At one point in his talk he essentially said that God is only needed to fill in the blanks of what we don’t know. The more we know, the less need there is for God.

My prediction is that scientists will keep inventing “patches” to repair faults in existing theories. Gravity is the chief faulty theory and for some unknown reason the scientific world is desperately trying to repair. We love it because it is the simplest model of the Universe – one that obeys Einstein’s equations, and made only of atomic matter. We have had to patch it by inventing two forms of matter – Dark Matter and Dark Energy. Black holes were invented because gravity does not explain scientific observations.

Einstein introduced a ‘cosmological constant'(read ‘patch’) into his equations in order to allow for the possibility of a repulsive anti-gravity force to counteract the gravitational pull of matter. This patch made his equations fit with the prevailing view of the time that the volume of the universe was static.

I can hardly blame them really, because what real science does hold forth on the basis of repeated experiment is so very fair, blind to all the foibles of race, sex, origin.. anybody so inclined can repeat the experiments and see the results for themselves. It’s very comforting, that, in its way.

Sometimes I speculate the above is the nature of the ‘promise after the flood’ — meaning not that there won’t be further natural disasters but that the heart of science: that the future will be like the past insofar as the repeatability of experimental results is assured. Done fussing ‘the constants and equations of the universe’ as it were, a declaration that it’s all fair and reliable going forward.

They do not understand the essence of religion yet they criticize it. Their criticism does not touch the essence of faith, since they are unable to understand the types, the expressions of religious feeling. The essence of religion they do not understand. Why not? Because the Lord Jesus Christ says “No one can come to me unless My Father who sent Me draws him to Me.(John 6:44)

So it is necessary that we be drawn by the Heavenly Father, it is necessary that the grace of the Holy Spirit enlighten our heart and our mind. To dwell in our heart and mind through this enlightenment, the Holy Spirit and the ones who were found worthy to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, those in whose heart lives Christ and His Father, know the essence of faith. The others, outside the faith cannot understand anything.
St. Luke Archbishop of Simferopol the Surgeon

What we doubt is the right of science to research with its methods the spiritual world. Because the spiritual world cannot be researched with the methods used to research the material world. Such methods are totally inappropriate to research the spiritual world.

How do we know that there is a spiritual world? Who told us that it exists? If we are asked by people who do not believe in the Divine revelation, we shall answer them thus: “Our heart told us”. For there are two ways for one to know something, the first is that which is spoken by Haeckel, which is used by science to learn of the material world. There is however another way that is unknown to science, and does not wish to know it. It is the knowledge through the heart. Our heart is not only the central organ of the circulation system, it is an organ with which we know the other world and receive the highest knowledge. It is the organ that gives us the capability to communicate with God and the above world. Only in this we disagree with science.

Peter, I do not believe that sincere scientists find grounds to assert science dismisses or accepts anything about which there is no experimental basis. There are those who make a religion out of their sense of the implications of what fraction of present science they happen to know, that’s all. They would never use the term ‘religion’ to characterize this doing, but it is in fact the most apropos.

It’s very hard for folk trained in that world to integrate how it comes to pass things they plainly experience that do not admit to measurement. I can hardly blame them really, because what real science does hold forth on the basis of repeated experiment is so very fair, blind to all the foibles of race, sex, origin.. anybody so inclined can repeat the experiments and see the results for themselves. It’s very comforting, that, in its way.

Bingo, Harry! You have expressed exactly the ‘problem’ with many scientists. They mistakenly conclude that “if it can’t be quantified, it can’t be known.” Strictly speaking, it is correct that “science,” as it is currently (and narrowly) understood, cannot “know” about beauty, truth and goodness and certainly has nothing to say about God. Their elevation of the objective and disparaging dismissal of the subjective corresponds pretty closely to the division between the impersonal and the personal. One might say, between easy and difficult, but that would be disparaging.

Where science and faith diverge is when we confront the Mystery. The “scientist” (of the ‘bad’ sort) dismisses it as ‘unreal because unknowable’ (pride) while the faithful acknowledges his limitations and bows his head before the majesty of creation(humility). It may be argued that this latter attitude does nothing to advance our understanding of creation, but the scientific dismissal of all-but-the-material does exactly the same.

Likewise we hear tales of monastic holy cures for earaches involving pouring into the ear oil a rat drowned in.

I’ve never, ever heard it!

All true scientists know anything which can’t be measured in some way is outside the perimeter of scientific comment. The problem is that many scientists are willing to deny the existence of what they can’t measure, making the assumption that as they can’t measure anything about it therefore nobody else ever could.

In much the same mode of human hubris we see people of faith asserting some personal interpretation as being true in direct conflict with what God given eyes and ears repeatably give many of us to see.

For example, everyone has at some point seen something beautiful. It is a feeling, a conclusion, it is complex and simple at the same moment. Nobody doubts it exists, but there is nothing repeatably measureable about it, scientists feel it but cannot theorize about it.

Likewise we hear tales of monastic holy cures for earaches involving pouring into the ear oil a rat drowned in. So the people of faith really ought to take a leaf from the scientist’s book from time to time…

Eliot, a brief story. Many years ago a well known and respected astrophysicist who was raised in my parish came and gave a talk about his work and how it related to his faith. It really didn’t. The pre-suppositions of his work had overtaken and eclipsed his faith (although he did not see it that way). At one point in his talk he essentially said that God is only needed to fill in the blanks of what we don’t know. The more we know, the less need there is for God.

Intelligence can be a pride producing trait especially when it is immersed in a milleau of competition for money and philosophical naturalism.

Once again we are faced with what, IMO, is the paramount challenge of our time for the Church–what is a human being?

The scientists of whom you speak have adopted an anthropological model that exclues the possibility of a much beyond humanity as a bio-mechanical organism with an emotional and psychological component.

I believe they are confused too … or ignorant.
I am trying to understand how people with assumed high intellectual and logical abilities can be so careless regarding such an extremely important matter – the eternal soul. Why are they gambling with their souls? Why did they conclude that the soul does not exist? Why their narrow focus on worldly knowledge and the dedication of their lives to it? What ties them together is a strong belief in Darwin’s theory of evolution or in other theories?

The confusion you write of is among the non-scientists, those who make idols and dogmas out of scientific theories, those who have other needs and agendas, those who do not understand the theory’s limits and nuances, those who ascribe to theories implications and conclusions beyond the support of experiemental results.

Real theories describe accurately all the observed relevant phenomena known to date and make reasonable predictions about observations to come. Those are then tested, leading to either confirmations, refinements, and so forth.

He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Mathew 5, 45

Science is now facing the need to “revoke many theories”. Of course, we can’t ignore the theories altogether, neither should we totally lose confidence in all of science, when mistakes are being aknowledged. Science is a wonderful way to learn about our world, and learning from mistakes is how science progresses.

Science created new medical treatments, the radio, airplanes, internet, etc. It was very useful and very successful. For quite a long time science was considered to be much better than the alternatives. Nowadays we are facing profoundly pessimistic assessments about the fate of mankind … we are past the point of no return, it is already too late to save ourselves. All of it is attributed to the consequences of technology.

Through technology the world became smaller, but despite this we are less likely to talk face-to-face. We left unexplored opportunities and amazing capabilities. The gifts received by the Holy Fathers are nothing less that what science offers, on the contrary: healings when doctors have given up, reading thoughts without using complicated detectors, defying gravity, emitting light, traveling a large distance without any polluting technological device.

http://www.oca.org/FSLivesAllSaints.asp?SID=4&M=8&D=7 St Theodora of Sihla

Placing all her hope in God, she continued her spiritual struggles, and reached great heights of perfection. When she prayed her mind was raised up to Heaven, and her body was lifted up off the ground. Like the great saints of earlier times, her face shone with a radiant light, and a flame came forth from her mouth when she prayed.

Suddenly, they saw a bright light stretching up into the sky, and went to investigate. As they approached, they saw a woman shining with light and levitating above the ground as she prayed.

Her holy relics remained incorrupt, and many miracles took place before them.

Venerable Horus of the Thebaid, Egypt

All the thoughts and deeds of his disciples was revealed to St Horus, and no one dared to lie to him.

Obviously, they knew something that science has not revealed to us and never will. The saints possess mysterious powers. These secrets were transmitted as much as they were allowed to be revealed from generation to generation till the present day. These are the teachings of the Holy Fathers showing us the way to heaven, to our promised land. They teach us what science denies or ignores. Science does not have the means to study the spiritual world, and thus chooses to ignore it. The price we will pay… we have yet to discover, but when we’ll find out it will be too late, past the point of no return.

Look at so many basic things the faith based accounts say to do without explaining why that have been amazingly helpful, even from the Jewish days– washing, not mixing foods likely to cross-contaminate, refraining from promiscuity in sexual doing, plainly placing grave importance on the protection and rearing of the young, doing no harm (uses different language but the effect is the same), placing violence / conquest as a necessary evil tolerated only for defense and protective needs — a big big list that required a huge leap of faith back in that day because the reasons leading to knowing why those were good nobody then knew. People took these good things on faith, and even when they got bits wrong around the edges were better off than if they just ‘did what felt good at the mo’.

I see no conflict between altering small details of what once was faith in the light of what repeatable experimental results over a long period of time show (honest experiemental ones, not ones carefully chosen ‘gamed’ for ‘an agenda’).

Look over historical time– the main things the faith called people to do were really practically helpful to elevate the human condition. Yes there are counterexamples and bumps when viewed over shorter time windows but in the main, when the faith wasn’t used as a hierarchical tool of oppression, in most personal terms it led to dramatically fast life improvement. A whole lot more happened the last 2,000 years than the 10,000 prior…. and before that, well, ‘forget about it’.

I find the analogy extremely pedagogical though. I will use it from now on. 🙂

In my opinion the modern “flavour” of materialism is a side-effect of the revolutionary mentality, which is, according to the Brazilian philosopher Olavo de Carvalho, is constituted of three aspects:

1-Inversion of the perception of time.

2-The inversion of morality

3-Inversion of subject and object

1-Inversion of the perception of time.

Normal individuals, based on common sense, see the past as something immutable and the future as something that can be changed (it is contingent, as de Carvalho puts it).

Not so the leftist revolutionary, who sees the utopian future as a goal that eventually will be reached no matter what and the past as something that can be changed, through reinterpretation (what we call “rewriting history”), to accommodate it.

One example the author gives of this is how Soviet propagandists reinterpreted Dostoevsky, an anti-revolutionary of the first order. In his novel “Crime and Punishment,” young revolutionary Raskolnikov kills his wealthy elderly landlady as an act of solidarity with the poor class, in keeping with his world view that ownership of private property is immoral and that the revolutionary is entitled to take possession of it by any means at his disposal. But Raskolnikov is caught and goes to jail where the only book available to the prisoners is a Bible, which he reads, and is converted to Christianity, abandoning his revolutionary ideology, which he now understands as immoral.

While fully aware of Dostoevsky’s anti-revolutionary mindset, the early communists liked his novels and considered them too thoroughly Russian to ban, so they simply reinterpreted him posthumously and declared that his novels were written to highlight the need for more social justice. Thus the Left reached back into time and manipulated the thoughts of a man who would have been their adversary, making him posthumously a fellow communist.

2-The inversion of morality

De Carvalho points out that because the revolutionary (leftist) believes implicitly in a future utopia where there will be no evil, this same revolutionary believes that no holds should be barred in achieving that utopia. Thus, his own criminal activities in achieving that goal are above reproach.

The author cites Che Guevara, who said that the revolutionary is the “highest rank of mankind.” Thus, armed with such moral superiority, Che was able to cold-bloodedly murder his political enemies wholesale.

Another example cited in the lecture is Karl Marx, who had an illicit liaison with his maid and then, to keep bourgeois appearances, made his son, the offspring of that liaison, live in the basement of his home, never even introducing the boy to his brothers in wedlock. The boy was never mentioned in the family and went into historical oblivion.

De Carvalho compares this despicable behavior with the more noble conduct of Brazilian landowners who had illegitimate children but made them heirs, yet made no claims of moral superiority!

To the revolutionary mind, it is normal that the revolutionary should pay no mind to the bourgeois morality, because after all, nothing he does can be construed as immoral, since the sum total of his actions hasten the revolution when justice will prevail. This is why conservatives frequently refer to the Left’s hypocrisy (for example, environmental champion Al Gore’s 20-fold electricity consumption compared to yours and mine).

By contrast, the author shows that by the Left’s own definition of “revolution,” the American revolution is not a revolution at all because our founders were men who held themselves (not just others) to high moral standards, and in no way tried to usher in a novel experimental utopian system, basing their actions and policies on older English traditions and common law, and modeling our Republic on these tried and true common-sense precepts.

3-Inversion of subject and object

When revolutionaries like Che, and Hitler’s operatives, for example, killed innocent people, they would blame the people they killed for “making” them do it by refusing to go along with their revolutionary notions. This is one example the author gives of the inversion of subject and object.
http://www.theinteramerican.org/commentary/172-olavo-de-carvalhos-lecture-the-structure-of-the-revolutionary-mind.html

Applying this to the case of modern “scientific” materialists, they do show those three traits in a lesser degree than their political counterparts:

1 – Inversion of perception of time: “knowledge of everything”, a goal that is stated in that scientific Graal that is the “theory of everything” is this future utopian target that is immutable. The past can be “changed” by reinterpreting the high spirituality and religiosity of most of the past great genius as mere concessions to the their times.

2 – Inversion of morality – The Climategate is a case in point where some scientists in name of what they consider to be a irreproachable goal deem every dirty and imoral trick to be acceptable. Dawkins’ sophisms are also an example since he knows that most of what he says is just propaganda.

3 – Inversion of subject and object – Ask these people why they resort to those imoral tricks and they will say that the “conditions” forced them. That the “religious right” gave them no other way, thus, blaming their victims for their own crimes.