Please follow the link here to view a 5-minute interview on the Colbert Report.
Please jump to part 2 for three introductions (about 15 minutes), then 15 of a discussion here between (left to right) a Catholic priest, a philosopher, and two scientists. It ends at the time 1:04:20, about 7 minutes in total. This is a program for high-school students. You may wish to read the three questions before you watch.
Did St. Thomas Aquinas allow that some things may occur without God specifically controlling them, i.e. randomly?
Does God being eternal mean that He is old?
What do you think “God is outside time” means?
Please take the quiz (above 3 questions) Click here
Another wordfind game. See if you can find the Religion and Science words! The possible words appear below. Click the first letter and then the last to select a word.
[game-wordsearch id=”140″]
Agnosticism: The belief that there is no way ever to know that god does or does not exist.
Atheism: The belief that there is no god
Deism: The belief that God started everything, and that all things occur according to the rules that He put in place at the beginning.
Dipole: Something that has positive on one side, negative on the other, but the total is zero.
Einstein: Albert Einstein, most famous for developing the Special and then the General Theories of Relativity
Kitzmiller: Tammy Kitzmiller was lead plaintiff in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District
Evolution: refers to the development and formation of new species as described by Charles Darwin
big bang: name give to the leading theory regarding the origin of the universe
creation: refers to the beginning of our existence as described by the Old Testament
design: refers to Intelligent Design, a proposal that God’s work is evident by how complicated lifeforms are.
Genisis: The first book of the Old Testament, which describes the beginning of our existence
Gospel: The collection of Scriptures that form the basis for all Christian denominations
Galileo: Galileo Galilei, Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, most noted for defying the Church and stating that the sun is at the center of our solar system.
Neutral: Having an equal number of positive and negative charges, so they add up to zero.
Ptolemaic: name of the geocentric solar system developed by Claudius Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD.
Theism: The belief that God created everything and He is present now and is revealed by His acts.
Urban: refers to Pope Urban VIII who became Pope in 1623 and who attempted to persuade Galileo to recant his work demonstrating that the earth revolves around the sun.
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As a recap of Day 1, please take the following quiz:
See if you can find the Religion and Science words! The possible words appear below. Drag your finger across a word to select it.
Agnosticism: The belief that there is no way ever to know that God does or does not exist.
Atheism: The belief that there is no god
Deism: The belief that God started everything, and that all things occur according to the rules that He put in place at the beginning.
Dipole: Something that has positive on one side, negative on the other, but the total is zero.
Einstein: Albert Einstein, most famous for developing the Special and then the General Theories of Relativity
Kitzmiller: Tammy Kitzmiller was lead plaintiff in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District
Evolution: refers to the development and formation of new species as described by Charles Darwin
big bang: name given to the leading theory regarding the origin of the universe
creation: refers to the beginning of our existence as described by the Old Testament
design: refers to Intelligent Design, a proposal that God’s work is evident by how complicated lifeforms are.
Genisis: The first book of the Old Testament, which describes the beginning of our existence
Gospel: The collection of Scriptures that form the basis for all Christian denominations
Galileo: Galileo Galilei, Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, most noted for defying the Church and stating that the sun is at the center of our solar system.
Neutral: Having an equal number of positive and negative charges, so they add up to zero.
Ptolemaic: name of the geocentric solar system developed by Claudius Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD.
Theism: The belief that God created everything, and He is present now and is revealed by His acts.
Urban: refers to Pope Urban VIII who became Pope in 1623 and who attempted to persuade Galileo to recant his work demonstrating that the earth revolves around the sun.
On our first day I want to emphasize that people can be both a scientist and a person of faith. I will define a scientist as someone knowledgeable in a field of study who applies the scientific method when trying to understand and explain some phenomenon. As a quick review, a scientist forms a question based on an observation, proposes an answer that can be tested, predicts the outcome of that test that supports his answer, performs the test and analyzes the results. Two big points: your answer must be testable (or it’s not science), and you must make your prediction based on your theory before you do the experiment. Science has no place for what you feel must be true. Let us try the method with an experiment.
This experiment shows a Van de Graaff generator and someone who is willing to put up with a little pain to make a point. You may want to read through this, but stop at the quiz, and then look at the videos. These are just sections of the YouTube videos. If you want to watch the section over, just refresh the page.
The first video section runs for a half minute; it describes how charge transfers to and from a paper ball at the end of the string. The charges determine the forces acting on the ball.
It doesn’t explain everything, however. The paper is neutral (no total charge on it) to start with, and it is attracted to the negatively charged big dome. Why? Should anything that’s neutral be attracted to a big negative charge? Not normally!
A hypothesis could be that the paper is slightly conductive and, when it is neutral, negative charges are pushed away from the big dome. They can move because the paper conducts. leaving positive charge closer (and the paper ball remains neutral). Because the positive charge is closer to the big dome (and because the field is stronger near the big dome), the attraction of the positive side is stronger than the repulsion of the negative side. But wouldn’t that mean the small dome should be attracted to the big dome before it sparks? Our observation is the neutral paper ball is attracted to the big dome, our hypothesis is the paper ball becomes a dipole (neutral but charges are separated) and our experiment is to watch the small dome while it is sparking.
So he is asking us to figure out why the paper cups fly off when they’re upside down, but stick when they are right-side up – which is a different question. Did you notice the small dome is moving? If you want to replay just that part again, refresh the page at the top of your browser (or press F5). The segment below picks up after the countdown and answers the paper cup question, then talks about the small dome moving. This supports, but does not prove, our hypothesis. It goes to the end – watch as much as you want.
This video will start partway through, at 8:51 .
Notice that in this example we followed the Scientific Method: we made an observation, proposed a hypothesis, said what other thing should be true if our hypothesis is correct, did a test that showed the other thing is true, and concluded that the hypothesis is supported. Some theories are very well supported, like Darwin’s theory of evolution. But now scientists are beginning to question that. Einstein showed that Newton’s Law of Gravity is not completely correct. It took 218 years, when Einstein published his General Theory of Relativity.
Take-away: science uses the scientific method to support theories regarding observations. This is not the way we pursue our faith in God.
Notice also that in order for any explanation of an observation to qualify as a scientific theory, there must be a way to show that it’s wrong. One cannot propose the scientific theory, “It is God’s will.” Please follow the link below to take a short quiz. When you submit your answers you will be brought back to this page.
We will discuss Darwin’s Theory of Evolution as he describes in his book, On the Origin of Species. This book was published in 1859. A lot of people believe that Darwin was an atheist because his book seemed to contradict the Bible. If you believe the creation stories in the Bible, and that the earth was created in six days, you are called a Six-Day Creationist. Then it is true: Darwin’s book contradicts the Bible. The Catholic Church, believes that we should not interpret the Bible literally. But many people still do and in 1859 Darwin’s book upset a lot of people. First let’s see if we think Darwin believed in God.
Please open the book using the link above and count the number of occurrences of the word “Creator.” (Let the editor do that for you with ctrl-f) Also read the very last sentence in the book. Please take the brief quiz linked below. You will be brought back to this page when you hit submit.
There is a lot to Darwinian Evolution, but for our understanding of the controversy just a couple points need to be understood. We will discuss these in class.
Take-away: Darwin was never an atheist. He never said that God is not the Creator.
In the Bible we also learn about how man was created and how all the generations between Adam (from the other Creation story in Genesis) and Jesus tell us how we started out pretty much the same as we are now and the earth is only 6000 years old. Please read this short comic book and see if it sounds familiar.
Here is a video that explains much of this:
People believed that Darwinian Evolution contradicted the bible and denied that God is directing our destiny (Divine Providence). These objections resulted in two famous trials, one in 1925 and one in 2005. We will talk about these in class.
