About
By Robert Royal
Surveys of young people show that many lose their faith because they believe religion has been disproved by science. Among many other factors, this error is a major challenge for the Church – which doesn't get nearly enough attention. I thought of this when my longtime friend Phil Lawler and I were emailing a few weeks ago – always an enlightening thing – and we discovered that we both keep a kind of side interest in trying to understand quantum theory.
He does it to keep abreast, as much as a non-specialist can, of a significant intellectual development of our time (as did now-Blessed Fulton Sheen). I do it, I think, because a long, long time ago on a planet far, far away, I entered university as a physics student. Years later, I found to my relief that the young Socrates studied physics as well because, like me, he wanted to know the nature of things.
Well, the math (which I'd always been good at) began to seem increasingly fictional to me. I know now that it isn't. But you need another gear in your head for that kind of math, which I lacked. So like the older Socrates, I took other avenues to truth, though I follow, as an amateur, quantum mechanics and other scientific developments.
I "follow the science," but not in the way that phrase gets used today. In the classic formulation, science is a "value-free" pursuit, great for discovering truths about energy and matter, and the space/time continuum in which we live. And all the more valuable when it adheres to its domain of the value-free. But this raises a question. How do otherwise intelligent people write on social media or put up lawn signs that say, "Follow the Science," as if science can tell us how to live?
It's clearly a tactic, invoking the prestige of modern science to pressure us: to accept things like abortion (though the science of embryology shows that a living human being with unique DNA exists from the moment of conception); to downplay the differences between men and women, which are many and demonstrable far beyond the XX/XY chromosomal binary. "THE Science," it appears, should also lead us to regard homosexuality, "trans" people, non-traditional families, etc. as "normal," despite social-science surveys demonstrating their correlation with unhappiness, and various psychological and social disorders.
There are sciences that guide life – theology, philosophy, ethics – but properly followed, they lead in very different directions. Oddly, there are hundreds of very good books, old and new, and online sites that clarify the crucial distinction between the natural sciences and the sciences that constitute wisdom. But with little effect.
Which is remarkable given that it's precisely the failure to make this distinction that prevents many people, especially young people, from understanding how following only the physical sciences has led precisely to the sense of aimlessness and meaninglessness that's all around us today. As the American physicist Steven Weinberg wrote in his highly influential book The First Three Minutes, "The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless."
That's partly true, but tragically false.
It's partly true from the perspective of value-free science, where ends and meaning were methodically excluded. But it's tragically, catastrophically false as the only credible account not only of human life but of the order, truth, and beauty of the universe itself.
Phil Lawler mentioned in our exchange that he doesn't entirely understand quantum theory. (Even scientists – Richard Feynman with notable charm – say they don't either.) But it has convinced Phil that science can recognize that there are realities that we don't see – and can't in principle. Witness the experience of people who have "died" and come back with astonishing, similar accounts.
After our email exchange, I had what the French call l'esprit d'escalier, i.e., I thought of something I should have said. Non-believers often claim that ther...
Surveys of young people show that many lose their faith because they believe religion has been disproved by science. Among many other factors, this error is a major challenge for the Church – which doesn't get nearly enough attention. I thought of this when my longtime friend Phil Lawler and I were emailing a few weeks ago – always an enlightening thing – and we discovered that we both keep a kind of side interest in trying to understand quantum theory.
He does it to keep abreast, as much as a non-specialist can, of a significant intellectual development of our time (as did now-Blessed Fulton Sheen). I do it, I think, because a long, long time ago on a planet far, far away, I entered university as a physics student. Years later, I found to my relief that the young Socrates studied physics as well because, like me, he wanted to know the nature of things.
Well, the math (which I'd always been good at) began to seem increasingly fictional to me. I know now that it isn't. But you need another gear in your head for that kind of math, which I lacked. So like the older Socrates, I took other avenues to truth, though I follow, as an amateur, quantum mechanics and other scientific developments.
I "follow the science," but not in the way that phrase gets used today. In the classic formulation, science is a "value-free" pursuit, great for discovering truths about energy and matter, and the space/time continuum in which we live. And all the more valuable when it adheres to its domain of the value-free. But this raises a question. How do otherwise intelligent people write on social media or put up lawn signs that say, "Follow the Science," as if science can tell us how to live?
It's clearly a tactic, invoking the prestige of modern science to pressure us: to accept things like abortion (though the science of embryology shows that a living human being with unique DNA exists from the moment of conception); to downplay the differences between men and women, which are many and demonstrable far beyond the XX/XY chromosomal binary. "THE Science," it appears, should also lead us to regard homosexuality, "trans" people, non-traditional families, etc. as "normal," despite social-science surveys demonstrating their correlation with unhappiness, and various psychological and social disorders.
There are sciences that guide life – theology, philosophy, ethics – but properly followed, they lead in very different directions. Oddly, there are hundreds of very good books, old and new, and online sites that clarify the crucial distinction between the natural sciences and the sciences that constitute wisdom. But with little effect.
Which is remarkable given that it's precisely the failure to make this distinction that prevents many people, especially young people, from understanding how following only the physical sciences has led precisely to the sense of aimlessness and meaninglessness that's all around us today. As the American physicist Steven Weinberg wrote in his highly influential book The First Three Minutes, "The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless."
That's partly true, but tragically false.
It's partly true from the perspective of value-free science, where ends and meaning were methodically excluded. But it's tragically, catastrophically false as the only credible account not only of human life but of the order, truth, and beauty of the universe itself.
Phil Lawler mentioned in our exchange that he doesn't entirely understand quantum theory. (Even scientists – Richard Feynman with notable charm – say they don't either.) But it has convinced Phil that science can recognize that there are realities that we don't see – and can't in principle. Witness the experience of people who have "died" and come back with astonishing, similar accounts.
After our email exchange, I had what the French call l'esprit d'escalier, i.e., I thought of something I should have said. Non-believers often claim that ther...