Faith, doubt, and science · Question 3
Doesn't faith change its story every time it collides with science?
The question: “If I trust science, do I have to give up religion?”
The Church's answer: Science and faith ask different questions, but that doesn't mean the two can be sealed off from each other. When believers make claims about reality — the age of the natural world, the history of life, miracles — those claims have to face the scrutiny of observation and of historical research. Where established evidence collides with a particular reading of Scripture or with a non-definitive judgment by a church leader, it is that reading and that judgment which must be corrected, rather than the science suppressed. Conversely, learning how a process in nature works does not automatically settle philosophical questions such as why a world exists at all or what is good. Any real conversation has to sort out precisely what is a scientific claim and what is a core confession of faith.
If they press further: “Hasn't the Church wronged scientists before?” — Yes. The Galileo affair is a case where authority and the interpretation of Scripture were misused, and that history has to be admitted and learned from. We do not hide an actual wrong behind the claim that the principle of a doctrine is sound.
In one sentence: “Science and faith differ in their questions and their methods, but neither has any reason to fear the same truth. They should talk, each respecting the other's range.”