{"id":4759,"date":"2006-11-06T10:54:30","date_gmt":"2006-11-06T10:54:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/11\/faith-and-science-1.html"},"modified":"2006-11-06T10:54:30","modified_gmt":"2006-11-06T10:54:30","slug":"faith-and-science-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/11\/faith-and-science-1.html","title":{"rendered":"Faith and Science"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, the Pope addressed – in English – a meeting of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences<\/a><\/p>\n

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There is one final reflection that the subject of your Assembly can suggest to us today. As some of the papers presented in the last few days have emphasized, the scientific method itself, in its gathering of data and in the processing and use of those data in projections, has inherent limitations that necessarily restrict scientific predictability to specific contexts and approaches. Science cannot, therefore, presume to provide a complete, deterministic representation of our future and of the development of every phenomenon that it studies. Philosophy and theology might make an important contribution to this fundamentally epistemological question by, for example, helping the empirical sciences to recognize a difference between the mathematical inability to predict certain events and the validity of the principle of causality, or between scientific indeterminism or contingency (randomness) and causality on the philosophical level, or, more radically, between evolution as the origin of a succession in space and time, and creation as the ultimate origin of participated being in essential Being.<\/p>\n

At the same time, there is a higher level that necessarily transcends all scientific predictions, namely, the human world of freedom and history. Whereas the physical cosmos can have its own spatial-temporal development, only humanity, strictly speaking, has a history, the history of its freedom. Freedom, like reason, is a precious part of God\u2019s image within us, and it can never be reduced to a deterministic analysis. Its transcendence vis-\u00e0-vis the material world must be acknowledged and respected, since it is a sign of our human dignity. Denying that transcendence in the name of a supposed absolute ability of the scientific method to predict and condition the human world would involve the loss of what is human in man, and, by failing to recognize his uniqueness and transcendence, could dangerously open the door to his exploitation.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Oh…and as for the Pope’s next book? (a translation of an article from the German Catholic press at PRF)<\/a><\/p>\n

In 2003, the paper recalls, in an interview, then-Cardinal Ratzinger said:<\/p>\n

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"In August I started to write a book on Jesus. As things stand, it will take me probably 3 or 4 years to do it. In it, I would like to show how a living, harmonious and consistent Being steps out of the pages of the Bible, and how the Jesus of the Bible is also very much present and contemporary." <\/p>\n

Sixteen months later, he became Pope. But apparently, even as Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger has found time to work on the book, because he recently told the head of the Vatican publishing house that only the bibliography is not complete. <\/p>\n

"When it is done, I will call you," he told a delegation from the publishing house headed by Mons. Antonio Scotti. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/blockquote>\n
<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, the Pope addressed – in English – a meeting of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences There is one final reflection that the subject of your Assembly can suggest to us today. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4759\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}