Originally Posted by Yarn

Karl F. Muenzinger

Science is making the proud claim that all natural events are its subject matter and that if any event can be studied by its methods it is thereby proven to be a natural event. Supernatural events and forces have no place in science. To admit them as explanatory principles would destroy the power of that superb set of rules which we have come to call the scientific method. If an earthquake occurs we cannot, as scientists, ascribe it to an act of God, insurance contracts notwithstanding; we must look for its causes in antecedent natural conditions and events. The success of the scientific method during the past three hundred years in exploring, explaining, and controlling natural events is in a large measure due to the rigid exclusion of all references to supernatural forces. To the scientist, the eclipse and comet, flood and drought, famine and disease, war and genocide are not divine punishments, but events whose operations have to be adequately described so that they may eventually be brought under control.

Originally Posted by Yarn

It was inevitable that such a way of looking at nature and life should severely restrict the area in which religious teaching was the supreme source of explanation, guidance, and comfort. Science, in its impatient strength, kept on narrowing the boundaries of religion until many people regarded religious values and religious behavior as a closed chapter in human history. However, such an attitude disregards the obvious fact that science itself has its own definite limits. Its own rules prevent it from going beyond these limits, and any proper evaluation of science and religion demands that the limits of science be taken into account. It is my contention that religious behavior begins where scientific thinking comes to a definite and perhaps permanent halt.

Originally Posted by Yarn

The question of the limits of science is not new, although it has been disregarded frequently. It was eighty years ago that the German physiologist, Emil DuBois-Reymond, delivered a lecture entitled “Ueber die Grenzen des Naturerkennens”or “On the Limitations of the Knowledge of Nature.” What is so remarkable about this lecture is not its actual content but the fact that it boldly proclaimed that science, which was already on its unprecedented rise, did possess limitations. At the end of each section, dealing with one of the limitations, DuBois-Reymond exclaimed: “Ignoramus; Ignorabimus!” (“We do not know; we shall not know”). Like a refrain in a revolutionary song, this exclamation has since been repeated by not a few scientists who have been able to rise above the above the minutiate of their specialties and look at science as humanists, so to speak. That science, or rather the scientific method, has certain limitations is a claim that should be periodically examined. It might also be fruitful to look at these limitations in relation to those that science has imposed upon religion.

Originally Posted by Yarn

A brief sketch of the main facets of traditional Hebrew-Christian religion will make it possible to point out the inroads made upon each one of them by sciences.