God's Big Bang
06/01/11 19:39 Filed in: Human Nature
A lot of people have begun commenting on Benedict XVI’s claim about God being behind the Big Bang.
First, it should be clear that the Catholic Church has accepted evolution since the 60’s. One of the key texts on this was written much later, with John Paul II’s “Truth Cannot Contradict Truth.” In this article, JP II repeated the Thomistic claim that truth from different areas -- especially science/natural philosophy and religion -- cannot contradict each other. They have to be reconciled in some way. Thus, Genesis, as we now know, does not tell the literal story of creation, but explains the meaning of creation. All Catholics must accept evolution as true or risk becoming irrational -- that is, not Catholic.
Second, how we explain God’s action in history must adhere to our understanding of God as unchanging. God is creator. Being a creator means that all of creation depends on God for its existence. Without God, there would be nothing. That truth, however, tells us nothing about “how” God created the universe. It would be mistaken to think of creation as a particular event. Creation is an unfolding of God’s creative power -- it is a sustaining act. Thus, Benedict is right to claim that "In the beauty of the world, in its mystery, in its greatness and in its rationality ... we can only let ourselves be guided toward God, creator of heaven and earth.” Creation points to God -- in its beauty, design, and very existence.
This point, however, means that the watchmaker argument isn’t quite right. The watchmaker argument works by analogy. If you were to be walking in the desert and found a watch, its complexity would make you think that someone had created it. Things just don’t fall together randomly in such an organized fashion. On the one hand, this argument proves sensible: if we see the complexity of the universe as a whole, it’s more intelligible to think that it came together from some intelligence rather than randomly. However, we must resist the idea that because things in the world that are complex are created by an intelligence, then the universe as a whole must be created by an intelligence. This way of argument is known as the fallacy of composition. Just because every brick in a wall is six inches by four inches by three inches does not mean that the wall itself is six inches by four inches by three inches.
What we confront when we look at creation with the eyes of science - that is, with the eyes of a mind questioning the order and workings of all that there is -- is a fact that raises the question: why is there anything at all? Science cannot answer this question. Religion can. But neither should contradict the other. They should support each other in humanity’s quest for meaning.
First, it should be clear that the Catholic Church has accepted evolution since the 60’s. One of the key texts on this was written much later, with John Paul II’s “Truth Cannot Contradict Truth.” In this article, JP II repeated the Thomistic claim that truth from different areas -- especially science/natural philosophy and religion -- cannot contradict each other. They have to be reconciled in some way. Thus, Genesis, as we now know, does not tell the literal story of creation, but explains the meaning of creation. All Catholics must accept evolution as true or risk becoming irrational -- that is, not Catholic.
Second, how we explain God’s action in history must adhere to our understanding of God as unchanging. God is creator. Being a creator means that all of creation depends on God for its existence. Without God, there would be nothing. That truth, however, tells us nothing about “how” God created the universe. It would be mistaken to think of creation as a particular event. Creation is an unfolding of God’s creative power -- it is a sustaining act. Thus, Benedict is right to claim that "In the beauty of the world, in its mystery, in its greatness and in its rationality ... we can only let ourselves be guided toward God, creator of heaven and earth.” Creation points to God -- in its beauty, design, and very existence.
This point, however, means that the watchmaker argument isn’t quite right. The watchmaker argument works by analogy. If you were to be walking in the desert and found a watch, its complexity would make you think that someone had created it. Things just don’t fall together randomly in such an organized fashion. On the one hand, this argument proves sensible: if we see the complexity of the universe as a whole, it’s more intelligible to think that it came together from some intelligence rather than randomly. However, we must resist the idea that because things in the world that are complex are created by an intelligence, then the universe as a whole must be created by an intelligence. This way of argument is known as the fallacy of composition. Just because every brick in a wall is six inches by four inches by three inches does not mean that the wall itself is six inches by four inches by three inches.
What we confront when we look at creation with the eyes of science - that is, with the eyes of a mind questioning the order and workings of all that there is -- is a fact that raises the question: why is there anything at all? Science cannot answer this question. Religion can. But neither should contradict the other. They should support each other in humanity’s quest for meaning.
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