Science and Faith

 

Science and Faith

As we enter the age of AI, many changes will take place in our thinking and attitudes. Years of hard labour once required for research and investigation are now within our reach in seconds. The libraries of the world are at our disposal. Literary masterpieces unfold instantly before us. Intricate metaphors, complex ideas, and abstruse theories become clear in no time. Undoubtedly, we are moving into a new world shaped by knowledge and technology.

In this new world, it is natural to ask whether faith or religion still has a place. Can humanity move forward confidently without dependence on faith or belief in God? Human beings are moral by nature and are constantly prompted to distinguish right from wrong. As in the use of atomic energy—an explosive and potentially annihilating force—it is human beings who decide when and how to use it. As moral beings, we are guided not only by knowledge but also by moral vision and values.

Science and faith are not opposing forces. Science unravels the secrets of nature and, in doing so, makes humanity more humble and wise. Faith concerns the mind and the soul; it engages with spiritual realities beyond matter—truth, love, beauty, and meaning. Faith helps us understand nature more deeply, and science enriches that understanding.

Science offers theories that are self-correcting as knowledge advances. As Francis Collins explains, “Science is progressive and self-correcting… and is therefore called a theory—the theory of gravitation, the theory of relativity, or the germ theory.”

Sir Isaac Newton expressed the vastness of undiscovered knowledge before his death in 1727:
“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore… while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

Albert Einstein, though not a believer in a personal God, acknowledged the mystery behind nature:
“We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages… The child suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but does not know what it is.”

In The Tao of Physics (1975), Fritjof Capra explains the uncertainty at the heart of modern physics through Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle:
“We cannot simultaneously know the exact position and the exact momentum of a particle.”
This highlights the limitations of science. It is not an all-knowing or all-powerful source of knowledge; other realities exist in the universe.

Pope John Paul II, in his Apostolic Letter Fides et Ratio, spoke clearly about the harmony between faith and reason. Despite claims that the Church opposes science—often citing the case of Galileo—many scientists have been people of faith, and priests have contributed significantly to scientific research. The Pope writes:
“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth… There is no competition between reason and faith; each contains the other and each has its own scope for action.”

Scientists have discovered the forces of nature and used them for the good of humanity. Yet what they discover already exists within creation. Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project, writes:
“God is not threatened by science; He made it possible… The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. He can be worshipped in the cathedral or in the laboratory.”

In his book The Language of God, Collins asks whether harmony between science and spirituality is still possible in the age of cosmology, evolution, and the human genome. His answer is a resounding “Yes.” After studying DNA, he concluded that the genetic code alone cannot explain human awareness of the moral law or the universal search for God.

Collins eventually embraced the Christian faith through his scientific research. He was convinced that the moral law within the human heart cannot arise from matter alone. He was also influenced by the anthropic principle, which suggests that the fundamental constants of physics are so precisely tuned that even the slightest variation would make life impossible. Scientists speak of the “fine-tuning” of the universe—constants such as gravity, the speed of light, Planck’s constant, the proton’s charge and mass, and the rate of cosmic expansion.

Max Planck, the founder of quantum theory, summarized his view of matter in these words:
“All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this minute solar system of the atom together.”