Faith Journal #5
by Paul Marsek
Challenges to Faith
Summary of the key idea summarizing the major idea of the section.
The key idea of this section is challenges to faith. The first challenge to faith is the attack from atheism. Atheism is not believing in a higher being and having no Faith. The main attack from atheism was by Friedrich Nietzsche. He said that the time of people believing in God is dead. Scientism is another challenge to faith. People like proof and believe that science can give them more answers than religion can. Father Kavanaugh and the video "The Merchants of Cool" talked about dehumanization through advertisement. They talked about how media and advertisements form us and shape our values and personalities.
The three most important ideas I want to remember from this section.
1. I would like to remember the difference between positive and practical atheists. Positive atheists make up roughly 2% of Americans. Positive atheists make a conscious decision not to believe in God. They strongly believe that God does not exist. Their atheism is a key part of their personality. Most positiive atheists believe that religion is a hinderance to human progress. A good example of a positive atheist is Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche was so much of an atheist that he critiscized atheists who still lived by the same morals of everyone else. A practical atheist is someone who was raised baptised in some religion and is similar to a Christmas and Easter Catholic. They are only in the church when it can benifit them. So they are atheists, only believing in God when its for positive gain. An example of a positive atheist was Thomas Hobbes. It is important to know that there are differfent kinds of atheists. Many people who may consider themselves Catholics are actuallly practical atheists. Many people who call themselves aheists might not be as strong in their beliefs as they thnk.
2. The second thing that I would like to remember are the three stages of the relationship between science and religion. The first stage is unreflective unity. In the years before the renaissance, there was almost no distinction between the teachings of science and the teachings of the church. In the age of enliightenment, they were in the stage of reflective disunity. People began to use the scientific method and teachings of the church began to contradict the findings of scientists. This resulted in persecution of scientists by the church. The most famous example of this is the church's persecution of Galileo. The final stage in the relationship that they are now entering is reflective unity. Each party knows that neither science nor religion can give you all the answers. One large step in reparing this relationship was when Pope John Paul II apologized for the church's treatment of Galileo.
3. The third thing that I would like to remember is limitations of the scientific method. Knowing the limitations of what science can do leaves room for the possibility of God and makes religion reasonable. Science presupposes the uniformity of nature. The scientific laws used in everyday life are generalizations that are assumed true for every instance. Laws that we have proved true for the last 100,000 years we assume we true billlions of years ago when the earth was created. Science emphasizes empiracle knowledge. Empiracal knowledge is based on matter and the physical world. God and spirits are not composed of matter, so according to the scientific method they can't be measured. So science can't prove or disprove anything beyond the physical world. The Scientific method does not give us certitude. In the scientific method thereis always room for one more theory or hypothesis to account for the way things work. And nothing can be proved true for every instance because you cant test every instance. Using the scientific method you can disprove theories and hypotheses, but you cant prove them entirely true.
key images:
click on image to view its source
Question to ponder:
Q: The readings book says that one of the faults of the scientific method, is that it does not give us certitude, so that leaves room for Faith. Are they saying that Faith gives us certitute?
