The Desire For Uncompromising Truth

Pope Leo recently gave an address at the Vatican Observatory, making the observation that religion and science, far from being enemies, actually face the same “principal threat”: the denial of the existence of objective truth.

The Pope’s point may seem a familiar one, but it’s one nonetheless worth calling to mind. He notes that we’re living at a moment when the perception persists that science and religion must be enemies, even though the Church’s commitment to “rigorous and honest science remains not only valuable,” he says, “but essential.” Indeed, Christianity has always had a hearty respect for the working of the human mind, and it has honored reason more than most human societies. The result has been a fertile context in which science could grow, while being accompanied by an increasing sense of awe at the God who could put this created order together.

But the Pope’s comment points to what it is the Church does resist: dogmatic scientism, which leverages and manipulates “scientific facts” for ends that go beyond, and often come into conflict with, the rational pursuit of truth. Both science and faith begin with the notion that there is such a thing as an objective order to reality – whatever inconveniences that reality may seem to impose, and whatever demands it may make of us. It is those who insist that they can remake reality according to their own desires and ideas who part company with both genuine scientists and educated believers – those whose ideological agendas toward some social or political end are the real motivators behind their thoughts and actions. And that is the condition of many new (often gnostic) religions that claim a basis in science, but deny any normative structure to the universe, to humanity, to human society, to anything.

The resulting irony is that the Catholic Church, accused of being an enemy of science and reason, has actually emerged as being among the most insistent defenders of rational investigation in the world, often even more than those groups or individuals who claim to be profoundly committed to scientific inquiry. “It’s not surprising that people of deep faith feel called to explore the origins and workings of the universe,” Pope Leo noted. “The desire to better understand creation is but a reflection of that restless yearning for God that dwells in the heart of every human being.” That desire – to know what we are, where we’ve come from, and what our nature and condition mean, in full and uncompromising truth – is the mark of the religious mind and heart. Interestingly enough, it’s also the mark of the genuinely scientific one.