Sells,

I agree with you totally that trying to create mathematical models of biological systems 'a-priori', as you say, can be quite futile.
What I am saying is that a facility with mathematics will greatly extend the biologists repertoire of recognisable patterns and relationships between patterns. Sometimes it will give you predictive power, sometimes it wont. History should tell you that time and again scientists of all sorts, armed with solid mathematical training, have found mathematical patterns even where they least expected them.
I do not go along, however, with Voltaires optimism when he says "What our eyes and mathematics demonstrate we must take as true. In all the rest we can only say: we are igorant." This reflects the guiding principle of the enlightenment that human reason alone can deliver true knowledge.
On the contrary when we limit ourselves to that which can be 'seen' or demonstrated mathematically then we remain in ignorance. These offer us no reason for being, no dignity, no freedom, no humanity and no wisdom.
The enlightenment represents a paradigm shift away from the idea that knowledge derives from some external source and without doubt the rediscovery of scientific scepticism has contributed to the rapid expansion of knowledge of the the last few hundred years. I agree with you, however, that it has probably driven us backwards in our appreciation of justice, wisdom and our sense of the sacred.
There are, however, a few theologians who seem to me to be pointing a way forward that has some real promise. I am particulary inspired by McFague's "Metaphorical Theology", Tracy's "Analogical Imagination" and Ricoeur's narrative theology. They suggest approaches to the sacred that are contemporary, intelligent, constructive and sensitive to our deeper traditions.

Could believe that the discussions while accepting reason, have failed to promote the importance of as both Aquinas and Kant wrote so much about, the importance of faith and reason working together.

No doubt both Aquinas and Kant, even though hundreds of years apart, while establishing the dire necessity for faith to be tempered by reason, still found it difficult to prove a reason for God.

Maybe it is when too much science is brought into it?

Possibly the term Grace is missing, a feeling hard to talk about, and one who has experienced the feeling after the death of a loved one .....?

Sells,
Of course, “maths is central to physics but not so central in the biological science”. However, I also sympathise with waterboy saying “there is a growing sense that the mathematical study of complexity is going to make significant contributions to our study of biological systems“, although as a “mathematical Platonist“ (where I am in company with many famous 20th century mathematicians, religious believers or unbelievers) I would not place maths at the end of the chain biology-chemistry-physics but above, or at least outside of it.

Having had no formal RE, mathematics or mathematical physics became the “rational catalyst” of my faith because I realised that in our days not only faith was “seeking understanding” (was it Anselm, or Augustine who first formulated this?) but also science, notably cosmology and nuclear physics (QM, string theory etc.) are in search of philosophical understanding.

When physics “seeks understanding” the crucial role of mathematics is obvious, and Platonists claim that it lives in a world of its own: it is a difference whether you say “photons, quarks exist“ or “Hilbert spaces, the Mandelbrot set exist”. So it is easier to accept also a third kind of existence, namely of a spiritual world referred to by the statement “God exists”, a world that can be reached neither by science nor by maths.

As a working mathematician, sometimes I felt I was discovering things, sometimes I felt I was creating things. Sometimes mathematics felt like really being just “out there”, sometimes it felt like famous mathematicians created it, sometimes I even felt I was contributing myself.

This helped me to understand also, that although as a Christian I believe there is a spiritual world “out there” that the human condition is dependent on (the “God created man” feeling), sometimes however I feel that what we can grasp of this existence depends on the human condition (the “man created God” feeling) or even just on my personal “I and Thou” (Martin Buber) approach to Him.

Sells, I hope you are not horrified by my amateur “natural theology” but I think I better stop.

Desipis,
The “fundamental difference between Catholicism and Communism“ is clear to anybody who himself/herself experienced Communism, or understands the difference between what the Church taught through centuries (as often distinct from what they practised) and what Lenin taught. It was certainly not the political but the spiritual power of the (underground) Church that Communists feared.

As to their methods, there are, of course, similarities, because one is a plastic (godless) replica of the other. You have a similar difference between a patient having his leg amputated without an anaesthetic in 21st century Australia and in Medieval Europe: Whereas the first case would be an outrageous medical practice, the second one was something quite common in those days. You obtain another measure of the difference when you compare the number of people wanting to escape the Communist rule to live in a “free” country where the Church had an influence you disliked so much, with the number of people wanting to escape in the opposite direction, e.g. from Australia to the Soviet Union.

Let me repeat, there is much to the point in your criticism whether aimed at the Church locally or at its centralised “power“. As already mentioned, all my RE came from my father who - when I asked about something the (marx-leninist) teacher said about religion, Church etc. - never reacted with “the teacher is wrong, the truth is this” but tried to explain that the issue was much more complicated. A brief “I do not really know“ would certainly not have satisfied me. Perhaps this “indoctrination”, which helped me to see some of the problems in their complexity (yes, in the unconscious background, also liturgy and sacraments played their roles), makes me so irritated when somebody utters sweeping statements about the 2000 years old Institution, be they positive or negative.

To summarise: All I wanted to point out, while accepting your criticism, was that the Church can be seen and evaluated from different angles, points of view, different personal experiences and emotional dispositions, but always in their proper temporal and cultural context.

I think waterboy has made his point.

Anselm is famous for his “faith seeking understanding”. This was a key axiom for Karl Barth who had to turn his back on modernist philosophy in order to write his dogmatics.

I am a bit worried about George’s Platonist tendencies. We live at the end of centuries long history in which universals have been well and truly brought down to earth. If that had no happened with Ockham and Bacon then the scientific revolution would never have gotten underway. There is nothing “out there” in Christianity, certainly not in some ideal Platonic space. The whole point of the history of Israel and the incarnation of the Word is that Christianity happens “down here”, as I keep saying, the medium of revelation is human history, that is what the bible is all about, obviously.

If there is no “out there” in the spatial realm there is a “out then” in the temporal. The spatial orientation of much medieval (that word again) theology is now understood to be a mistake. This is a large part of the crumbling of the medieval world brought about by the early astronomers. It is now agreed by most commentators that the tension in the bible is a temporal and not a spatial tension, it is not “here-out there” but “now-then”. This is most obvious in the gospels but also present in the Hebrew scriptures. The kingdom of God is an earthly reality that is even now glimmering on the horizon and is present proleptically at every celebration of the Eucharist. The idea of progress is the secularised version of this but is brought about by our means rather than God’s. Now I had better stop in case I have insulted your intelligence.

This thread is coming to an end and has been the most interesting yet. Most of the contributors have been polite and this has made all the difference. I had gotten to the stage where I ignored this page because it was just full of abuse. Thank you for a brilliant thread.

Keiran

The linearity of narrative is not really the point. That is simply the skeleton upon which the flesh of meaning may hang. Without the skeleton the flesh is formless. A narrative may be one-dimensional and empty but it may also connect with the universal patterns of human existence. If it does connect with experience and prompt one to re-imagine ones being then its linearity, having done its work, ceases to be the point. The 'leap of imagination' which connects images, sounds, events and textures into 'linear', causal chains that we might call narratives is but the beginning of the process of exposing meaning, wisdom and things that we can call ultimate truth.
Our being is constructed from many narratives, not all necessarily consistent with each other or with those of others around us. The stories rub against each other disturbing our existential space. They may harmonise with each other or blend together contrapuntally but they may also be discordant and disturbing. Sometimes a new story will clash so violently with the old as to prompt a major re-imagining of our being. A religious conversion, for example, may be an event of this sort.
Please do not misapprehend that I believe that narrative represents some sort of absolute explanation of all things or that it is somehow beyond criticism. It offers a way of talking about being human or about being itself. Within a language framework such as this it becomes possible to talk about meaning and purpose. It is also possible within this framework to see how the divine and the sacred can be so intimately caught up in our being. It exposes the futility of conceptual speculation about God using the languages of science or mathematics. It is a powerful alternative to those languages.