Does Science Discredit Faith? | Fr. Gregory Pine, OP

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 19 October 2019

⏱️ 44 minutes

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Summary

This lecture was given on September 17, 2019 at John Hopkins University.

Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P. serves presently as the Assistant Director for Campus Outreach with the Thomistic Institute in Washington, DC. He served previously as an associate pastor at St. Louis Bertrand Church in Louisville, KY where he also taught as an adjunct professor at Bellarmine University. Born and raised near Philadelphia, PA, he attended the Franciscan University of Steubenville, studying mathematics and humanities. Upon graduating, he entered the Order of Preachers in 2010. He was ordained a priest in 2016 and holds an STL from the Dominican House of Studies.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The topic at hand, what is it that we are asking? Does science discredit faith?
0:05.0	Do we mean that to say, do science disprove faith? Does it displace faith? Does it somehow trivialize faith?
0:13.0	Now there's a kind of ambient culture in many scientific communities which can be dismissive of faith.
0:19.0	So I think it's helpful to make distinctions
0:21.0	in order to better appreciate what is at stake and how best to hold fast what is good.
0:28.3	So to speak in kind of broad and sweeping way about 19th century developments that have
0:34.7	brought us to the place where we are now, we can see that there is a kind of sense,
0:39.5	downstream of Hegel and Marx and Auguste Comte, that religion or faith is a kind of primitive version of science.
0:47.6	It's sentimental, it's naive, it's childish, it's hyperdependent, contrary to the noblest aspirations of the human spirit,
0:57.0	which are for a kind of unassailable autonomy, and rather what we observe is a movement away from
1:02.9	faith and towards science, a kind of inevitable progress, an inexorable evolution.
1:09.0	You can think here of Marxist ideologies, which usually speak of an
1:12.4	apocalyptic third age, in which an underclass will come into possession of the goods of the
1:18.0	earth, whatever those might be, and in so doing, usher in a kind of utopic period of general benevolence.
1:24.7	So oftentimes science or practitioners of science, philosophers of
1:28.6	science, will seize upon this notion. And what we see in effect, to kind of hark into Hagellian themes,
1:34.5	is that reason will be self-realized at that point, and in a certain sense, deified. Okay?
1:41.3	So that's the atmosphere in which we are often working, living, and breathing. So here, we're just going to make a very simple and modest claim, namely that science does not discredit faith if both are understood properly. So if practiced well, the disciplines do not genuinely conflict. And in fact, they investigate different things under different aspects or lights
2:03.2	and with different methodologies. So they can, in truth, be complementary in their consideration
2:09.5	or interrogation of reality. So I just have three small points. The first is an introductory
2:15.9	notion about formal and material objects,
2:18.5	which at this point might sound jargony, but will be clear in about seven minutes. And then
	...

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