Christianity - Science Flashcards
1
Q
What is the meaning of the Existentialism?
A
Existentialism - A philosophy based on the idea that humans created their own personal reality through the choices they make
It is important to know that Kierkegaard is the earliest Christian existentialist, saw faith as a matter of personal commitment not related to scientific facts
2
Q
What is Quantum theory ?
A
- The world is revealed by relativity and quantum mechanics ( how energy exists in individual units )
- Through particle physics we know that atoms are made up of many different particles, divisible into smaller ‘quarks’, which themselves
- Quantum theory cannot predict the action of individual particles, but describes the atomic world in terms of probabilities, based on the observation of very large numbers
3
Q
What theory does neuroscience inadvertently oppose?
A
- Descartes Dualism as it supports the materialist view of the self
4
Q
When looking at the christian and religious response to Darwin’s Evolution who are key scholars to focus on ?
A
- Michael Behe and his claim bout how many biological systems are irreducibly complex at the molecular level
- Karl Rahner states god and evolution are compatible as evolution works by the laws of nature and god is the ‘author’ of the laws of nature
5
Q
When looking at the religious responses to the God of the Gaps arguments who are three philosophers who posed them?
A
- Tillich - stated that God is a Being-Itself and any god found in a gap couldn’t be the god of classical theism
- Polkinghorne - God does not intervene in the world crudely but instead influences it at the quantum level, God is active in the world, so there is no more gaps left to fill
- Wiles - God is active, all the time, everywhere, within and beyond the universe
6
Q
What are the views of Max Planck?
A
- He was key in Quantum theory with his discovery that radiation did not appear to arrive as a continuous stream, but as little packets, or ‘quanta’. Under certain conditions, light can appear as a wave or a particle, a phenomena known as ‘wave-particle duality’
