MODULE 2: Faith as Believing

Questions to deal with:

1. Is Faith blind?
2. Is Faith and Reason opposing?

Processing of Results:
● Faith is a natural human orientation. Everyone has faith or belief in something.
● Faith is not blind, since everyone has it.

Reading: Faith as Believing (Brazal & De Guzman)

● [An intellectualist faith gives primacy to doctrinal assent; It became predominant in Christianity
in the Rationalism of the 19th century]
● The paper traced historical developments in Philosophy and later in the Church that led to the
shifts towards a showing a doctrinal leaning of faith.
● St . Augustine: Neo-Platonism
○ The world of truth and the world of ideas, Plato
■ World of Matter - only a shadow or image of the true reality of the realm of forms
■ World of Forms - more real than any individual physical objects
○ Dominant theology in 13th Century
● St. Thomas Aquinas
○ use of reason
○ used Aristotelian Philosophy
○ Reason is important.
● Industrial Revolution, Age of Enlightenment = Rationalism
○ Vatican I rejection: Dei Fide Catolica
○ Faith: intellectual assent to revealed doctrines; an act of the mind assenting to the
divine truth.

Strengths and Weaknesses: Intellectualist Model

Strengths Weaknesses
•Revelation = reasonable •Depersonalized faith
•Good for those wanting for •Hellenistic dualism at work
standards/ norms. •Does not encourage responsible
faith commitment

Processing: In De Guzman and Brazal’s paper, we saw how religion accommodated the
Philosophical traditions of the past. Since the past, Christianity has always engaged in a constant
critical self reflection of faith.

Online Task: Example of a community

•Check online for faith-based communities that exhibit an Intellectualist model of faith.
•What community are you looking at? [Active/ Dull; Blind/ Responsible; Informed/ Ignorant]
•How did they show their faith? [they observe religiously their religious responsibilities; they identify
their need and need of others; respond to these needs; they are only interested in personal
salvation.]
•How is it indicated? [when they work for others; they show their love for God by loving others;
Others]

Processing from “Community” example:

•From this task we see how a community of faith manifests their intellectualist faith convictions. And
the manner that they manifest their faith reflect judgments or decisions mainly from their religious
sources or tradition. The community being examined here show how the members are committed
towards personal spiritual upliftment, honoring their responsibilities as responsibilities towards God.

CREATION STORY AND THE BIG BANG

•In this exercise, let us examine a religious narrative (Creation story) and a scientific narrative (Big
Bang). Who wrote them? Why are they written? What is the basis of religious literature? Basis of
scientific literature? Does the scientific narrative preclude the existence of a Creator/Intelligent
Being? To help us answer these questions, please watch the following videos:
a. David Christian: The history of our world in 18 minutes | TED Talk
❖ Scrambled Egg - Order -> Lack of Order and Lack of Structure, Complexity (MUSH)
❖ How does the Universe make complexity?
➢ It can make complexity but with difficulty, complexity builds stage by stage.
Creating something new every time.
➢ Complex things get more fragile and vulnerable, harder to make complexity
❖ This can be determined by identifying the whole history of the universe (13.7B years)
➢ Nothing, no time or space
➢ Universe appears - first threshold, hot, busting, expanding rly fast
➢ Distinct things appear, energy shatters into forces (electromagnetism, gravity),
and forms matter
➢ Simple atoms appear, no structure (380K years)
➢ Gravity becomes more powerful with more matter (i.e. clouds of hydrogen and
helium)
➢ Protons start to fuse, release of energy -> STARS -> new types of atoms
➢ Form particles, planets, moons, solar system (4.5B years)
➢ Living organisms from molecules, requires: right amount of energy, diverse
chemical elements, liquids create molecules
➢ Heat inside the earth -> Elements and chemistry
➢ DNA information on how to make living organisms -> Oceans
➢ Errors in DNA though -> Advancing of living organisms
➢ DNA learns by creating brains -> Information dies when human dies -> Sharing
information and create a collective memory -> Generations of creativity and
history = COLLECTIVE LEARNING -> Trading, internet, singular brain
b. The Cosmological Argument (1 of 2) | by MrMcMillanREvis
❖ Cosmological Argument
➢ Philosophical argument in favour of the existence of God, which caused the
universe
➢ “A Posteriori” - based on looking at evidence in the world around u
➢ Inductive Argument - aims to persuade us, not prove to us, to conclude
➢ Cosmos = universe
❖ Why is there something rather than nothing?
➢ Concept of Causation
■ Aka the Law of Cause and Effect
■ Tracing the first cause = Big Bang??? Who caused the big bang??
(REJECT Infinite Regress or the idea that the universe has always existed)
➢ The first cause should not be physical (spiritual), timebound (eternal), or
caused (necessary) = GOD
❖ St. Thomas Aquinas
➢ Wrote the Summa Theologica
■ About the five ways of God’s existence: Motion, Causes, Contingency
(existence dependent on smth else), Quality, and Design
■ Things are in motion, caused, and contingent by something, but they can
not go on as such forever
■ This “something” is the unmoved mover, uncaused cause, and uncreated
being
❖ Process of Thinking
➢ Everything that exists has a cause
➢ The Universe exists
➢ The Universe has a cause
➢ The cause is God

c. Genesis and the Big Bang: Both contain truth (Ed Langlois, 2017)
❖ Pope Francis (2014)
➢ Both Genesis and Big Bang theory are consistent with Catholic Faith
■ Belgian priest-physicist Msgr. Georges Lemaitre
● Developed the Big Bang theory, which had gained evidence and
discovery within 90 years - universe was originally contained within
a dense, hot point which expanded and cooled; its energy became
matter and space
● Used math and observation of the skies
■ Fits with the notion of creation from nothing
● “vindicates the reasonableness and rationality of Christian
understanding of creation” - Benedictine Brother Louis de Montfort
Nguyen
 ➢ This seemed revolutionary for secular media. Though, Catholicism understood
scripture and science as different ways of telling the truth. Theologians and
scientists warn that while the scientific theory and the religious theory can be in
harmony, neither proves the other. (Those who say the Genesis stories describe
creation as it happened run the risk of assigning meaning the authors never
intended) (Scripture and science offer truth but from different angles)
❖ Before, scientists thought the universe always had existed = CONTRARY
➢ Law of Thermodynamics - energy could be neither created nor destroyed; there
was no beginning of the universe and so no need for a creator
➢ Scientists can't explain God, which goes too far compared to what they can
reach
■ Some theories don't explain why there was a primordial gravity field or
physical laws to allow it spontaneously to go “bang.”
■ CONTRARY = The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 declared that creation
was ex nihilo, or “out of nothing.”
● Father Holtzinger is critical of atheist scientists who will not even
explore the idea of a creator. “To do good science,” he says, “you
need to be open to the possibility.”
■ St. Augustine taught that Genesis should be taken figuratively. In the 13th
century, St. Thomas Aquinas said no one should stick to an interpretation
of Scripture that is proven wrong by facts.
● God is the author of nature as well as author of Scripture
❖ The First Vatican Council in 1870 declared that “there can never be a real conflict
between faith and reason, since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith
is also the God that has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind.”
➢ Those who take Genesis literally want to force science and faith into agreement
in all respects right now, not trusting that someday all will be revealed in a unity
of truth. They do not have trust, and therefore have no faith.
➢ God’s intention to have faith and reason. When you try to force faith and reason
to work together, you are denying yourself faith in the unknown.
➢ No need for certainty and consistency in faith. But humans really want that.
❖ “The idea is this: While science analyzes the dots, religion sees the overall picture. Both
views can be true.” (Dots can be fascinating but chaotic, and looking at the overall
image brings coherence)
❖ “Faith is concerned with what is right, good and beautiful, and how it all hangs
together. Science is concerned with how the world works, down to its smallest pieces.”
❖ “The trick is to get comfortable with the idea of flipping back and forth between two
different ways of seeing,” Father Mueller writes. “And the trick, also, is not to panic if
one way of seeing omits something that the other includes, or emphasizes something
that the other neglects.”
❖ Science can’t answer why the universe is rational and not chaotic. Creation stories
have a go at that, and the answer has to do with goodness and love.
 ❖ Science = HOW in Genesis, Religion = WHY in Genesis
❖ But Babylonian creation myths held that the universe came about by mistake, a
byproduct of other activities carried out by divine beings. What was new in Genesis
was not the shape of creation, but that it had been given shape deliberately in an
orderly fashion by a God who was separate from it. That, says Brother Consolmagno,
is the big truth of Genesis and endures as its real meaning.

Processing:
The Bible contains varieties of literary forms. What we study in Literature are also true for biblical
materials. For instance, the Bible contains Myths, Parables, Histories, Fables, etc. Hence to
understand the biblical text one need also to understand the literary type being examined.
● Second, one needs to consider the purpose and nature of that literary form. If we read a Myth,
we realize that we are reading a material that projects a certain truth using symbolic language
because that is the nature of a Myth. Hence instead of saying it is NOT True because it is a
myth we now say—What truth is being projected by that Myth?
● The creation story declares a truth claim that all material things have their beginning in a
Creator. Christianity assigns this ‘beginning’ to a Divine Being or a “Super Intelligent Being”. Is
there a way to validate these arguments? David Christian’s video and the Cosmological
Argument provided us some answers.
○ David Christian spoke about a Goldilocks condition- an evolving cosmological state of
the balance between heat and cold to sustain life. Secondly, the cosmological
argument used reason to build sufficient basis to affirm that the beginning of life can
only come through causation- by higher force that gives life. At the end of this inquiry,
are the cosmological argument and scientific version of the history of the universe
additive or opposing theories? If you say additive, you affirm the complementing role of
both. From our discussion, we saw how both theories complement.

Summative Assessment [DONE]

•Kindly click and answer: https://forms.gle/tSoXGyGYi8FBo4Cu5
POWERPOINT 2

On Creation stories in Genesis: What do you think about Creation stories? Are Creation stories True
or Not? (previously you were asked if a Creation story possess a “Truth”)
● They contain a Truth in them. The bible contains several literary forms that show the truth in
different ways, with different purposes and intentions.

Review:
● Faith and science differ in the following:
○ Presupposition and operating principles
■ Faith operates on a principle of belief “believe that you might see”
■ Science operates on the principle “to see is to believe”
○ Content/subject
■ Faith deals with spiritual realities while science deal with material existence.
○ Language
■ Faith uses symbolic/metaphorical language = CREATION STORY (one type of
literary form, projects a spiritual/religious truth, which describes spiritual realities
as they are)
● E.g. there are spirits, miraculous cures
● Are also captured in religious dictums (e.g. “one must die to one’s self in
order to live” with die = beginning of life)
■ Science relies solely on precise and exact language alone. Describes
material/physical/scientific realities arrived from material evidence = BIG BANG
THEORY
● Two entities – are in opposition if they clash on equal grounds or plains.
○ The three categories (presupposition, language, content)
■ Not in the same plain; they are different. (“difference” need not mean opposing)
○ For Example:
■ Spirit is not in the same plain as Matter.
■ Metaphorical language is different from scientific language.
■ Hence a “Clash” implying contradictions is not a precise interpretation of their
relationship.
● Faith and science do not clash. The Creation story and the Big Bang present two
particular TRUTH claims which are independent from one another.

Now let us verify if truth claims are indeed a shared claim by either the religious believer or the
scientist. Can a person trained with reason in fact see the place of faith in the investigation of truth?