Catholic Scientist Harmonizes Science and Faith

by: Dr. Gerard Verschuuren

Modernity, academia, and the media perceive and relentlessly advance a dichotomous, contradictory relationship between faith and science. However, from the time of Aristotle, it has been demonstrated that man is a rational being who reasons intellectually in a way that animals and technology cannot. Man is also a religious being, correlating himself to what is above and seeking answers to the ultimate questions of transcendence.

In his definitive book Science and Faith, Dr. Gerard Verschuuren draws from the reflections of St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, St. John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, Dr. Peter Kreeft, and numerous scientists, such as Albert Einstein and Gregor Mendel, who reveal the essential connection between reason and religion.

Dr. Verschuuren confirms the necessity of reasoning in scientific theory. Relying on true stories from scientific developments in medicine, astronomy, and physics, he asserts that the scientific method alone can't explain the origins of the universe. By the same token, he decries blind faith and shows how science doesn't threaten the Church. On the contrary: it confirms those truths that Christians have always believed.

That is why the Father of Lies has always sought to pit faith against reason and science against revelation. Dr. Verschuuren explains how the progress of doubt, from agnosticism to atheism to antitheism, is not a result of increased scientific knowledge. Rather, it's part of a diabolical attack on the Faith. The devil means to enthrone a new religion - scientism - in Christianity's place.

This attack can be repelled only by true religion and real science working together, hand in hand, as they always have.

Clarifying the assumptions upon which science and religion are based, this cogent book reflects on how:

• authentic reasoning inevitably leads us closer to God and belief in His attributes
• both science and faith are guided by logic and deal with facts
• faith needs science to avoid fideism, and science requires belief
• the New Atheism, including the views of Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins, is erroneous
• our thoughts should be "controlled by reality" and objective truth
• Christianity helped produce modern scientific advancements
• there is no "double truth" between evolution and faith and between the Big Bang theory and faith

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Gerard Verschuuren is a scientist, writer, speaker, and consultant, working at the interface of science, philosophy, and religion. He is a human geneticist who earned a doctorate in the philosophy of science, and studied and worked at universities in Europe and the United States.