Does science explain everything? Is reason the same thing as science or something different?
Is either reason or science a sufficient guide to life? Or is something else necessary in order
to fully live? Shakespeare was right. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” And there are more things in heaven and earth
than are dreamt of in all of science.
In the minds of many people today, there is a certain fixed equation.
Reason = science. For many people, reason is nothing other or nothing more than science.
Something similar holds for the term truth. Many people think
that a truth is nothing other than a claim verified by science.
When our sense of reason is reduced to science or scientific thinking, and our sense of truth is
reduced to what science tells us about the world, then we have passed from science into scientism.
Scientism is an exaggerated understanding of what science is
and what it can do for us. Scientism blows science as such all out of proportion,
and then aims to organize the world according to the exaggeration. We can say that scientism
is the view that science alone explains all things, and science alone is the guide to life.
Let’s unpack the issue in two basic points.
First, science is one thing, and scientism is another. There is no doubt that over the
last several centuries modern science has developed a new and unprecedented
understanding of the world around us. It is a body of knowledge well confirmed by evidence. Science
has explained many things, and makes progress in explaining more with the passing of time. It
has brought tremendous benefits and insight into the world of nature, and yet science has limits.
Science cannot explain everything. Scientific methods are designed to deal with specific
questions in specific subject matters, and are not designed to answer all questions about all things.
For example, modern science is not able to settle the question of God’s existence or attributes.
After all, science is adapted to investigating specific things in the world of nature and God
exists beyond the world of nature. Science is also not adequate for answering profound
questions about the meaning and purpose of life. Scientists will be the first to tell you that,
and you will meet them in later videos. Science is also not adequate for settling moral questions.
Science can tell us how to build a nuclear bomb, for example,
but cannot tell us whether it is right to use one. That’s a moral question.
If someone were to try to live by accepting as true only what science can confirm,
that person would be left thinking there is no public, accessible, verifiable truth about God,
about the meaning of life, or about moral principles and claims. God, meaning, and morality
would seem totally subjective and private matters.
They are not, but that is how it seems to many people today, especially to many young people.
For a secularistic education has left many people submerged in scientism
often without even realizing it.
But science is not an adequate compass to life. It was never meant to be.
Rather, science is one form of knowing among others. Another way to know truth would be, for
example, to read some Shakespeare. “What is done cannot be undone” he says.
It rings true to our reason even though it is not advanced on scientific grounds.
So here is the second basic point. Reason does not equal science and truth does not equal
what is verified by science. There is a broader
and deeper understanding of reason available to us, so let’s consider it.
According to Thomas Aquinas, God has given all human beings a common nature,
with a certain power or light called reason. Reason is therefore a gift of God. Its light
is essentially a share in the very light of God. Just like our hearing is a gift from God and we
can hear many things within a limited range of sound, so by the light of reason humans are able
to know many things, but within a certain range – let us call it the range of reason.
Thanks to the light of reason, many sciences have developed over the course of human history,
but no one of the sciences nor all of them combined extend to the whole range of reason.
By using our reason not only scientifically, but also philosophically, human beings are able to
know many things beyond the limits of what science can tell us, but still within the range of reason.
For example, through philosophical reasoning we can know that God exists
but we cannot know what God is. The nature of God remains beyond the range of reason,
and so Scripture says he dwells in unapproachable light.
By the light of reason we can know that the meaning or purpose of life is to know God
to whatever extent he makes possible to us.
By the light of reason we can also know many moral truths and apply them to particular situations.
That is the work of conscience, and everyone has a conscience.
All of this knowledge about God, meaning, and morality is due to God’s gift of the natural
light of reason to us. But even though the light of reason is great, even here
we must say that reason is not enough to know all that is going on in reality.
Something more than reason is necessary for us to enter into the fullness of life.
For God has another gift to give us. God created us, and gave all human beings the natural light of
reason, because he has a special supernatural light to give us, to our whole human race. God created us
in order to come to us in Jesus Christ, to reveal himself to us, and to share with us the life
he enjoys in the unapproachable light beyond the range of reason. Now, the light of God is
unapproachable in the sense that we cannot reach it by our natural, human powers. Again, it is
beyond the range of reason. But God definitely has the power to lift us up to it, and make us
dwell with him in the paradise of light beyond the range of reason, in the heavenly places.
You and I receive this uplifting, and pass beyond the range of reason, and begin to live with God
in his otherwise unapproachable light by following Jesus Christ and putting our faith in him. By
putting our faith in Jesus Christ we come to know God in a manner beyond the whole power of reason.
Faith is a personal and more familiar form of knowing God. And this is why God created us.
So that we might know God personally and love him and enjoy him forever.
To know him that way is the true life, supernatural life, eternal life.
Faith is like a seed of a new life of knowing God in a higher, personal, and supernatural way.
Even the seed of faith fulfills our rational nature, and answers many
questions. But ultimate fulfillment of the desire to understand comes when we see God in heaven.
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