as the Pastor of a church I am starting that is probably much like the ninety other churches mentioned in this article. My background is neither Episcopal nor Catholic, but rather Evangelical.

The premise of the new church plant is to cultivate an atmosphere of mutual respect where people of faith and sincere skeptics are welcomed and whereby each experiences personal growth through their interactions. As a lover of the sciences, I earnestly desire that Christians as a whole will leave behind ignorance of what man can learn (and has learned) through observation, experimentation, and research. Also as a Christian, I earnestly desire that sincere skeptics will experience the hope, peace, and joy that comes from allowing oneself to believe in a God that exists outside the confines of the observable and measurable universe in which we live and yet has deep love and concern for each individual on our miniscule planet.

By: 3in1

3in1 — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 15:00:49 +0000

To separate religion from reason/logic (i.e. science) is impossible. The notion that the only “truth” that we can ever know or accept must be from science, is known as “scientism”. This is a false notion due to circular reasoning. The claim that scientism is true is in fact, not a scientific claim and it cannot be proven using scientific methods. Another demonstration; the scientific process itself is dependent on several ASSUMPTIONS. Assumptions are an act of faith. There are three assumptions that are made in all scientific inquiry: 1. There is an objective world outside of our minds, 2. this world is governed by regularities and causes, 3. our human mind can discover and describe these regularities. Science cannot prove or justify these three assumptions without arguing in a circle. In order to try and prove any one of the three, a person must assume that they are all true! Therefore science is dependent on faith. Likewise, faith is dependent on reason. We do not have blind faith. There are very valid reasons and logic for belief in a deity; it is not superstition. These very valid reasons are rooted in several areas: philosophy and logic itself, history, and yes indeed, modern science. We don’t have space here to go into all of the details on that, but I strongly recommend reading “answering the new atheist” by Benjamin Wicker, and also some of the youtube videos by Father Robert Barron. Faith therefore, requires reason. Put quite simply, the theist requires valid reasons to believe. Lastly, I would like to encourage everyone to look at the contributions that the Catholic Church has made to science. Some of the most important discoveries in math and science. You can thank the Church for Universities, which were by the way, established to search for Truth. The big bang theory was developed by a priest, as an example.

By: Ian

Ian — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 09:14:45 +0000

@2, You need to read up on your history of science to appreciate its religious roots. Science is actually a very difficult thing to do – you need the right mindset, the right beliefs and understanding of the world to have confidence in matter and the repeatability of experiments.

Whilst I cannot speak up for Islam and Judaism, as much as they did for science, I can speak for the Catholic side of things – read almost anything by Pierre Duhem, James Hannam and Fr SL Jaki.

By: Kirk

Kirk — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 21:32:12 +0000

As an atheist Episcopalian I can warn you that this will not help much. That makes like 800 surviving Episcopalians in the win category.

By: vel

vel — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 20:10:00 +0000

It’s nice that some churches want to expand the knowledge of science, but at the base of it, churches and their theists, no matter what the sect, believe in something that has no evidence and that has never had any evidence from a book that contradicts and outright tells nonsense. IT is only by cherry picking, and creating god in your own images tht you can get around the pure delusion that myth and science can be compatible.

How can science and Christianity be compatible if at some point you must say “and a magic deity became human and killed himself off for rules that the magic deity itself made. It died (accompanied by a earthquake and darkening of the sun no one observed, plus the dead walking in the streets) and then magically came back to life offering the future of a magic afterlife where everyone will see their loved ones/forget who they were and become automatons endlessly worshiping this deity.”

It’s sounds more than a little ridiculous.

By: Duncan Scrymgeour

Duncan Scrymgeour — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 18:30:23 +0000

I knew even before I read the body of the text that it would be about an Episcopal Church. Although I’m not a believer any longer, my experience growing up Episcopal belies most of the stereotypes of Christians–real or imagined–that we hear today. I went to an Episcopal school where we were taught not only about the reality of Darwinian evolution, but also about the beauty of the other Great Religions and their contributions to our world. We were taught that all people contain the *imago Dei* the representation of God on earth and so, are to be cherished, not simply tolerated. I was confirmed in my twenties by an openly gay bishop (though his sexuality was not widely reported) and attended a church that performed same sex unions long before it was a subject of open debate even within the larger church. Although I am no longer a believing Christian, I maintain much of the Christian practice I was taught and found my upbringing to be one filled with hope, a respect for knowledge–scientific knowledge–and the notion that Faith meant faith in my fellow humans and the need to respect and serve them. It fills me with some pride that the Church, which I cannot in conscience remain an active member of, continues to use their pulpit (literal, not “bully”) to teach science properly to its members.