While We're on the Subject of Science and Religion

"Scientists do not create the world," declares Pope Benedict XVI in his address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, "they learn about it and attempt to imitate it, following the laws and intelligibility that nature manifests to us. The scientist’s experience as a human being is therefore that of perceiving a constant, a law, a logos that he has not created but that he has instead observed: in fact, it leads us to admit the existence of an all-powerful Reason, which is other than that of man, and which sustains the world. This is the meeting point between the natural sciences and religion. As a result, science becomes a place of dialogue, a meeting between man and nature and, potentially, even between man and his Creator."

The whole address is here.

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[Manuel G. Daugherty Razetto]

Through carefully weighed words BXVI prefers, as is his norm, addressing audiences in a dialective rather than merely in a dialogic tone giving the gathering his thoughts of what we greatly achieved in the 20th century; two extremes: a panacea of advancement and a danger in the misuse of science, but as he defines what is Science:"a patient and passionate search for the truth about the cosmos" the pope lifts the subjective component that soaks with feeling, that is, the human touch in science.

Furthermore Ratzinger states:"in our own day, scientists themselves appreciate more and more the need to be open to Philosophy if they are to discover the logical and epistemological foundation for their methodology and their conclusions in the world".

Philosophy is not just the conjectural opinion of exceptional men but the whole portion of social and political living. We can call a miracle what happened in Greece during the fifth century B.C. for they created Philosophy (and Science, Mathematics...) without disassociation from Religion. Historically it was part of their world. The same with Ethics. So Religion and the beginning of Philosophy were joined from the start.

Going into the realm of Science BXVI has adroitly given us the Truth of Christianity chapter of "Truth and Tolerance" (2004) a most interesting recount of how in a dialogue between W. Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli and Paul Dirac (all physicists), the theme being 'around atomic physics' were dealing with the relationship of Science and Religion; how Max Planck sustained there was no conflict among the two; how, as well, Einstein often spoke of God. But, that was then, now the 'moral crisis of humanity' presents increased worries that there are no more answers available to our demand for trascendence (J.Fest "Difficult Freedom,-1993-p.75) .

Largely the Vatican and precisely, Benedict XVI continue to expose a two-fold radiant verity:
The Church is coherent with Science.
Today's crisis exists because the link between Reason and Feeling translates in distancing themselves and, at the same time, both suffer because of it.