Calgary,November 2021
My grandchildren are attending Catholic school and I was wondering what they are teaching them. Do they follow the Bible, claiming that God created Earth 6,000 years ago with the dinosaurs, Adam and Eve and everything else together, or do they accept that the Universe began more than 13 billion years ago by a big explosion, that Earth is more than 5 billion years old, and life is following the evolution described by Darwin? I don’t know their curriculum, so I looked at what is the current Catholic church position on those questions. To my pleasant surprise, I found out that Catholic church accepts the explanations presented by science. They don’t dispute the Big Bang theory or Darwin’s evolution. So, where does this leaves God? It is simple. God created the Big Bang and all the laws of nature governing our Universe. Therefore, everything including us is God’s creation. For me, a non-believer, this is as good a theory as any other. The cause of Big Bang is unknown and, to my understanding, will remind so, because it happened outside of our Universe. We can speculate whatever we want about what caused the Big Bang, but we cannot observe it. Therefore, there is no way to confirm or disprove any of those speculations and, from that point of view, there is no conflict between the science and religion.
The conflict starts with a question: What is God’s function now, 13 billion years after the Big Bang? This is not a conflict between science and religion, but conflict between religious and secular values. Catholics believe that God stipulated 10 commandments and disobeying any of them is a sin. But, according to them, we all are God’s creations, following His design, implemented by His laws of nature, so why do we commit sins? Doesn’t it point to some fault in a design? According to the Bible, the original sin started by Adam disobeying God. But Adam was a God’s creature, so why he disobeyed Him? Does that mean that God has no control over His own creation? That He cannot improve us to eliminate sins? Why not? He is supposed to be all-powerful.
I am sure I am not the only person asking those questions, but they don’t highlight conflict between science and religion. Even Catholic church admits that Adam and Eve represents symbols, not real people. One of the greatest scientists, who was also Catholic priest, Father George Lemaître (1894 – 1966) said that Bible is not a textbook. He didn’t see any conflict between science and religion, because those two different interpretations of the world have nothing in common. To him, the stories in Bible represent metaphors, not reality, and Father George Lemaître knew what he was talking about. In 1927, by correcting Einstein equations of General Relativity, he was the first one to note that an expanding universe could be traced back in time to an originating single point, which he called the "primeval atom". His theoretical conclusion, which we now call Big Bang Theory, was supported two years later by discovery of expansion of Universe by American astronomer Edvin Hubble. Then, in 1965, shortly before George Lemaître death, his theory was confirmed by detecting the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, the echo of Big Bang which we can measure even now. Those key advances in cosmology were not the only achievements of George Lemaître. In 1951 he convinced the pope Pius XII not to use the Big Bang Theory as a proof of existence of God. Religion and science, he insisted, must be kept separate. Father George Lemaître is the only person who corrected both Einstein and pope.
What has all that to do with the Catholic education of my grandchildren? As far as science is concern, not much. After doing some research for this essay, I found out that science curriculums for Catholic and Public schools are about the same. The conflict might arise between the lifestyle which Catholic church demands from their followers and the secular laws of a country like Canada. For example, Catholic church declares masturbation, sex outside marriage, pornography, and homosexual practices to be grave offences contra the Catholic sexual morality. According to them, sexual pleasure is morally wrong when sought for itself, isolated from its procreative purposes. Adultery, divorce, polygamy, and free union are grave offenses against the dignity of marriage. Abortion is punishable by excommunication.
None of the above is against the Canadian law. Will my grandchildren, when the time comes, be burdened by those restrictions? I hope not. My wife and I have always ignored those rules and didn’t experience any adverse effects because of it. On the contrary, ignoring them made our life more enjoyable.