Can there be a dialogue between faith and science?.
Scientists and theologians appear to inhabit two incompatible worlds. While scientists work largely through experimentation, the theologian often deals in the unknowable, examining articles of faith that are central to centuries of spiritual reflection and tradition. Reconciling theological dogma and scientific "fact" appears to be one of the principle barriers between the two "worlds- and one of the main issues is closing this gap. We do know that science does raise questions that it cannot itself answer. It can trace a sequence of events back to the Big Bang, but it cannot tell us why there is a universe at all, or why the cosmos is orderly and intelligible. The atheist can suggest that perhaps there are billions of universes with differing constants, and we just happen by chance to live in one where life and consciousness are possible. But this is a philosophical interpretation, not a scientific conclusion, and many scientists today are willing to acknowledge the limitations of science. Some theologians believe the Bible provides us with scientific as well as religious understanding. However, many of them hold that the writers of the Bible were inspired to express enduring religious wisdom, not to provide scientific knowledge long before the rise of science, which I agree completely, but we can see how difficult is to explore this issue. How do we approach the people who believe that the Bible is inerrant? I think we can surely state that some passages of the Bible are to be understood in a metaphorical way and it's not precisely an astronomy book (like St. Augustine said: "The Bible tells how to go to heaven, not how heaven goes-) but that doesn't allow scientists, who, for example, promote evolutionary naturalism, say that evolution is incompatible with theism. We must recognize the differences between the questions asked by scientists and those asked by theologians before there can be fruitful dialogue between them, but I think we are on the right track.
