God of Wonders

I am who am

Divine Majesty

Get wisdom & understanding

Please respond: Lord hear our prayer

Please respond: Lord hear our prayer

Please respond: Lord hear our prayer

Please respond: Lord hear our prayer

January

Science

Stars

Pope Francis

Faith

Creation

Complete handout individually. Once done, share in small groups

What is the public perception of how the Catholic Church views science?

Why do you think this is the view of religious belief (faith) and reason (science)?

“Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.” Richard Dawkins

“We may define ‘faith’ as the firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. Where there is evidence, no one speaks of ‘faith.’ We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence.” Bertrand Russell

Evidence vs Proof

Youcat #15, 23, 41, 42

• What does the Church teach about science and faith?
• Put in own words!

Cambridge University astrophysicist, John Polkinghorne, estimates the odds that any universe exists that can support life are 10 to the 500th power.

He also holds that if the expansion of the universe at the moment of the Big Bang was off by a factor of 10 to the 120th power, life could not have evolved. That is 10 followed by 120 zeros.

Dr. David D. Deutsch, Institute of Mathematics, Oxford University: “If we nudge one of [the laws of nature] just a few percent in one direction, stars burn out within a million years of their formation, and there is no time for evolution. If we nudge it a few percent in the other direction, then no elements heavier than helium form. No carbon, no life. Not even any chemistry. No complexity at all.”

“The precision is as if one could throw a dart across the entire universe and hit a bullseye one millimeter in diameter on the other side.” Michael Turner, astrophysicist at the University of Chicago and Fermilab

Complete handout individually. Once done, share in small groups

“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.” Pope St. John Paul II

We are special in the sense that we can know our place in the cosmos. We can know our place in space. We are at least one of the cosmo's ways of knowing itself. That fills me with reverence and joy. Bill Nye