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Where do you see these two concepts in your life?

Where I see science: Where I see them both: Where I see religion:

FLAME TEEN HANDOUT

Week 18– Religion and Science

What you

believe How do you define religion?

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What is religion to you?

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How do you define science?

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What is science to you?

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❖ What have you heard about religion and science?

❖ Do you think the two can go together?

❖ What do you think the Catholic Church believes about science?

❖ What does the media say about the relationship between religion

and science?

❖ What do your friends or classmates who are not religious say about

what you believe in relation to science?

❖ Have you ever had someone question your beliefs with science as

their argument? What did that conversation look like?

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• The Catholic Church does not

denounce science and accepts

scientific discoveries.

• There have been a TON of Christian

scientists, and there are still a good

percentage today.

Key Ideas

So, what DOES the Catholic Church believe? Is there

a contradiction between faith and science? We find our answer in YouCat, a Catholic resource for teens to help us understand our faith and the Catechism in

more down-to-Earth language. It was written in 2010 and published by the Catholic Church.

“There is no insoluble contradiction between faith and science,

because there cannot be two kinds of truth.

There is not one truth of faith that is in competition with another truth of science.

There is only one truth, to which both faith and scientific reason refer. God

intended reason, with which we can recognize the rational structures of the

world, just as He intended faith. That is why the Christian faith demands and

promotes the natural sciences. Faith exists so that we might know things that are

not apparent to reason yet are real above and beyond reason. Faith reminds

science that it is supposed to serve creation and not set itself up in place of God.

Science must respect human dignity instead of violating it.”

• Religion and

science CAN

coexist

• Examine your

own thinking.

What do you

believe?

Okay. So you read this through once. Read it

again. The language gets a little technical.

Read it slowly. Underline something that stands

out to you.

When you’re ready, discuss these questions:

• What did you underline? What stood out to you?

• Did anything surprise you?

• What is the Catholic Church saying about the

relationship between religion and science?

• What is the Catholic Church saying about the

purpose or the role of science?

• Does this contradict what you’ve learned in the

past?

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What do you think? What do religion and science say about certain topics? What do you

think about those same topics?

Talk about the ideas in the chart below as a group, filling out the “Science” and “Religion” columns. Then take a

few moments on your own to fill out the “Me” column with what you believe.

Science Religion Me

Origin of Man

Meaning of Life

Calculus

Morality

Destiny

Chemistry

Afterlife

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Science vs. Faith: A Contradiction? By Mark Hart and Todd Lemieux

There are a lot of questions that science cannot and will not answer. One of those questions is “why?”

Why did God create human beings? Why do human beings search for something bigger than themselves? Where is the human consciousness? Where is the human soul? How do we know that these two things exist? Why do human beings love? Why do human beings sacrifice themselves, even their lives, for others? Why do we think that certain things are always good and certain things are always bad?

When we eliminate the study of God from our lives and restrict ourselves to scientific explanations, we are not liberating ourselves, making ourselves freer and smarter. We are restricting ourselves more ignorant.

There is certainly a lot of be learned from the sciences. All of them. Since God create everything, we have nothing to fear from science. Science offers us an explanation of how God accomplished what He did, but we cannot forget that the science cannot tell us everything in the same way that a sculpture cannot tell us everything about the sculptor.

Science cannot tell us what is beautiful. Science cannot tell us what is good. Science cannot tell us what is truth.

It looks like we need faith after all.

"Science is very good at answering the 'how' questions. How did the universe evolve to

the form that we see? But it is woefully inadequate in addressing the 'why' questions.

Why is there a universe at all? These are the meaning questions, which many people

think religion is particularly good at dealing with."

-Brian Greene, a world-renowned physicist and author of “The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality”

As a group, talk about these questions:

➢ What are your thoughts on the passage? ➢ What are the authors saying about the analogy of the sculptor? How does

this relate to God? ➢ Do you think we have anything to fear from science? ➢ Do you think we have anything to fear from Christianity? ➢ The authors mention some “why” questions they have. What questions do

you have?

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Let’s call in some expert opinions…

The theories of evolution and the Big Bang are real and God is not “a magician with

a magic wand”, Pope Francis has declared.

Speaking at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Pope made comments which

experts said put an end to the “pseudo theories” of creationism and intelligent design

that some argue were encouraged by his predecessor, Benedict XVI.

Francis explained that both scientific theories were not incompatible with the

existence of a creator – arguing instead that they “require it”.

“When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a

magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so,” Francis said.

“The Big Bang, which today we hold to be the origin of the world, does not

contradict the intervention of the divine creator but, rather, requires it.

“Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because

evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve.”

Science can purify religion

from error and superstition;

religion can purify science

from idolatry and false

absolutes. Each can draw the

other into a wider world, a

world in which both can

flourish.

–Pope John Paul II

The truth of creation and

the theory of evolution do not

represent two different realities, he

wrote, as is often portrayed by the

perception that faith and science

operate in mutually exclusive

spheres. Pope Benedict instead

called creation and evolution

“complementary realities” in that

they are different, but they go

together.

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In the beginning… According to Catholic teaching, we do not have to denounce the theory evolution completely. “A Christian can accept the theory of evolution as a helpful explanatory model, provided he does not fall into the heresy of evolutionism, which views man as the random product of biological processes.” One of the ideas of evolution is that over time, mutations happen by chance that lead to new species or different aspects of them. Catholic teaching says, however, that this cannot be the case. “We believe that God, not chance, is the cause of the world.” The changes in the world are not aimless, but rather they exist because of God’s will. We as Catholics can accept the changes in the world and accept that science has proven that species transform over time, but the cause of these changes is not random. God is the force behind any evolving that may take place.

On the other hand, Catholic teaching tells us that creationism can also be misinterpreted. “Creationists naively take biblical data literally (for example, to calculate the world’s age, they cite the six days of work in Genesis 1).” So, we don’t have to take what is written in the Bible literally in this case? Why then does Genesis say the world was created in six days? According to our teaching, “the symbol of the work week, which is crowned by a day of rest (Genesis 1:1-2:3), is an expression of how good, beautiful, and wisely ordered creation is.” In other words, it probably didn’t take only six days, but these days are a good way to break down time in a way that is easier for us to comprehend. Time can be a tricky thing to grasp!

As a class, read Genesis 1:1-2:3

Discussion questions: ((There are no wrong answers))

How do you interpret what is said in Genesis?

How do you think Genesis 1 conflicts with evolution?

How do you interpret the days that are discussed?

Do you believe in evolution, creationism, or a combination of the two?

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We look again at YouCat for some FAQs:

Does science make the Creator superfluous?

No. The sentence “God created the world” is not an outmoded scientific statement. We are dealing

here with a theo-logical statement, therefore a statement about the divine meaning (theos = God,

logos = meaning) and origin of things. The creation account is not a scientific model for explaining the

beginning of the world. “God created the world” is a theological statement that is concerned with the

relation of the world to God. God willed the world; he sustains it and will perfect it. Being created is a

lasting quality in things and a fundamental truth about them.

Can someone accept the theory of evolution and still believe in the Creator?

Yes. Although it is a different kind of knowledge, faith is open to the findings and hypotheses of the

sciences. Theology has no scientific competence, and natural science has no theological competence.

Natural science cannot dogmatically rule out the possibility that there are purposeful processes in

creation; conversely, faith cannot define specifically how these processes take place in the course of

nature’s development. A Christian can accept the theory of evolution as a helpful explanatory model,

provided he does not fall into the heresy of evolutionism, which views man as the random product of

biological processes. →EVOLUTION presupposes the existence of something that can develop. The

theory says nothing about where this “something” came from. Furthermore, questions about the

being, essence, dignity, mission, meaning, and wherefore of the world and man cannot be answered in

biological terms. Just as “evolutionism” oversteps a boundary on the one side, so does →CREATIONISM

on the other. Creationists naïvely take biblical data literally (for example, to calculate the earth’s age,

they cite the six days of work in Genesis 1).

Is the world a product of chance?

No. God, not chance, is the cause of the world. Neither in its origin nor with respect to its intrinsic

order and purposefulness is it the product of factors working “aimlessly”. Christians believe that they

can read God’s handwriting in his creation. To scientists who talk about the whole world as a random,

meaningless, and aimless process, Pope John Paul II pointed out in reply in 1985, “Given a universe in

which there is such a complex organization of its elements and such a wonderful purposefulness in its

life, talking about chance would be equivalent to giving up the search for an explanation of the world

as it appears to us. In fact it would be tantamount to accepting effects without cause. It would be an

abdication of human reason, which in this way would be refusing to think and to search for a solution

to problems.”

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Who created the world?

God alone, who is beyond time and space, created the world out of nothing and called all things into

being. Everything that exists depends on God and continues in being only because God wills it to be.

The creation of the world is, so to speak, a “community project” of the Trinitarian God. The Father is

the Creator, the Almighty. The Son is the meaning and heart of the world: “All things were created

through him and for him” (Col 1:16). We find out what the world is good for only when we come to

know Christ and understand that the world is heading for a destination: the truth, goodness, and

beauty of the Lord. The Holy Spirit holds everything together; he is the one “that gives life” (Jn 6:63).

Do natural laws and natural systems come from God also?

Yes. The laws of nature and natural systems are also part of God’s creation. Man is not a blank slate.

He is shaped by the order and the natural laws that God has inscribed in his creation. A Christian does

not simply do “whatever he wants”. He knows that he harms himself and damages his environment

when he denies natural laws, uses things in ways contrary to their intrinsic order, and tries to be wiser

than God, who created them. It demands too much of a person when he tries to design himself from

start to finish.

Why does the Book of Genesis depict creation as “the work of six days”?

The symbol of the work week, which is crowned by a day of rest (Gen 1:1-2:3), is an expression of how

good, beautiful, and wisely ordered creation is. From the symbolism of “the work of six days” we can

derive important principles: (1) Nothing exists that was not called into being by the Creator. (2)

Everything that exists is good in its own way. (3) Something that has become bad still has a good core.

(4) Created beings and things are interrelated and interdependent. (5) Creation in its order and

harmony reflects the surpassing goodness and beauty of God. (6) In creation there is an order of

complexity: man is superior to an animal, an animal is superior to a plant, a plant is superior to

inanimate matter. (7) Creation is heading for the great celebration when Christ will bring the world

home and God will be everything to everyone.

I Learned Statements – complete at least two of the sentences below

I discovered. . . I learned…

I was reminded that. . .

The question I have is. . I was surprised by. . .