Miks teadus vajab teoloogiat?
Abstract
Nancey Murphy, Why Science Needs Theology
This article has set out to address the question of why the sciences need theology. It focuses especially on why the human sciences need theology. Two resources are used. One is Arthur Peacocke’s model for relating theology to the sciences - a hierarchy of sciences studying increasing levels of complexity in nature - with theology at the top, because it studies the most complex level possible, that of the relation of God to all of reality.
Alasdair MacIntyre’s arguments are also employed regarding the nature of ethics. He claims that without some concept of ultimate reality we will never be able to settle disagreements about the ultimate purpose of human life. And without an account of the human telos, in turn, we will never be able to settle disagreements about particular moral issues.
These two resources are put together in the following way: the author claims that the human sciences raise boundary questions - that is, questions that can be formulated at the level of that science, but cannot be answered without taking into account a higher level of analysis. The most daunting questions raised by the human sciences are ethical questions, and this returns us to MacIntyre’s claim that ethical questions call for theological answers.
Finally, all of the human sciences are, in a sense, theology-laden. That is, all accounts of what is normal or good or desirable for humans, individually or socially, are presupposing some account of ultimate reality. If it is not a theistic account, then implicitly or explicitly, it is the universe itself that is taken to be ultimate, and conclusions such as that of physicist Steven Weinberg follow: the more we understand about the universe, the more it seems pointless.
Downloads
References
Barbour, Ian G. 1966. Issues in Science and Religion. New York: Harper and Row.
Berger, Peter L. 1963. Invitation to Sociology. A Humanistic Perspective. New York: Doubleday.
Comte, Auguste. 1883. ‘Plan Des Travaux Scientifiques Necessaires Par Organiser La Societe’. In Opuscules de Philosophie Sociale, 1819-1828. Paris: E. Leroux. http://books.google.com/books?id=v82xTclMnxAC.
Dunn, James D. G. 1998. The Theology of Paul the Apostle. Edinburgh: Eerdmans.
Flanagan, Owen J. 2002. The Problem of the Soul: Two Visions of Mind and How to Reconcile Them. New York: Basic Books. http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=904165.
Harrison, Peter. 2008. ‘Religion, the Royal Society, and the Rise of Science’. Theology and Science 6 (3): 255–71.
MacIntyre, Alasdair C. 1984. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theology. Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press.
Murphy, Nancey C. 2006. Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Murphy, Nancey, and George F. R. Ellis. 1996. On the Moral Nature of the Universe: Theology, Cosmology, and Ethics. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
Niebuhr, Reinhold. 1932. Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics. New York: C. Scribner’s.
O’Toole, James. 1993. The Executive’s Compass: Business and the Good Society. New York: Oxford University Press.
Peacocke, A. R. 1979. Creation and the World of Science. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Peacocke, A. R. 1993. Theology for a Scientific Age: Being and Becoming - Natural, Divine, and Human. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
Schleiermacher, Friedrich. 1958. On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultural Despisers. New York: Harper and Row.
Taylor, Charles. 1985. ‘Philosophy and the Human Sciences’. Philosophical Papers 2.
Taylor, Charles. 1989. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Weinberg, Steven. 2007. ‘What about God?’ In The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever. Philadelphia: Perseus Books.
Whiteley, Denys Edward Hugh. 1964. The Theology of St. Paul. Oxford: B. Blackwell.
Winch, Peter. 1967. ‘Max Weber’. In Encyclopedia of philosophy. Vol. 2. New York: Macmillan.
