Thursday, November 18, 2010

Science and Religion

What would we do for entertainment without scientists telling us, with breathless excitement, that “God did not create the universe,” as if they were the first to discover this astonishing proposition? Stephen Hawking is the latest, but certainly not the first. When Napoleon asked Laplace, two hundred years ago, where was God in his scientific system, the mathematician replied, “I do not need God to explain the universe.” We never did. That is what scientists do not understand.

There is a difference between science and religion. Science is about explanation. Religion is about interpretation. Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts things together to see what they mean.

It is important for us to understand the mistake Professor Hawking has made, because the mutual hostility between religion and science is one of the curses of our age, and it is damaging to religion and science in equal measure.

But let us hail a scientific genius. Professor Hawking is one of the truly great minds of our time. Two thousand years ago the rabbis coined a blessing – you can find it in any Jewish prayer book – on seeing a great scientist, regardless of his or her religious beliefs…the right attitude of religion to science is admiration and thankfulness.

The Bible is not proto-science, pseudo-science or myth masquerading as science. It is interested in other questions entirely. Who are we? Why are we here? How then shall we live? It is to answer those questions… that we seek to know the mind of God.

--Lord Sachs reply to Stephen Hawkings in The Times

5 comments:

goliah said...

If science is about explanation and religion about interpretation, how an one know, as all are theological, which 'interpretation' is correct?

We may be about to find out. For what science and religion both though impossible has happened. Histroy now has it's first fully demonstarble proof for fatih and it hasn't come from any existing tradition. Quoting a forum review:

"The first ever viable religious conception capable of leading reason, by faith, to observable consequences which can be tested and judged is now a reality. A teaching that delivers the first ever religious claim of insight into the human condition that meets the Enlightenment criteria of verifiable, direct cause and effect, evidence based truth embodied in experience. For the first time in history, however unexpected, the world must contend with a claim to new revealed truth, a moral wisdom not of human intellectual origin, offering access by faith, to absolute proof, an objective basis for moral principle and a fully rational and justifiable belief! "

A moral and spiritual revolution appears to be getting under way at http://www.energon.org.uk

Angelo Vecchione said...

“My Father is at work until now, so I am at work”
(John 5:17)
“I bless you my children! Today I wish to speak to you about God’s work in these times and about the general picture in which your life and your mission is inserted.
“Try to understand, above all, that you did not happen to be in the reality in which you are by accident, but you are here because of a precise divine project. Whatever you might think about yourselves or others might think about you, know that your life is precious and irreplaceable in the time and place in which you find yourselves to be, according to God’s projects. You have been preordained for this reality, and for this reason God gave you irreplaceable and original potentialities. No one in the universe is equal to you, because God’s creativity is unlimited and inexhaustable, and because each one of you is absolutely unique in his being and in his way of acting.
“Unfortunatly, many on Earth live below their potentiality, because they do not make of themselves a gift to Me. I am the only One to know pefectly the Father’s project for each one of you, because from Him I received the order to bring to completion His work in every person. I am acting in you by the power of the Holy Spirit, who enlightens you, cloaks you, constantly inspires you pointing out the avenue towards Me, so that I might reveal to you the Will of the Father for each one of you.
Without me you shall never truly be able to know yourselves, nor to be able to understand what is asked of you to do in this life.
“The Holy Spirit and I are constantely at work in order to realize the Father’s project in each one of you, but we can do this only with the help of your freedom, that is, only when you willingly and freely choose to love and serve God and you offer to Him your life. This is the indispensable condition so that your potentialities activate and are at work. In fact, by the moment you decide to live for God and to be totally abandoned to His will, within you the action of the Holy Trinity starts working, and little by little, transforms your life and your thoughts. Thus, you are beginning to become conscious of who you are in God and to make a mark on reality, a creative mark, because it is divine creativity working in you. I wish you to be conscious about what I am saying to you, because the knowledge that God is active in you, independently from your human limitations and frailties, is determinant for your mission in the time in which you live.
“Yours is a grand time and a difficult time for the entire universe. Grandiose for the power of the events that the hand of God is preparing, and difficult because it is a time of battle with the powers of evil, an always more open battle.
All this does not refer to the planet earth alone, but to the entire creation and all the people who inhabit many other planets. I have already told you that they are children of God as you are, and that I gave My life for them as well. They are your brothers in whom the project of My Father has to be perfectly accomplished, just as it is in yours.
“What is the project of the Father? To bring back the entire creation to the state of integrity and perfection it had before original sin; to bring back every person to the dignity and glory of a child of God. All men and every creature that exists in the universe must be made free from corruption and death which infiltrated themselves in the work of God because of the sin of your forefathers. Humanity must return to a correct relationship with God, by recognizing His authority and by submitting to His guide. How is the Father going to realize this project? By recapitulating all creation in Me, since He gave Me all power in the whole universe.
www.versolanuovacreazione.it

Angelo Vecchione said...

“This is why I am at work in this time, so that all those who will come to Me might be brought to a new and filial relationship with the Father.These people will be instructed interiorly by Me, to be ready to understand and to live the events awaiting humanity. When My work will be accomplished in each one and in the entire universe, I will return in My glory and I will introduce all those who belong to Me, in the new incorrupt and incorruptible creation. This will be the new and most pure dimension of the spirit, in which redeemed humanity will live; it will be the kingdom of heaven that at the end of times I will give to My Father, but a kingdom that even now belongs to those who live for Me and in Me.
“On the contrary, those who will remain outside Me, because they will not have accepted Me nor recognized Me as Son of God and Savior, they will not enter the new creation.
“I came on Earth in order to bring the beginning of a new time, a definite and decisive time for the humanity of the whole universe. After My death and resurrection a progressive journey towards the new creation had begun. With My passion, I fufilled in front of My Father what His justice required, washing the sins of the forefathers with My Blood and erasing your heavy debt. This way I opened the avenue to every single person of good will who wants to accept Me and follow Me. If you offer yourselves to Me, I will lead you perfectly according to the plans of God, to introduce you, some day, in the kingdom of heaven. However, the walking is up to you. Don’t think that I also do your part! I am near you and I sustain you but I do not walk for you. Christians often depend on Me, thinking I already did everything, so they don’t have to do anything anymore. They feel satisfied by participating in some religious rite, and they think they are fine. No, children, this attitude is very wrong. I redeemed you, this is true, but if you remain lifeless and passive, without taking upon yourselves the responsibility expected of you, as spiritually mature people should do, how is Redemption going to bring any fruit in you? What will distinguish you from those who do not believe? My life and My work must become incarnated in each one of you, so that you might be able to make My Sacrifice efficacious, alive and visible, for your benefit and that of others. It is not sufficient to believe in Redemption, one must fully enter It, taking up your cross and following Me.
“If this is true at the level of a single person, much more is it true when referring to the entire humanity. The entire humanity will have to know Me, accept Me, and follow Me if it wants to be taken back to the Father and led into the kingdon of heaven.
Bringing back the entire creation to the Father is up to Me only, therefore everything has to pass through Me.
“Which is your duty then during these times? It is that of firmly believeing in Me and offering Me your very selves, so that I can unite you to Me in order to take you back to the Father. This is the meaning of being recapitulated in Me. This way you will be part of My Mystical Body which is the most powerful force working in the universe. Part of the Mystical Body are My Mother, the angels, the Saints, and all those, living and dead, who believed and still believe in My work, because they love the Father and recognize Me as Son of God and Redeemer of the whole humanity.In this way you will become partakers of My actions and of the Father’s; you will be part of God’s army, that in these times is powerfully at work. This is why it is absolutely necessary that you decide to live for God, renewing yourselves interiorly and detaching from your selfesheness and egoism. I expect from each of you a serious and unequivocal decision. Such a decision is not postponable anymore; this is valid for each individual and for the entire humanity.
_www.versolanuovacreazione.it______Stefania Caterina

Angelo Vecchione said...

“This is why I am at work in this time, so that all those who will come to Me might be brought to a new and filial relationship with the Father.These people will be instructed interiorly by Me, to be ready to understand and to live the events awaiting humanity. When My work will be accomplished in each one and in the entire universe, I will return in My glory and I will introduce all those who belong to Me, in the new incorrupt and incorruptible creation. This will be the new and most pure dimension of the spirit, in which redeemed humanity will live; it will be the kingdom of heaven that at the end of times I will give to My Father, but a kingdom that even now belongs to those who live for Me and in Me.
“On the contrary, those who will remain outside Me, because they will not have accepted Me nor recognized Me as Son of God and Savior, they will not enter the new creation.
“I came on Earth in order to bring the beginning of a new time, a definite and decisive time for the humanity of the whole universe. After My death and resurrection a progressive journey towards the new creation had begun. With My passion, I fufilled in front of My Father what His justice required, washing the sins of the forefathers with My Blood and erasing your heavy debt. This way I opened the avenue to every single person of good will who wants to accept Me and follow Me. If you offer yourselves to Me, I will lead you perfectly according to the plans of God, to introduce you, some day, in the kingdom of heaven. However, the walking is up to you. Don’t think that I also do your part! I am near you and I sustain you but I do not walk for you. Christians often depend on Me, thinking I already did everything, so they don’t have to do anything anymore. They feel satisfied by participating in some religious rite, and they think they are fine. No, children, this attitude is very wrong. I redeemed you, this is true, but if you remain lifeless and passive, without taking upon yourselves the responsibility expected of you, as spiritually mature people should do, how is Redemption going to bring any fruit in you? What will distinguish you from those who do not believe? My life and My work must become incarnated in each one of you, so that you might be able to make My Sacrifice efficacious, alive and visible, for your benefit and that of others. It is not sufficient to believe in Redemption, one must fully enter It, taking up your cross and following Me.
“If this is true at the level of a single person, much more is it true when referring to the entire humanity. The entire humanity will have to know Me, accept Me, and follow Me if it wants to be taken back to the Father and led into the kingdon of heaven.
Bringing back the entire creation to the Father is up to Me only, therefore everything has to pass through Me.
“Which is your duty then during these times? It is that of firmly believeing in Me and offering Me your very selves, so that I can unite you to Me in order to take you back to the Father. This is the meaning of being recapitulated in Me. This way you will be part of My Mystical Body which is the most powerful force working in the universe. Part of the Mystical Body are My Mother, the angels, the Saints, and all those, living and dead, who believed and still believe in My work, because they love the Father and recognize Me as Son of God and Redeemer of the whole humanity.In this way you will become partakers of My actions and of the Father’s; you will be part of God’s army, that in these times is powerfully at work. This is why it is absolutely necessary that you decide to live for God, renewing yourselves interiorly and detaching from your selfesheness and egoism. I expect from each of you a serious and unequivocal decision. Such a decision is not postponable anymore; this is valid for each individual and for the entire humanity.
_www.versolanuovacreazione.it______Stefania Caterina

Angelo Vecchione said...

_www.versolanuovacreazione.it______Stefania Caterina________________________
“The walk of all humanity has come to a crossroad, particularly for you, men and women of Earth, a crucial planet in the plans of God. Here I became incarnate, I died and Resurrected, here I instituted My Church, the first cell of the Kingdom of God. From Earth a powerful mission of evangelization of the entire world should have started. The Church of Earth, in fact, is called to this: to be a witness of My death and Resurrection and a carrier of the message of salvation to every person living in the universe, in the manners and times foreseen by God. Every person in the universe is destined to be part of the Church, that is of the people of God, and not just your humanity. Do not forget that I died and I resurrected for all people in the universe.
“My Father gave to your humanity ample decisional freedom throughout the millennia, and He always gave signs and prophets, so that you would be able to understand His plans and to stay with His work and Mine, in order to recapitulate the entire universe in Me. He sent you my Mother who many times called you, with strength and tenderness, to the need of returning to God.
“A lot has been done by My people on Earth, but much more remains to be done. Nowdays, on Earth, just a small part of humanity believes in God, in spite of the work of evangelization done by Christians. The evangelization of the universe instead remains an unknown question and is rejected by many, ridiculed, and never seriously faced. Why? Because of two fundamental reasons:
“The first reason is that the people of God, upon the Earth, withdrew into themselves and their own problems. Faith has been lived and it is still lived by many Christians as the remedy to life’s problems. Life on Earth, with all its difficulties, has been the center of every attention, of every preaching and mission. The Church herself, that is, My people, is running the risk of operating more as a charity institution then a depository of a universal mission. For sure I do not mean to say that the works of charity are not necessary, on the contrary! However, I am saying that they cannot constitute the only field of action of Christians, which seems to be the case for many.
“Christians thought too little about heaven and too much about Earth. This created a vicious cycle: the more Christians are concerned with earthly matters, the more they remain slave of them. I see a great decadence of My people and even of many pastors, that run after earthly matters. It is obvious that each one of you has duties and responsibilities and that life on earth is objectively difficult; your heart, however, must remain free from the troubles of everyday life and rise to God and to the things of heaven. Only this way will you be able to come to know the things of God. Instead, after two millennia of My coming, notwithstanding the faith in Me you profess and the teachings of the Gospel, you still have not been able to come to a resolution to your earthly problems. This means that your faith is weak. Then, as I said to Nicodemus, if you do not believe Me when I speak to you about earthly matters, how can I speak to you about heavenly matters? How would you be able to believe, what would your position be in front of them?
“This is the reason why the universal dimension of Christianity did not fully develop, universal in that it is able to embrace the entire universe. I have been wanting to talk to you for a long time about things of heaven, but you were never ready. And yet, this humanity was given plenty of signs about the existance of life on other planets! I am telling you, not even the Church was left without signs. Who accepted them and had been able to read them at the light of faith? Very few, and those few have been harshly persecuted.
www.versolanuovacreazione.it Stefania Caterina
“The

Sunday Propers

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