God and Science - A Catholic View

In tonight's sharing, we touched a bit on science and religion, and how they fit together. Below is something that I wrote to someone about my thoughts on the topic... let me know what you think!!

============

Catholic Teaching to be found here.

This is from the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), which is a place where all the church's official teachings are collated.
See the wiki entry for a start if you want to find out mroe about the CCC.

Back to the Catholic teaching:

You will see from paragraph 282, that the chruch irecognises that everyone s concerned with questions like "Where do we come from?" "Where are we going?" "What is our origin?" "What is our end?" "Where does everything that exists come from and where is it going?".

Para 283 states: "The question about the origins of the world and of man has been the object of many scientific studies which have splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos, the development of life-forms and the appearance of man." The fact that it says that scientific studies have splendidly enriched our knowledge,means that the church agees with science in that evolution might have occured as the creation of the world.

Para 284 goes on to say: "The great interest accorded to these studies is strongly stimulated by a question of another order, which goes beyond the proper domain of the natural sciences. It is not only a question of knowing when and how the universe arose physically, or when man appeared, but rather of discovering the meaning of such an origin...". When they say "these studies", they are referring to what the church is primarily concerned about. And the church is not concerned about the WHEN and HOW the universe arose (it leaves this to science) but it focuses on the MEANING of such an origin - the WHY.

If you keep reading, you will notice that the church does not EVER discredit science, or say that the theory of evolution is wrong. In fact, it doesn't even go down the track of HOW at all, but concentrates on WHY the world has come to be.

Remember what I said - the church never says that Scientific knowledge is WRONG. Maybe part of the reason that the church has not said that evolution is RIGHT, is because scientists themselves call it the THEORY of evolution - meaning they believe it to be the most correct answer right now, but that it has not yet been proven to be the ABSOLUTELY CORRECT answer.