There are several interesting points, the last paragraphs (below) seem critical to our times.
”CHRISTIAN TRUTH IN AN AGE OF SCIENTIFIC MYTHOLOGY”
https://www.catholicscientists.org/idea ... -mythology
(i added bold, line spacing, emojis, etc., to help me read) .... .. One of the problems with Scientific Triumphalism, the notion that science has displaced all other ways of arriving at truth, is that there are many questions it cannot provide answers to, including most of the important questions of life and how we should live our lives.
Modern science as we know and practice it emerged in the early modern period within a Western Christian culture. In the service of human flourishing it has done great good.
But in an increasingly secularized West, science as a methodology for solving problems is in constant danger of pulling loose from its religious and spiritual moorings. Whenever this happens, the result is disaster.
In ethics and in morality science cannot provide for itself. There are two things in particular it has to borrow from elsewhere, and these are “compassion” and “hope”.
Concerning compassion, one way to put the problem is this:
“compassion for the weak is not a principle of science.”
The more you think about that the more frightening it becomes.
To be fair, all of the atheist scientists I have known who claimed to live by science alone actually had quite a lot of compassion for the weak.
Whether this arose from the “law written in their hearts” by God (Romans 2:14-5)
or from breathing what is left of the increasingly rarified religious component of the atmosphere of our culture I cannot say.
But this compassion was certainly not an outgrowth of their scientific materialism.
I have always been simultaneously puzzled by and grateful for the compassion of atheists,
but I never inquire too deeply about it, out of fear I might trigger a recognition of what I have just told you: “compassion for the weak is not a principle of science.”
In fact, compassion for the weak is the virtue science most easily forgets.
The flirtation with eugenics in the last century was an attempt to improve the human race by eliminating the so-called weak.
In the United States it resulted in forced sterilizations and in Europe millions died.
In the future, when we have constructed clear enough genetic maps to choose precisely between the weak and the strong, how many millions will die?
The machinery is already in place, and our culture has already declared its willingness to cooperate in such an “improvement project” by assenting to the abortion of many millions of children.
In addition to “compassion for the weak,” science lacks the route to another important virtue, and that is hope.
From observation we know not only that each of us will die, but that in the distant future our planet will undergo the same fate.
Even if there is no catastrophic asteroid collision that wipes out all life sooner, in 5 billion years or so the sun will grow into a red giant star, boil away the earth’s oceans and atmosphere and leave a lifeless rock. Everything we have ever created or will create will be lost forever. Even if we can move elsewhere, the increasing expansion of the universe will eventually mean energy is too dilute to sustain life.
Science gives us no reason to hope in the face of existential fears.
And the loss of hope has become a serious problem in the secular world.
According to the World Health Organization, the leading cause of violent deaths is suicide,
which is roughly twice as common as homicide and seven times more common than death from violent conflict.
In many ways we live in our own Dark Ages, an era of despair.
Never have so many, with so much, been so unhappy. Science can show us how to live longer, but it cannot show us how we ought to live or even that we ought to live.
Science itself is a great good and a great gift.
It is not and never has been an enemy of religion.
What is harmful to religion, and not only to religion but to science itself, is what I have called
Scientific Mythology and Scientific Triumphalism.
These are cultural phenomena that do not stem from the discoveries of science but from the vanity of some scientists who are unable to put science in proper perspective.
coincidentally, just recently, i have been thinking “we” are now in a second period of (psychological) Dark Ages, for much the same reasons this author is citing. “we” are choosing ignorance, depravity, calling it fact, and revelling in it. at great cost to many.