Our modern world is filled with many wonders. Machines make the chores of everyday life easy to manage. The speed us from one place to another. The make our homes and work places cool in the summer and warm in the winter. The feed us with a wide variety of foods, conquer diseases the killed whole populations in the past. All of these blessings God has given us in large part through a powerful technique known as science. One of the reasons we very much want to have harmony between science, opinions based on it and our faith is that we enjoy these wonders.
Human thought, reasoning, logic and its fruits are gifts from God. When we use them to serve God and each other, they are in harmony with our faith. Theologians call this use the ministerial use of reason. Yet often, as did our first parents, Adam and Eve, (Genesis 3) we decide that we know better than God what is best, right and true. We buy Satan’s lies and act on what we think we should do, directly disobeying God. Like the ancient people of Babylon, we use technology to make a name for ourselves. (Genesis 11) Theologians call this the magisterial use of reason. As you might imagine, this puts us in direct conflict with God and with our faith.
When it comes to using science as our servant and not our master, it helps to understand that it, like all our knowledge, has its limits. To begin with, it helps to know what science is. Science is, at its basic nature, is a method of observation. While not directly saying that supernatural things are not real, science, for the most part, sets them aside. It concentrates on what we can see, touch, taste, hear and smell, and using instruments that extend our senses, what we can measure and record. It seeks to create conditions that can be controlled and investigated in these ways and that can be repeated over and over again. When it sees the same results happen over and over again, it explains why it thinks this is so. As long as these experiments continue to produce effect that fit the theory, it accepts them as true.
So, strictly speaking, science really can’t learn about creation. By definition, you can’t repeat the beginning of all things. No one today can be at the time when humans first walked on earth. No one can observe it, measure it and record it. So, then, theories of our origins have no data support them. We need someone who was there. That someone, of course, is God.
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