The two fields of inquiry need not be mutually exclusive as they both explore different questions
By J. Alvaro Olaguera
The B.C. Catholic

VANCOUVER--With particle physicists so close to unlocking the mystery behind the quantum building blocks of our universe, there is a pressing need for Catholics to enter into the public dialogue concerning the interplay between faith and science, according to Father John W. McCarthy, SJ, chaplain to St. Mark’s College.

“There is no better time than now to bring up these questions,” Father McCarthy noted Nov. 20 in a lecture at St. Mark’s, “and we’re in good company.”

Father McCarthy, a specialist in agricultural science, has a doctorate in boreal and forest ecology and is a member of the Society of Jesus, an order well known for scientific discoveries. The priest is confident that faith and science, far from being opposed, can actually illuminate and deepen one another.

“Popular culture often depicts these two forces as conflicting, and (that) unfortunately dominates the discourse today,” he stated. Moreover, there is “a widely-held belief that faith leads to conflict and division, while science represents development and freedom.”

This notion seems to make faith irrelevant, and even violently opposed to the needs of the modern world, Father McCarthy remarked, adding that while science certainly advances the freedom and knowledge of humanity, in this perspective it is the upper limit of all human inquiry, the final answer to every problem.

Father McCarthy insisted that Catholics are required to uphold a more moderate view. While faith and science are not mutually exclusive, the breakdown occurs when we force science to answer religious questions, and when we attempt to use sacred Scripture and tradition to provide answers to scientific questions.

In short, there is no genuine conflict, since both fields explore different questions. Science is a study of “how.” It is especially useful for solving problems; discoveries in the fields of medicine and nutrition, for example, demonstrate this. It is a tool for discovery that helps us understand the physical laws of our universe.

Faith, on the other hand, is a study of “why.” Instead of answering “problem” questions, faith forces us to ask “limit” questions: what is the meaning of life? Of death? Where are we going, and why are we here? What is the purpose of my life, and what does God require of me? Is there even a God at all?

Father McCarthy brought up these points to argue that faith and revelation support and nourish science; they do not oppose it. Belief in God, he remarked, forces us to acknowledge that “the cosmos is ordered and open to the inquiry of our minds.”

The universe is intelligible, since it was made by an intelligent and loving God. Moreover, this God has given us an unlimited desire to know and discover more about about the world in which He has placed us.

The heart of the problem seems to be a perceived need to accept faith and reject science, or vice versa. Father McCarthy used a model to help illustrate this point.

Looking at reality through a single lens destroys our ability to perceive the world in its wholeness and grandeur. There are many ways to “know” a certain object: we can describe it in terms of its beauty, utility, composition, and purpose. Reducing our description of a phenomenon such as a sunset to only one of those terms would cheapen it at worst and give an incomplete picture of it at best.

Father McCarthy found it important to note that it is a mistake to shunt religion off to the private and subjective sphere. When one looks at the universe solely through the perspective of naturalism, one is forced to say that reality is “nothing but” randomly formed matter with no inner dynamism, no purpose.

Apparently the creationist makes a similar mistake when he limits the incredible narrative of the universe’s origin to the symbolic language of Scripture, which in the first place is only a grasping at real cosmic mysteries experienced by the biblical text’s awestruck authors.

To reduce humanity in either way limits our capacity to ask further questions, Father McCarthy noted. Indeed, we will always be faced with ultimate questions such as “Why is there something rather than nothing?” and “What is right and wrong?”

Science cannot tackle these questions. It can explain the mechanism behind how matter and energy are formed and distributed, but its purview is limited to a description of the physical world.

Cardinal John Henry Newman, an eminent philosopher and scientist, wrote that “faith and reason are mutually illuminating and united in the search of truth.”

According to Father McCarthy, Catholics are called to resist the kind of reductionism that requires an “either/or” explanation of our world. Rather, one ought to consider a “both/and perspective, where science and reason (ability to grasp creation) are tempered by an awareness of God’s radical mystery.”

“Catholics are asked to affirm that God is not a problem to be solved or an object to be proved, but a mystery to be entered,” Father McCarthy insisted. “There’s something about our existence, if we go deep enough, that forces us to ask limit questions. This itself forms the data of our exploration of faith.”