In the words of the director of the Vatican Observatory: If you're afraid of science, you don't have faith, which, incidentally, were spoken at the Vatican Observatory ahead of a summit on "Black Holes, Gravitational Waves and Space-Time Singularities".

We've already heard of Br. Gregor Mendel (who led the effort in defining the laws of genetic inheritance) and Fr. Georges Lemaitre (who proposed the Big Bang theory) as two examples of devoutly religious people who, more than simply supporting science, greatly helped further our scientific understanding of nature. The Roman Catholic Church also developed many scientific fields through the medieval universities she founded, and it's notable that the 13th Century Bishop of Lincoln and chancellor of Oxford University, Robert Grosseteste, is credited with having played a key role in the development of the scientific method.

The Pontifical Academy of Sciences is the oldest scientific academy in the world, including Galileo and Stephen Hawking as members. It thus has a reputation as a prestigious academy, combining different viewpoints to come to conclusions on human issues and mankind.

Much more than simply being a supporter of science, the Church, throughout the ages, has been instrumental in its nurture and development.

But now we have science is something I've heard quite a few times. The argument that religion was used for the same purpose as science - to understand the world - is a misconception. We have always had science, to further our understanding of the physical, tangible world and we have had religion to further our understanding of the spiritual. Saying, I am a person of science, not of religion! makes about as much sense as saying, I am a person of science, not of history!.

The notion of science replacing religion is one refuted by many scientists. In fact, belief in a Creator and thus a nature that is governed by laws that could be understood, gave scientists throughout history the hope that their endeavours would not be in vain. Noteably, one of history's most famous scientists, Lord Kelvin, said: The more thoroughly I conduct scientific research, the more I believe science excludes atheism. If you think strongly enough, you will be forced by science to the belief in God, which is the foundation of all religion.

Scientific study is not an absolute and complete truth, otherwise there would be nothing left to learn. To my knowledge, we haven't finished science.

Purpose of Scientific Theory

I came across a nice desciption of the purpose of scientific theory when I read Alastair Rae's book, "Quantum Physics":

We begin with a short discussion on the meaning and purpose of a scientific theory. A useful analogy is a map that might be used to navigate around a strange city. Though the map is normally much smaller than the physical area it represents, if it is a good map it is a faithful representation of the terrain it is modelling: streets and buildings are related to each other in the same way as they are in reality. Clearly, however, the map is not the same as the terrain it models and indeed is different from it in important respects; for example, it is usally of a different size from the area it represents and it is typically composed of paper and ink rather than earth and stones.

A scientific theory also attempts...to create a model or "map" of physical events. Consider the simple case of an object, such as an apple, falling under gravity. The apple is at rest, is released, accelerates and stops when it reaches the ground. Such a sequence of events is often referred to as a "history", and the physicist's map of this history is constructed using Newton's mechanics. Two types of information are required in order to contruct this map: the first is our knowledge that all falling bodies accelerate under gravity, while the second is the particular body's initial position and speed. Given these, we can calculate how fast the particle will be travelling and how far it will have fallen after a given time...To construct this map, we have done a little mathematics, but, although the real apple is incapable of performing the simplest mathematical calculation, it still falls to the floor at the predicted time.

Another example is the motion of the planet Mercury around the sun, where the construction of a map of the motion requires the application of the equations of general relativity. These were unknown until Einstein's work early in the twentieth century, and they still challenge the understanding of all but specialists in the field. Nevertheless, Mercury has had no problem in following this orbit before the time of Einstein or since! The aim of science is to construct the most detailed and faithful map of physical reality as is possible. This can require the extensive use of mathematics, which is used to construct a map of reality; but the map is not reality itself.

Clearly it is essential that we choose a map appropriate to the physical situation that we are addressing. A map based on Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism will be of little use to us if we are trying to understand the fall of the apple under gravity.

The map is entirely our construct; much of it corresponds to how we have decided to think about the problem, rather than with what may "actually" be happening...we do not attempt to describe processes that are in principle unobservable.

A Universe of Room

Scientific study allows us to understand the rules of the universe, but this understanding is always developing. Not until 1920 did Newton's ideas of a universe that predictably follows the rules as we understood them, down to the last atom, come into question by quantum physics.

Given the vastness of the universe and our limited tools for observation - and consequently, our limited range of maps - it is obvious that there is much we still do not know about the observable universe. Furthermore, by definition, we could never successfully model the unobservable universe, much less could we ever hope to create models that would faithfully describe the creator of the universe, who as such would be outside of nature, namely God.

It is not the job of science to define the rules: science endeavours to understand the rules that are already running. God, by definition, is outside the laws of nature (the effects of God's interventions in the world, i.e. miracles, must obey the laws of nature, for us to be able to experience them, but their source is outside of nature).

As our maps are designed to describe nature - a predictable, observable nature - they cannot model that which is outside of nature. As such, the supernatural is not inherently impossible or contrary to science (but it should be said that fact doesn't necessarily make them possible). We just know that we cannot scientifically model them, because we cannot observe their source in order to create our "maps".

Just because we don't, or possibly cannot, understand something, doesn't mean it is not possible. After all, everything in science was, at one stage, not understood.