How can religion and science work together?
Not like this.
Rather, as Küng argues, desirable is:
* No confrontation model between science and religion: whether one of a fundamentalist-premodern origin, which ignores or suppresses the results of science or historical-critical biblical exegesis; or whether a type of rationalistic-modernism which right from the start declares religion as irrelevant
* Also no integration model of harmonising tendency
* but rather a complimentary model of critical-constructive interaction of religion and science in which their own spheres of specialisation are maintained, all illegitimate transitions avoided, and all one-dimensional totalising rejected.
(cf. Der Anfang Aller Dinge, p. 57)
Labels: Küng
posted by Chris Tilling @ 11:31 PM
8 comments
8 Comments:
It is ever more evident that Küng's book is a "must read." A fascinating citation; was it Hegel that said, "Every determination is a negation"?
Hi Carl, nice to hear from you.
As to the quote, I think Küng may have already said something similar already in Does God Exist?, so perhaps you want to check that out. Until then, I linked back at the start of April to a number of Küng audios, his lectures upon which Der Anfang aller Dinger is based- I'm sure you'll like them!
All the best
Go here, type in Küng and click on the search button. Enjoy!
Actually, this is quite easy. We must recognize a few things:
0) After 25 years in high tech, I can testify that every single scientific concept is something that can't be seen and we must accept and apply by FAITH. Without FAITH, science would be impossible.
1) The credibility of science lies completely with the technological wizardry that we experience daily in life, especially as we consider all of the little scientific wonders that are needed just to post and see these blogs.
2) The "scientists" who make pronouncements that conflict with religion have exactly nothing to do with the marvels that we experience in life. It is an entirely distinct group of people with entirely distinct sciences. Cosmology will never have anything to do with airplanes flying. No farmer or doctor or drug discovery can be attributed to Darwinism.
3) Unless a branch of science can show a distinct contribution, then it should be rejected (pruned?).
4) I have worked for years using scientific principals with Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists, Mormons and other Christians. If it weren't for theologians and other academics, we would never have known that a problem even existed!
Throw the intellectual parasites out and all the problems between science and religion disappear!
Thanks for your interesting comments, Looney. Thing about 'scientific concepts', as you mention, is that they tend to be demonstratable via Kant's theoretical reason, but God, who exists outside the observable and testable universe, is not so available - only to practical reason. So I would suggest that faith in God and faith in scientific priciples is of a different order.
"So I would suggest that faith in God and faith in scientific priciples is of a different order."
Consider the words of Benjamin Franklin to the US Congress:
"I have lived, Sir, a long time and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth -- that God governs in the affairs of men."
The distinction is between faith in the creator and faith in His creation.
Consider this: I have seen God's hand guiding my family and protecting me from my stupidity.
No scientist has ever seen a big bang or a fish evolve into a mammal. Both of these are inherently non-"demonstratable". Not only that, but there is exactly nothing useful you can do with the belief that they occured!
Kant was a novice who talked about God and science, but it seems that neither were from first hand experience!
No scientist has ever seen a big bang or a fish evolve into a mammal. Both of these are inherently non-"demonstratable".
Thanks for your comments again, Looney.
I would suggest that the theory of evolution is built, however, on demonstrable science, especially in the field of biochemistry. However, faith in God is of a different order, and is not the sum postulations of my observation of the universe, at least not my faith in the God and Father of Jesus.
What do you think?
Well, given that evolution was announced as "proven fact" almost a century before biochemistry was invented, I think it is pretty hard to base it on biochemistry. (i.e. DNA and proteins were discovered in the 1950's, not the 1850's.)
I visited Tubingen 16 years ago with some Mercedes engineers when we were working together on crash simulations. We all agreed on Newton's laws of motion. Without Newton's laws of motion, crash design would be impossible in any kind of sensible, scientific manner.
On the other hand, those lovely farms around Germany are just as productive whether a farmer is a Darwinist or a 6-day Creationist. We argue passionately over whether doctors are more efficient under socialism or capitalism, but I have never considered if the doctor treating me is a Darwinist or a Creationist. It simply isn't relavant to anything in life.
The fact is that the science which appears to conflict with the Bible is completely distinct from the science that you experience in your daily life - and for which we assign credibility based on our experience.
That is why I refer to this other science as parasites. Newton didn't need to believe anything about how the solar system formed to figure out how the solar system worked. Belief about origins is totally irrelevant to science.
I took my children to visit a friend of mine, a biologist doing heart research at Stanford Medical Center. My kids asked if they did experiments with monkey hearts. The researcher said no, they preferred to use pigs hearts. The children were very surprised and asked how this could be. The researcher replied that pigs hearts are much closer to human hearts than monkey hearts.
There are many things that scientists won't say publicly for fear of a Darwinista on a Jihad.
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