2013_02_06_"In the relationship between science and faith we must work for a more ambitious goal than mere peaceful coexistence."
2013_02_06_“En las relaciones entre ciencia y fe debemos trabajar por un objetivo más ambicioso que la mera coexistencia pacífica”
Peaceful coexistence between science and faith is not enough
The Full Professor Juan Arana offered a lecture on the occasion of the celebration of St. Thomas Aquinas.
"Peaceful coexistence is not the most desirable state for the relationship between science and faith. Showing the compatibility between the two is too little: we can and should work for a more ambitious goal ". This was stated at the University of Navarra by Juan Arana, Full Professor of Philosophy of Nature at the University of Seville, during the lecture that he gave under the degree scroll 'The role of Philosophy in the science-religion dialogue'.
In this sense, he indicated that "faith and reason are like two branches born from the same trunk. However, the vicissitudes of history have separated them so much that many even consider them to be strangers and even at odds with each other. The man of faith cannot accept that this estrangement becomes definitive. It is imperative that they try to stop the process of mutual estrangement in order to recover the harmony that once existed and should always have been maintained".
For Juan Arana, one of the contributions of Philosophy to the dialogue between science and faith consists in "reminding both scientists and theologians that their work combines the divine and the human at the same time. Some deal with God and others with Creation. To carry out their work work they have only a very limited reason and a means of expression, language, which crumbles in their hands like a soft, pulverizable rock".
Thus, he pointed out that "the mistake is to confuse the objective greatness of the investigated truth with the result of his efforts, forgetting the smallness of the means at his disposal to approach it".
PHOTO: Manuel Castells
25th Anniversary of the School Ecclesiasticus of Philosophy
The Full Professor stressed that the core topic resides in the unity of knowledge: "For the Philosophy to play a significant role in the relationship between science and religion, it is imperative that it remains faithful to this paradigm, which was maintained by all the great philosophers from at least Aristotle to Leibniz. The inability of the Philosophy to enhance the dialogue between the two manifests the decadence of the Philosophy".
Finally, Professor Arana emphasized that "it is not only a matter of dialogue between science and religion: it is the dialogue between the different branches of science that must be strengthened, in order to make clear what there may be within them of hasty extrapolations formulated from still incomplete research, and what there is of legitimate aspiration for a broader, deeper, truer knowledge".
The lecture of Juan Arana was organized by the School of Theology and the School Ecclesiastic of Philosophy on the occasion of the celebration of St. Thomas Aquinas. It is also one of the activities planned to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Ecclesiastical School Philosophy . Precisely, the topic of the workshop is a reference letter to the first Dean of the center, Mariano Artigas, who was one of the pioneers in the science-faith dialogue in Spain and the first director of the group of research 'Science, Reason and Faith', to which Professor Arana belongs as a member partner.