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in certain circumstances; whether we have free will or are determined; how to operationally define good and evil, especially about such subjective matters as meaning and purpose of human existence. Scientists have opinions on these questions, of course, but there is no consensus (and considerable disagreement) among them, to such an extent that these matters are rarely even dealt with in the scientific literature, let alone agreed upon. But the best reason to keep science and religion separate is because they employ radically different methods. Science is not a “thing,” but a “process”—more than a body of knowledge, science is a method for obtaining answers to questions about the natural world. Religion, in its second mode, deals with matters about which science has little to say.

To that end, the separate-worlds model is better for science because religion, by definition, deals with subjects beyond our scope and practice. But the separate-worlds model is also better for religion because science is constantly changing and thus it is dangerous to attach religious doctrines to scientific theories, which may go out of date in a matter of years. If Stephen Hawking’s no-boundary universe is true, for example, then there is no beginning, no end, and no need for a creator. Catholic cleric and professional astronomer Guy Consolmagno, a scientist at the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope in the high desert of southeast Arizona, summarized this position well when he explained why he believes in God: “It’s not because of the beauty or symmetry or design of the universe that I see in my science, even though all of those things can lead me to appreciate the God I already believe in. It’s not because some particular scientific theory is true or false, but because truth and falseness themselves are important. And because, the last time I asked God if he existed, His reply was, ‘Last time I looked, I did.’” Faith, not reason, religion, not science, is the proper domain of God’s existence.

FIDES ET RATIO

Two years after his 1996 address on evolution, John Paul II released his thirteenth Encyclical Letter—Fides et Ratio of the Supreme Pontiff to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Relationship between Faith and Reason. Coming in at no less than 35,000 words, divided into 7 chapters and 108 numbered subchapters, and featuring a weighty 132 scholarly endnotes, it was a significant expansion of his commentary on evolution. By any standards Fides et Ratio is an impressive work of scholarship. It begins poetically: “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.” Faith and reason, the Pope points out, both must be employed in addressing the most fundamental questions about human existence: “Who am I? Where have I come from and where am I going? What is there after this life?”

To answer these questions, to become “ever more human,” we begin with philosophy, “one of noblest of human tasks.” Philosophers employ logic and reason to yield “genuine systems of thought” as well as “a body of knowledge which may be judged a kind of spiritual heritage of humanity.” That heritage can be seen in “certain fundamental moral norms which are shared by all,” and thus “the Church cannot but set great value upon reason’s drive to attain goals which render people’s lives ever more worthy.” However, “the positive results achieved must not obscure the fact that reason, in its one-sided concern to investigate human subjectivity, seems to have forgotten that men and women are always called to direct their steps towards a truth which transcends them,” giving rise “to different forms of agnosticism and relativism which have led philosophical research to lose its way in the shifting sands of widespread scepticism.” John Paul II then launches an attack on “undifferentiated pluralism” where “all positions are equally valid, which is one of today’s most widespread symptoms of the lack of confidence in truth.”

Most scientists would join the Pope in voicing their concerns for the decay of knowledge and