Here are developed ways in which Whitehead applies different categories to different entities in the world - from particles to persons - and an evaluation of the adequacy of process philosophy from a scientific point of view. Such ethical questions will be the subject of the second volume in this series, Ethics in an Age of Technology. The first major challenge for religion in an age of science is the success of the methods of science.
The materialist believes that all phenomena will ultimately be explained in terms of the actions of material constituents, which are the only effective causes in the world.
Biblical Literalism
In the twentieth century, the Roman Catholic Church and most mainline Protestant denominations have held that scripture is the human testimony of primary revelation, which occurred in the lives of the prophets and in the life and person of Christ. Many traditionalists and evangelicals insist on the centrality of Christ without insisting on the inerrancy of a literal interpretation of the Bible. 34; creation science" has claimed that there is scientific evidence for the creation of the world within the last thousands of years.
Some of the same forces of rapid cultural change contributed to the revival of Islamic fundamentalism and the imposition of orthodoxy in Iran and elsewhere.
Independence
Contrasting Methods
On the other hand, the clergy have little knowledge of science and are reluctant to discuss controversial topics in the pulpit. The first is known only through subjective involvement; the latter is recognized in the scientist's typical objective detachment. The meaning of life is found only in commitment and action, never in the spectatorial, rational attitude of the scientist who seeks general abstract concepts and universal laws.
Both science and religion can be demonic when used in the service of certain ideologies and when the ambiguity of human nature is ignored.20.
Differing Languages
In the linguistic view that Lindbeck himself advocates, doctrines are rules of discourse that are correlated with individual and communal forms of life. By minimizing the role of beliefs and truth claims, the linguistic view avoids conflicts between science and theology that can arise in the propositional view, yet it escapes the individualism and subjectivity of the expressive view. Nature tends to be treated as the unredeemed framework for human redemption, even though it may participate in the eschatological fulfillment at the end of time.
If God acts exclusively in the realm of the self, and not in the realm of nature, natural order is devoid.
Dialogue
Boundary Questions
One type of boundary question refers to the general presuppositions of the entire scientific enterprise. The theologian may answer that God is the creative basis and reason for the random but rational unitary order of the universe. McMullin, however, maintains that the doctrine of creation is not at all an explanation of cosmological beginnings, but an assertion of the absolute dependence of the world on God at every moment.
How much room is there for the reformulation of classical theological doctrines in the light of the results of science.
Methodological Parallels
The interpretation of the data (such as religious experiences and historical events) is even more paradigm dependent than in the case of science. Stephen Toulmin traces the change from the assumption of a detached spectator to the recognition of the spectator's participation. But Rolston recognizes that personal involvement is more total in the case of religion, since its primary purpose is the reformation of the person.
Religious faith must always be seen in the context of the life of the religious community and in relation to the goal of personal transformation.
Integration
Natural Theology
These are what we have called boundary questions, since they refer only to the existence and very general features of the world. He then argues that the evidence for order in the world increases the likelihood of the theistic hypothesis. He also maintains that science cannot account for the presence of conscious beings in the world.
Being a scientist trained in twentieth-century habits of thought and language rather than eighteenth, I do not claim that.
Theology of Nature
Our understanding of the general features of nature will influence our models of God's relationship to nature. As we will see in Chapter 6, Peacocke offers some rich imagery for talking about God's actions in a world of chance and law. In some passages Peacocke suggests the analogy of the world as the body of God, and God as the spirit or soul of the world.
The writings of the Jesuit paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin are another example of a theology of nature.
Systematic Synthesis
Quoted by Ernan McMullin, 'How Should Cosmology Relate to Theology?' in The Science and Theology in the Twentieth Century, ed. Arkansas, along with articles by several participants in the process, is printed in Science, Technology & Human Values 7 (Summer 1982) Torrance also defends contingency within the created order ( i.e. the unpredictability of certain events), as reflected in the uncertainties of quantum physics.
Ernan McMullin, 'How should cosmology relate to theology?' in The Sciences and Theology in the Twentieth Century, ed.
Religion in an Age of Science by Ian Barbour Part 1: Religion and the Methods of Science
Models and Paradigms
- The Structures of Science and Religion
- Belief and Experience In Religion
- Story and Ritual in Christianity
- The Role of Models
- Models in Science
- Models in Religion
- Personal and Impersonal Models
- Christian Models
- The Role of Paradigms
- Paradigms in Science
- Paradigms in Religion
- Paradigms in Christianity
- Tentativeness and Commitment
- Tradition and Criticism
- Central and Peripheral Beliefs
- Revelation, Faith, and Reason
The model helped with the formulation of the mathematical equations for the theory (for example, the equations for the energy levels of the electrons). Sometimes the laws of the old theory are actually included in the new theory as limiting cases. The mystic is careful in the use of models and may say that the object of the experience cannot be described.
In the history of Israel, decisive events were only revelatory when they were interpreted in the light of the prophet's experience of God.
Religion in an Age of Science by Ian Barbour
Religion and the Methods of Science
Similarities and Differences
- History in Science and Religion
- Historical Explanation
- Story and History in Christianity
- Objectivity and Relativism
- The Social Construction of Science
- Third World Critiques
- Feminist Critiques
- Religious Pluralism
- The Interpretation of Religious Experience
- Between Absolutism and Relativism
- Conclusions
The limitations of the blanket law model are further highlighted by the unpredictability of history. The previous points can be summarized together by suggesting that there are a variety of types of explanations within each of the disciplines. Martin Luther King, for example, understood himself in light of the Exodus and the crucifixion, and these motifs of liberation and self.
But this neglects both the role of community and the belief that faith is a response to what God has done in the past. The God of the Bible is also understood to be the God of nature and history and the God of our lives. Not so, say authors in the social construction of the scientific movement, especially the more extreme versions of the "hard program." Research design is not given to us by nature.
The starting point here is the confirmation of the presence of God in the faith and life of persons from other traditions. More recently, feminist and Third World writers have helped us see some of the biases in the classical tradition. It brings liberation from the search for certainty, which is one of the motivations of.
John Dominic Crossan, In Parables: The Challenge of the Historical Jesus (New York: Harper & Row, 1973). 34; Biblical Faith and the World's Poor," in Faith and Science in an Unjust World, ed.
Religion and the Theories of Science
Physics and Metaphysics
- Quantum Theory
- Complementarity
- Indeterminacy
- Parts and Wholes
- Bell’s Theorem
- Relativity and Thermodynamics
- Space, Time and, Matter
- The Status of Time
- Order and Disorder
- Metaphysical Implications
- The Role of Mind
- Life, Freedom, and God
- Physics and Eastern Mysticism
- Conclusions
Already in the field of physics we confront issues of the observer and the observed, chance and law, and parts and whole. This view of the world as a clockwork mechanism led to the deistic view of god as the. Theories allow us to correlate diverse aspects of the world that manifest in different experimental situations.
Bohr postulated the reality of the atomic system interacting with the observing system. There must be independent evidence of the value of two alternative models or sets of constructs in the other domain. The energy levels of a series of atoms in the solid state (such as a crystal lattice) are a property of the entire system rather than of its components.
In particular, we must think of two particles and two detectors as a single indivisible experimental situation. The statistical correlation becomes apparent only when the records of the two detectors are later compared.)23. This was sometimes taken as proof that the human mind shapes the reality of the world.
Furthermore, we have seen that many of the supposed implications of recent physics appear to be questionable. It is evidence of interconnectedness and wholeness, not pervasiveness of mindset or consciousness. We will find the same combination of chance and law in other areas, including quantum effects at early moments.
The inseparability of the observer and the observed was presented as further evidence of interdependence.
Astronomy and Creation
- The Big Bang
- Theories in Astrophysics
- Theological Responses
- Creation in Judaism and Christianity
- Historical Ideas of Creation
- The Interpretation of Genesis Today
- The New Cosmology
- Design: The Anthropic Principle
- Necessity: A Theory of Everything
- Theological Implications
- Intelligibility and Contingency
- Ex Nihilo and Continuing Creation
- The Significance of Humanity
- Eschatology and the Future
As for the future of the cosmos, observations show that the rate of expansion is very close to the critical threshold between eternal expansion (open universe) and expansion for a very long time before contracting again (closed universe). Anthropologists and scholars of world religions have studied various creation stories and examined their role in structuring human experience in relation to the meaningful world. A striking feature of the new cosmological theories is that even a small change in the physical constants would cause
The theory already suggests that the slight imbalance between particles and antiparticles may have arisen from a slight asymmetry in the decay processes of the X and the anti-X bosons (the very heavy particles, which are the unified force of the GUT theory mediated). At the singularity, God would have had freedom to choose both the initial conditions and the laws of the. Then all of us, philosophers, scientists and just ordinary people, will be able to participate in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist.
God alone is infinitely free, and both the existence and structure of the world are contingent in the sense that they might not have been. The details of particular scientific cosmologies are irrelevant to the contingency of the world's existence. We have seen that quantum phenomena played a role in the very early history of the Big Bang.
In the Middle Ages and the Reformation, much attention was paid to the end of the world and. We have seen that the expansion of the universe is slowing down, but the current evidence is insufficient to decide whether it is open (expanding forever) or closed (expanding to a maximum before collapsing).