Rector's letter for January Fowey News
Dear Friends
Throughout the covid pandemic government leaders assured us they would “follow the science”, be “guided by the science” or be “driven by the science” by which they appeared to mean immunologists, virologists and epidemiologists (despite significant disagreements amongst them!) Nonetheless the appeal seemed obvious and natural to our modern ears: Science, not faith, holds the answers. Boris Johnson called science a shining ‘light’ echoing the lines by the poet Alexander Pope about the father of modern physics, Isaac Newton: “Nature, and Nature’s Laws lay hid by Night: God said, ‘Let Newton be!’ and all was light.”
However, it is a comparatively recent (19th century) idea that science and faith are in conflict: The idea that centuries of medieval darkness were overturned by spectacular breakthroughs to give us the modern scientific method.
The reality is rather different. It was a distinctly Christian worldview that provided the conviction that the world can be figured out, that it is intelligible and comprehensible. It was the notion of an ordered creation which provided for regularities that are reliable, able to be investigated and understood. Albert Einstein was so amazed by the figure-out-ability of the universe that he called it a miracle, “The eternal mystery of the world is is comprehensibility… the fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle.” (1956, Out of my later years).
On page 1 of the Bible we meet an orderly God who has made an orderly world. For an atheist, it is a miracle without a miracle-maker. Yet Genesis 1 provides the key to unlock the miracle, for it to make sense and for the foundations of science to be laid.
A core belief of the medievals was in the “two books”, the book of God (the Bible) and the book of nature (the universe), enabling them to study the world to know God’s handiwork, and they pursued such knowledge with rigour and reverence. Just as medieval Christendom gave us human rights, universities, parliaments and more, it also laid the foundation for science, drawing explicitly on Christian beliefs:
Copernicus: “To know the mighty works of God, to comprehend… the wonderful workings of his laws, surely all this must be a pleasing and acceptable mode of worship to the Most High.” Galileo: “The glory and greatness of Almighty God are marvellously discerned in all his works.” Newton: “This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an Intelligent Powerful Being.”
It’s on that basis that Science has been and can be done.
with my prayers for a happier and more peaceful New Year