![\"And](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2015\/09\/400px-Chemistry_Lab.jpg\")
<\/a>While in California a couple of weeks ago, I picked up a copy of Gerard Verschuuren, A Catholic Scientist Harmonizes Science and Faith<\/em> (Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2022). \u00a0Dr. Verschuuren studied human genetics and the philosophy of science at Leiden University, the University of Utrecht, and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, all in The Netherlands, and now \u2014 since 1994 \u2014 lives and writes in the southern part of New Hampshire.<\/span><\/p>\n I found the very first lines of his book interesting. \u00a0That\u2019s why I decided to buy it. \u00a0He commences as follows:<\/p>\n The idea that science and faith can live together is an issue of vital importance for people of faith. \u00a0Yet, more and more people nowadays claim science and faith cannot really live together. \u00a0They caricature religious believers as \u201cschizophrenics.\u201d \u00a0On weekdays, they are critical, want proofs, look for arguments, and believe something only if there is no further doubt. \u00a0Then, on Sundays, they turn a switch, set their understanding to zero and their gaze on infinity; they have no need for proofs, they open their mouths and swallow revealed truths and absurd dogmas.<\/p>\n The contrast painted in this parody is clear: religious believers live a \u201cschizophrenic\u201d life. \u00a0It is the life of science and reason on weekdays and the life of religion and faith on Sundays. \u00a0Of course, it is a travesty, but a very widely held one nowadays, heavily promoted by media and academia. \u00a0Let\u2019s see why it is a false contrast. \u00a0(3)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Dr. Verschuuren has much to say over the next several pages about what he plainly regards as a false contrast, indeed as a \u201ccaricature\u201d and a \u201ctravesty.\u201d \u00a0I agree with him on that assessment, but I rather liked his immediate response over the next page or two. \u00a0He makes a fairly simple and probably obvious point, but he makes it well.<\/p>\n He simply points out that the dividing line between the realm of weekday living and that of religious faith is not nearly as clear and stark as the caricature suggests.\u2019<\/p>\n For one thing, he says, we cannot and we typically are not asked to accept on faith something we absolutely cannot understand. \u00a0So reason must be employed in order to make at least minimal sense of the propositions that are delivered to us by religious faith.<\/p>\n I offer some examples of my own that, I think, illustrate Dr. Verschuuren\u2019s point and with which he would be content: \u00a0What does it mean to speak of God<\/em>? \u00a0What does it mean to affirm that Jesus was divine, or that he in some ways came to save us? \u00a0To what do his miracles \u2014 the apostle John calls them \u201csigns\u201d \u2014 point? \u00a0And there are, surely scores if not hundreds or thousands of other declarations of faith where, to be affirmed, they must be at least somewhat understood<\/em>.)<\/p>\n I also note, although he himself has not yet done so in my reading of him, that there are scientific propositions that we are invited to affirm that we \u2014 certainly I \u2014 do not wholly or even minimally understand or cannot comprehend: \u00a0Is light both wave and particle? \u00a0Is space curved? \u00a0Are there multiple dimensions beyond the four with which we\u2019re familiar? \u00a0What about the singularity at the time just prior to the Big Bang? \u00a0What does it mean for time to have come into existence at some point 13.8 billion years ago? \u00a0What was there prior<\/em> to that? \u00a0Nothing? \u00a0How can I even imagine<\/em> such a thing? \u00a0And yet current science seems to require that I affirm such things, even if I can\u2019t even pretend to understand them.<\/p>\n \u201cReason itself depends on faith to begin with,\u201d writes Verschuuren, \u201cfaith in our senses, faith in our intellect, faith in our memories, and faith in what others have discovered\u201d (4).<\/p>\n Again, I offer some examples: \u00a0We take it for granted that the deliverances of our senses of touch, smell, hearing, sight, and taste, while they are not infallible and may need occasional correction, provide us with a reasonably accurate picture of the \u201creal world\u201d around us. \u00a0If we rejected such confidence in our senses, science would be completely impossible. If, moreover, we denied that our intellectual processes, our reasoning, is reliable, we would have no reason to trust any argument or demonstration that any scientist had ever made or, for that matter, that we ourselves had ever made. \u00a0(This is a point that C. S. Lewis often made \u2014 and he made it, to my judgment, to great effect. \u00a0Even Charles Darwin occasionally wondered whether a simian brain that had evolved in order to facilitate survival and reproduction on the African savannah should really be trusted to do science.) \u00a0And, finally, if the past were totally beyond recovery, and if, thus, our recollections of the past were competely worthless, neither science nor historiography nor even ordinary daily life would be feasible.<\/p>\n Dr. Verschuuren\u2019s point, accordingly, is that science and scientific reason are not free of faith, and religious affirmations are not totally divorced from reason. \u00a0Thus, the caricature that attempts to portray religion as wholly irrational and purely faith-based, as contrasted with a science that has absolutely no need of faith but, rather, is firmly based in objective reason, can\u2019t withstand scrutiny: \u00a0\u201cThis means that \u201cweekdays\u201d and \u201cSundays\u201d cannot be disconnected from each other, as the caricature suggests\u201d (4).<\/p>\n Moreover \u2014 and here is another important point that demands further elaboration \u2014 \u201cFaith can cover issues that science and rationality are inherently incapable of addressing, but that doesn\u2019t make them unreasonable or unreal\u201d (4). \u00a0(See the photograph above.)<\/p>\n Following the First Presidency\u2019s recent announcement that a medical school is to be established at Brigham Young University, there were expressions of surprise and satisfaction as well as, in some circles, of doubt and even derision. \u00a0I alluded just a bit to the doubt (and to the derisive mockery) in a recent blog entry. \u00a0(See \u201cThe Church in Recent Media.\u201d<\/a>) \u00a0Now there is a thoughtful piece on the topic from the estimable Tad Walch, of the Deseret News<\/em>: \u00a0\u201cBYU\u2019s medical school will be rare: How many faith-based schools are there? How religious are they? Leaders of other faith-based medical schools share how they employ faith to help train excellent, compassionate doctors.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 While in California a couple of weeks ago, I picked up a copy of Gerard Verschuuren, A Catholic Scientist Harmonizes Science and Faith (Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2022). \u00a0Dr. Verschuuren studied human genetics and the philosophy of science at Leiden University, the University of Utrecht, and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, all in The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":40762,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[37842,909,6786,1230,743,37839],"class_list":["post-106434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-a-catholic-scientist-harmonizes-science-and-faith","tag-faith","tag-rationality","tag-reason","tag-religion","tag-verschuuren"],"yoast_head":"\n<\/a>