Religion and Science

James Cardinal Gibbons attempts to explain the "Truth" of religion through the harmony of religion and science. He points to God as the original creator, and that God is truth. Christians believe that the world was created with such an organized complexity that God must have been the creator. However, Richard Dawkins, an author in Science and Christian Belief demonstrates that "God is useless as an explanation of organised complexity because a)he must have organised complexity, the very same property we want to explain, only more so, and b) God's organised complexity would exist unexplained (Richmond 2009)." He argues that this idea of one designer being created by another designer, being created by another designer, would go on forever with no original creator, whereas Darwinism builds up complexity, beginning with simple organisms (an actual beginning).
Gibbons accuses "leaders of modern thought" of degrading Christians by saying "that to enjoy full freedom in searching the secrets of the physical world, you must emancipate yourself from the intellectual restraints imposed on you by the Christian religion (Gibbons 1889)." He goes on to say that these are "ungrateful assertions,since they are spoken by men who are indebted to Christianity for the very discoveries they have made (Gibbns 1889)." The Cardinal is taking offense to the theory of Evolution and asserts that all Christians are being victimized by these scientists. Finally, Christians are getting a taste of their own medicine. After centuries of being considered outsiders by the church, scientists are able to use fact to support their reasoning of Evolution and natural selection. They have had to endure years of verbal abuse, being called profane, chaotic, and liars by those such as Eliade, while theists are supposedly sacred, true, and known.
Despite his solid beliefs, Cardinal Gibbons admits that there are many "truths" in religion that cannot be explained. Yet instead of discussing these so-called truths, the cardinal justifies the unknown by saying "If the ideas of time and space and the relation of soul to body are beyond our comprehension, we cannot be expected with our unaided reason to explain away the apparent incongruities that we find between the unseen and the visible kingdom of the universe (Gibbns 1889)." He is justifying the profane, unknown world, which would completely contradict his theory that God created the world, because everything sacred is supposed to be the truth. He is saying that some things are simply unexplainable; not a valid argument, considering science does give us an explanation of the real truth.
The most laughable of the statements Gibbons makes is that just because we do not know all the explanations of the "truth", it does not mean they are false because some things are always going to be left out. He says "If we hold the two ends of a chain, we know that the connection is complete, though some of the links may be concealed from us (Gibbons 1889)." This statement directly refutes the Christian argument against Evolution, which says that we must have a fossil from every stage of evolution in order to prove it is true, and since we are missing a few fossils, Evolution must be false. These "gaps" in Evolution are exactly congruent with the links of chain metaphor, that says even though there are links missing, we can still make the connection because we are holding both ends. This selection of reading holds so many contradictions. The Cardinal encourages science when it aids in the explanation of religion, and refutes science when it disagrees with religion. To highlight these contradictions and deceptions clearly shows the desperate attempts by the church to regain control in the face of truthful opposition.


Sources:
James Cardinal Gibbons, Our Christian Heritage (Baltimore: John Murphy & Co., 1889), 301-4, 309-10, 319-20. Cited in Mathisen pg.387

Richmond, Patrick "Richard Dawkins' Darwinian Objection to Unexplained Complexity in God." Science & Christian Belief 19.2 (2007): 99-116. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 2 Nov. 2009.