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Mathematics, Physics and Religion: A Need for Candor and Rigor1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Frederick W. Norris
Affiliation:
Emmanuel School of Religion, Route 6 Box 500 Johnson City Tennessee

Extract

In Western culture, religion and the sciences often have found themselves to be more and more at odds since the period of the Enlightenment. The change which that era brought to the Christian community could be illustrated as follows. The analogy is perhaps a bit overdrawn, but it does indicate how important the historical shifts were. During the earliest phase of Christian belief, Christianity had to compete with other religions as one fruit-bearing tree within a varied orchard. When the Christian religion became established and dominant in the Middle Ages it tended to cause other trees to wither and die because of its enormous and on occasion darkening size. During the Reformation a radical pruning took place which gave life not only to the Protestant branch but also a new vitality to the Roman Catholic branch. What the Enlightenment represented was the first pervasive suggestion that most fruit trees — perhaps even the orchard — were unnecessary. One could find individual precursors of such attempts as well as a number of people during the Enlightenment who found various religions satisfying. But at no time in the history of Christianity had a large segment of the intellectual culture been so fascinated with the idea that religion in most all of its forms might be useless.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1984

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References

page 458 note 2 Good surveys of these problems are to be found in the appropriate sections of Pannenberg, Wolfhart, Theology and the Philosophy of Science, trans, by McDonagh, Francis (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976)Google Scholar and Küng, Hans, Does God Exist? An Answer for Today, trans, by Quinn, Edward (Garden City: Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1978).Google Scholar

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page 465 note 11 ibid., p. 93.

page 466 note 12 ibid., pp. 60–2.

page 466 note 13 ibid., pp. 175–6, pp. 40–1, pp. 53–7.

page 466 note 14 Torrance, , Space, Time and Resurrection (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1976), pp. ixx.Google Scholar

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page 467 note 16 Hofstadter, , Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1979)Google Scholar. His essays with Dennet, Daniel, The Mind's I (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1981Google Scholar) particularly pp. 162 and 276 continue the interest in Zen as an approach to the question of artificial intelligence.

page 468 note 17 Hofstadter, , Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, particularly Chap. IX, pp. 246272.Google Scholar

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page 469 note 20 Bohr's, Niels article, ‘Discussion with Einstein on Epistemological Problems in Atomic Physics’, reprinted in his Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1958), pp. 3266Google Scholar is perhaps the best place to find his warnings about the misuse of the concept of complementarity. Honner, John, ‘Niels Bohr and the Mysticism of Nature’, Zygon, vol. 17, no. 3 (September, 1982), pp. 243253CrossRefGoogle Scholar details, particularly from Bohr's letters, the Dane's openness to the unusual in nature.

page 470 note 21 Kadowake, Kakichi, Zen and the Bible: The Priest's Experience (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980)Google Scholar, however, sees much similarity between Jesus’ teachings and those of the Zen masters.

page 470 note 22 Nazianzen, Gregory, Oration XXVIII. 9.Google Scholar