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The Realist Guide to Religion and Science
Why do some religious believers slaughter those who refuse to convert to their faith, refuse scientific evidence for an ancient universe, or hold God to be an utterly arbitrary being? Why do some scientists believe that universes pop into existence from nothing, that aliens seeded life on earth, or that fish turn into reptiles by chance processes? The answer, for both, is the same: the abandonment of realism, the human way for knowing reality. In The Realist Guide to Religion and Science, Fr Paul Robinson explains what realism is all about, then undertakes an historical exploration to show how religion and science become irrational when they abandon realism and intellectually fruitful when they embrace it.
556 pages, Paperback
Published January 15, 2018
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89 people want to read
About the author
Paul Athanasius Robinson
3 books109 followersI am a priest of the Society of St Pius X (SSPX), ordained in 2006. After three years at my first assignment in Saint Marys, Kansas, I spent the last ten years teaching at Holy Cross Seminary in Goulburn, Australia. Since August of 2019, I have been taking care of the SSPX parish in Denver, Colorado. My particular interest is in the intersection of theology, philosophy, and science. In 2018, I published The Realist Guide to Religion and Science to assist Catholics (and others!) to achieve a balanced intellectual perspective on faith/science questions.
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Realist Guide Blog
YouTube channel
Twitter account promoting The Realist Guide, run by Jeanette Daher
Facebook account promoting The Realist Guide, run by Jeanette Daher
Podcasts
Sermons
My answers on Quora
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 29, 2020
Full of prejudices, such as what René Guénon calls the classicist prejudice, I cannot explain the details, the books East and West, and Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines, should be able to clarify. The intellectual horizon of the author is sadly very limited.
One of the major problems here is that our author sadly many times falls in the trap of thinking that there is such a thing as a "scientific worldview", that is, even though he thinks he represents the Scholastics, he fails to see that the many "modern theories" are based on prejudices, as was even noted by Claude Bernard, but the author himself is full of prejudices, which he fails to realize.
An exclusive faith in science appears indeed to be the hallmark of modernity. That faith itself, however, has begun to falter as we have entered the era of postmodernism. It is not simply a matter of one world view triumphing over another, as has happened in the past. The shift to postmodernism is far more radical than that; for it denies the validity, not just of an antecedent world view, but of worldviews in general. Truth has been reduced in effect to a social convention, the local construct of a society. Partly in reaction, no doubt, to the tyranny of the scientistic Weltanschauung, one has set about to relativize all world views. What confronts us here is not simply a philosophic trend, but a cultural phenomenon: a cultural revolution, one can say. Think of the wholesale rejection of traditional norms, the pervasive distrust of authority, the radical disorientation which seems especially to afflict the youth of our day. There are of course notable exceptions and indeed counter-trends; but these do not offset the nihilistic tendencies in question.
Every epoch has its own “myth” through which it reflects a given collective climate.
The problem of geocentrism:
Medieval cosmology incorporated the old Ptolemaic planetary map, with the Earth in the center and the various planetary spheres - corresponding to different dimensions of existence - moving away until the last heaven, the abode of God. That this map should not be interpreted as a simple material portrait of the celestial world, the proof is the fact that it was dialectically compensated by an opposite conception, in which God was in the center and the Earth in the extreme periphery. The tension between the two spheres comprehensively condensed the paradoxes of human existence in a natural environment that was both a temple and a prison. The medieval view of heaven was not a cosmography, but a cosmology - an integral science of the meaning of man's existence in the cosmos. The outbreak of the heliocentrism versus geocentrism debate lowered the level of public imagination to a confrontation between two purely material conceptions, breaking the dialectical tension between the two spheres and lowering cosmology to the state of mere cosmography. The extraordinary progress of the latter served to mask the fact that the modernity thus inaugurated was totally devoid of a symbolic cosmology, and there is still no way to articulate the material-scientific view of the universe with spiritual knowledge: these two dimensions hover one on top of the other without ever interpenetrating, like water and oil in a glass, from time to time the “conflict between science and religion”, or “between reason and faith”, resurfacing, in different terms, it can only be appeased by conventional border arrangements, as artificial and unstable as any diplomatic treaty. What was dialectical tension has become static dualism, as in a war of positions between armies immobilized each in its own trench. Perhaps the most characteristic feature of modernity is precisely the unnerving coexistence between a science without spirituality and a spirituality without a natural basis.
To make matters worse, the rupture between the two dimensions was not only in the field of cosmology, but also in metaphysics and gnosisology, where René Descartes, breaking with the old Aristotelian-scholastic view of the human being as an indissoluble synthesis of the body and soul, erected a separation wall between matter and spirit, making them heterogeneous and incommunicable substances.
In spite of the countless disputes and corrections it suffered, Cartesian dualism ended up taking roots so deep in the Western mentality, that its harmful consequences are still felt even in the domain of the physical sciences (see Wolfgang Smith, The Quantum Enigma).
Finally, in the cultural sphere, this resulted in dividing the entire universe of experience into two categories: the real, that is, material and measurable objects, known to physical science, and the purely thought out (not to say imaginary) - laws, institutions, values, works of art, the properly human world.
Of the first, only what could be known was their measurable properties, thus becoming forbidden to try to discover any meaning or intention in them. Of the second even though full of meaning, only exists as thoughts, as “cultural constructions” with no basis in reality.
One of the major problems here is that our author sadly many times falls in the trap of thinking that there is such a thing as a "scientific worldview", that is, even though he thinks he represents the Scholastics, he fails to see that the many "modern theories" are based on prejudices, as was even noted by Claude Bernard, but the author himself is full of prejudices, which he fails to realize.
An exclusive faith in science appears indeed to be the hallmark of modernity. That faith itself, however, has begun to falter as we have entered the era of postmodernism. It is not simply a matter of one world view triumphing over another, as has happened in the past. The shift to postmodernism is far more radical than that; for it denies the validity, not just of an antecedent world view, but of worldviews in general. Truth has been reduced in effect to a social convention, the local construct of a society. Partly in reaction, no doubt, to the tyranny of the scientistic Weltanschauung, one has set about to relativize all world views. What confronts us here is not simply a philosophic trend, but a cultural phenomenon: a cultural revolution, one can say. Think of the wholesale rejection of traditional norms, the pervasive distrust of authority, the radical disorientation which seems especially to afflict the youth of our day. There are of course notable exceptions and indeed counter-trends; but these do not offset the nihilistic tendencies in question.
Every epoch has its own “myth” through which it reflects a given collective climate.
The problem of geocentrism:
Medieval cosmology incorporated the old Ptolemaic planetary map, with the Earth in the center and the various planetary spheres - corresponding to different dimensions of existence - moving away until the last heaven, the abode of God. That this map should not be interpreted as a simple material portrait of the celestial world, the proof is the fact that it was dialectically compensated by an opposite conception, in which God was in the center and the Earth in the extreme periphery. The tension between the two spheres comprehensively condensed the paradoxes of human existence in a natural environment that was both a temple and a prison. The medieval view of heaven was not a cosmography, but a cosmology - an integral science of the meaning of man's existence in the cosmos. The outbreak of the heliocentrism versus geocentrism debate lowered the level of public imagination to a confrontation between two purely material conceptions, breaking the dialectical tension between the two spheres and lowering cosmology to the state of mere cosmography. The extraordinary progress of the latter served to mask the fact that the modernity thus inaugurated was totally devoid of a symbolic cosmology, and there is still no way to articulate the material-scientific view of the universe with spiritual knowledge: these two dimensions hover one on top of the other without ever interpenetrating, like water and oil in a glass, from time to time the “conflict between science and religion”, or “between reason and faith”, resurfacing, in different terms, it can only be appeased by conventional border arrangements, as artificial and unstable as any diplomatic treaty. What was dialectical tension has become static dualism, as in a war of positions between armies immobilized each in its own trench. Perhaps the most characteristic feature of modernity is precisely the unnerving coexistence between a science without spirituality and a spirituality without a natural basis.
To make matters worse, the rupture between the two dimensions was not only in the field of cosmology, but also in metaphysics and gnosisology, where René Descartes, breaking with the old Aristotelian-scholastic view of the human being as an indissoluble synthesis of the body and soul, erected a separation wall between matter and spirit, making them heterogeneous and incommunicable substances.
In spite of the countless disputes and corrections it suffered, Cartesian dualism ended up taking roots so deep in the Western mentality, that its harmful consequences are still felt even in the domain of the physical sciences (see Wolfgang Smith, The Quantum Enigma).
Finally, in the cultural sphere, this resulted in dividing the entire universe of experience into two categories: the real, that is, material and measurable objects, known to physical science, and the purely thought out (not to say imaginary) - laws, institutions, values, works of art, the properly human world.
Of the first, only what could be known was their measurable properties, thus becoming forbidden to try to discover any meaning or intention in them. Of the second even though full of meaning, only exists as thoughts, as “cultural constructions” with no basis in reality.
October 13, 2022
Standard modernist drivel.
The book purports to be Catholic while promoting the following positions:
1. The Earth is orbiting the sun at 66,600 mph, rotating at an angle of 66,6° around its axis, moving at a total velocity of around 520,000 mph and has a curvature of 8 inches per square mile or 0.666 feet per square mile.
2. A singularity of near-infinite mass and consequently near-infinite gravity exploded and over billions of years of chance and pointless death and destruction life and ultimately men were formed.
3. The Great flood was local in scope. It did not cover the whole Earth.
Oh! how low the SSPX has fallen.
All of these are easily refuted, however, proposition 1 is explicitly condemned as heretical by the Church while the other two are heretical insofar as they contradict the express meaning of Sacred Scripture, as St. Robert Bellarmine, presider over the Galileo case wrote:
Refutation of:
1. Heliocentrism
From The 1633 Condemnation and Abjuration of Galileo:
The Michelson-Morley experiment also soundly proves a stationary Earth.
2. Evolution
An effect cannot be greater than its cause.
It blasphemes God as it denies him wisdom by ascribing to him a method of creation no sane engineer would consider.
The Probability of a Single Protein Forming by Chance is zero.
3. A local flood
If the flood was local why did God warn Noah a hundred years in advance and Noah spend his whole life building a huge ark to preserve all the animals? Why didn't God just tell him to move a fifty miles north? This view makes God look ridiculous.
A local Flood would make God a liar. God promised Noah never to send another Flood upon the Earth (Genesis 9:11). If the Flood was a local flood, then God lied to Noah, as there have been countless local floods during the four and a half millennia since the Flood of Noah.
Of course, there are a million ways to prove scientifically the veracity of the biblical account as well.
Both the Kolbe Center and Dr. Sungenis have refutations of this book available online.
For further reading on the topic of geocentrism I suggest J. S. Daly's study The Theological Status of Helicoentrism and Dr. Robert Sungenis' work. With regard to evolution, there are many great resources online but a good Catholic source is the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation.
God bless you all.
The book purports to be Catholic while promoting the following positions:
1. The Earth is orbiting the sun at 66,600 mph, rotating at an angle of 66,6° around its axis, moving at a total velocity of around 520,000 mph and has a curvature of 8 inches per square mile or 0.666 feet per square mile.
2. A singularity of near-infinite mass and consequently near-infinite gravity exploded and over billions of years of chance and pointless death and destruction life and ultimately men were formed.
3. The Great flood was local in scope. It did not cover the whole Earth.
Oh! how low the SSPX has fallen.
All of these are easily refuted, however, proposition 1 is explicitly condemned as heretical by the Church while the other two are heretical insofar as they contradict the express meaning of Sacred Scripture, as St. Robert Bellarmine, presider over the Galileo case wrote:
Nor can one reply that this is not a matter of faith, because even if it is not a matter of faith because of the subject matter [ex parte objecti], it is still a matter of faith because of the speaker [ex parte dicentis]. Thus anyone who would say that Abraham did not have two sons and Jacob twelve would be just as much of a heretic as someone who would say that Christ was not born of a virgin, for the Holy Spirit has said both of these things through the mouths of the Prophets and the Apostles.
Refutation of:
1. Heliocentrism
From The 1633 Condemnation and Abjuration of Galileo:
The Sacred Tribunal being therefore of intention to proceed against the disorder and
mischief thence resulting, which went on increasing to the prejudice of the Sacred Faith, by
command of His Highness and of the Most Eminent Lords Cardinals of this supreme and
universal Inquisition, the two propositions of the stability of the Sun and the motion of the
Earth were by the theological Qualifiers qualified as follows:
The proposition that the Sun is the centre of the world and does not move from
its place is absurd and false philosophically and formally heretical, because it is
expressly contrary to the Holy Scripture.
The proposition that the Earth is not the centre of the world and immovable but
that it moves, and also with a diurnal motion, is equally absurd and false philosophically
and theologically considered at least erroneous in faith.
The Michelson-Morley experiment also soundly proves a stationary Earth.
2. Evolution
An effect cannot be greater than its cause.
It blasphemes God as it denies him wisdom by ascribing to him a method of creation no sane engineer would consider.
The Probability of a Single Protein Forming by Chance is zero.
3. A local flood
If the flood was local why did God warn Noah a hundred years in advance and Noah spend his whole life building a huge ark to preserve all the animals? Why didn't God just tell him to move a fifty miles north? This view makes God look ridiculous.
A local Flood would make God a liar. God promised Noah never to send another Flood upon the Earth (Genesis 9:11). If the Flood was a local flood, then God lied to Noah, as there have been countless local floods during the four and a half millennia since the Flood of Noah.
Of course, there are a million ways to prove scientifically the veracity of the biblical account as well.
Both the Kolbe Center and Dr. Sungenis have refutations of this book available online.
For further reading on the topic of geocentrism I suggest J. S. Daly's study The Theological Status of Helicoentrism and Dr. Robert Sungenis' work. With regard to evolution, there are many great resources online but a good Catholic source is the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation.
God bless you all.
October 16, 2018
Dr. Robert Sungenis has written an extraordinary book which thoroughly critiques Fr. Robinson's book. I have read the book and strongly agree with the words of Dr. Sungenis as seen below and found at http://flatearthflatwrong.com/product...
Scientific Heresies and Their Effect on the Church provides a detailed and comprehensive rebuttal to the scientific, theological and exegetical views held by Fr. Paul Robinson, including his views on: The Big Bang; long-ages for the Universe and Earth; progressive creationism; heliocentrism; a local Noachic flood; and current views on radiometry and sedimentology.
This book was written for two purposes: First, to educate the public at large by a critical examination of science and history, especially in the areas of cosmogony and cosmology. Although modern science purports to know the origin and operation of the universe, in reality it comprehends very little and actually spreads more falsehood today than it does truth. On its face, modern science is the last formidable bastion of secular society. It is touted as impregnable and invincible. Indeed, today’s scientists have the education, the grants, the sophisticated equipment, the iconic image, the universities, the newspapers and the general media on their side. Opposing voices can barely form a whisper of contention. It is truly a Goliath if there ever was one in our modern age and it is as big as the universe itself.
Second, this book contends with Catholics, and anyone else, who have accepted the major teachings of modern science and thereby have rejected either biblical revelation, the traditional ecclesiastical consensus, or the official magisterial statements that disagree with modern science’s theories or conclusions. As one can see by the title, I have chosen to focus on the recent book by Fr. Paul Robinson, The Realist Guide to Religion and Science. He is a priest of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), a very conservative but embattled branch of Roman Catholicism. The reason he was chosen is normally we don’t see many examples of staunchly conservative Catholic groups being unduly influenced by the theories of modern science to the point they either reject or neutralize the biblical, traditional and magisterial teachings. If there is any group of Catholics from whom we could expect a rigid traditional Catholic view of either the Bible or its interpretation, it is the SSPX, at least in its beginnings under its founder Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. But like many conservative groups today, the inevitable tendency is to judge scientific issues according to the world’s “status quo” and to avoid being dubbed “Fundamentalist.” Fr. Robinson’s book, insofar as he represents the SSPX, has proven to be no exception.
Scientific Heresies and Their Effect on the Church provides a detailed and comprehensive rebuttal to the scientific, theological and exegetical views held by Fr. Paul Robinson, including his views on: The Big Bang; long-ages for the Universe and Earth; progressive creationism; heliocentrism; a local Noachic flood; and current views on radiometry and sedimentology.
This book was written for two purposes: First, to educate the public at large by a critical examination of science and history, especially in the areas of cosmogony and cosmology. Although modern science purports to know the origin and operation of the universe, in reality it comprehends very little and actually spreads more falsehood today than it does truth. On its face, modern science is the last formidable bastion of secular society. It is touted as impregnable and invincible. Indeed, today’s scientists have the education, the grants, the sophisticated equipment, the iconic image, the universities, the newspapers and the general media on their side. Opposing voices can barely form a whisper of contention. It is truly a Goliath if there ever was one in our modern age and it is as big as the universe itself.
Second, this book contends with Catholics, and anyone else, who have accepted the major teachings of modern science and thereby have rejected either biblical revelation, the traditional ecclesiastical consensus, or the official magisterial statements that disagree with modern science’s theories or conclusions. As one can see by the title, I have chosen to focus on the recent book by Fr. Paul Robinson, The Realist Guide to Religion and Science. He is a priest of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), a very conservative but embattled branch of Roman Catholicism. The reason he was chosen is normally we don’t see many examples of staunchly conservative Catholic groups being unduly influenced by the theories of modern science to the point they either reject or neutralize the biblical, traditional and magisterial teachings. If there is any group of Catholics from whom we could expect a rigid traditional Catholic view of either the Bible or its interpretation, it is the SSPX, at least in its beginnings under its founder Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. But like many conservative groups today, the inevitable tendency is to judge scientific issues according to the world’s “status quo” and to avoid being dubbed “Fundamentalist.” Fr. Robinson’s book, insofar as he represents the SSPX, has proven to be no exception.
February 10, 2019
One of the best books I ever read (and I'm going to read it again to absorb more). The author patiently and clearly delves into these topics in depth and is able to not only explain reality and truth, but bring it all together into logical understanding.
When I use my Sharpie highlighter multiple times on each page I know I am reading something of value to me. This book actually made me aware of many important things I'v been oblivious to - my willful blindness. This one book has opened my eyes to my own personal menagerie of the leopard, the lion and the wolf. Forewarned is fore armed. Take the journey with Father Robinson and understand Thomas Aquinas better along with Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Dante and learn the reasons for the multiple universe nonsense. Dig deeply into the theory of 'the natural rise of life,' something the eminent atheistic astrophysicist Fred Hoyle called "the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747.' This book also takes on Darwin and all the dead-soul Science as God gang. I also finally get a sense of the immense complexity of DNA. Now I want my own epistometer.
When I use my Sharpie highlighter multiple times on each page I know I am reading something of value to me. This book actually made me aware of many important things I'v been oblivious to - my willful blindness. This one book has opened my eyes to my own personal menagerie of the leopard, the lion and the wolf. Forewarned is fore armed. Take the journey with Father Robinson and understand Thomas Aquinas better along with Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Dante and learn the reasons for the multiple universe nonsense. Dig deeply into the theory of 'the natural rise of life,' something the eminent atheistic astrophysicist Fred Hoyle called "the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747.' This book also takes on Darwin and all the dead-soul Science as God gang. I also finally get a sense of the immense complexity of DNA. Now I want my own epistometer.
May 29, 2023
While a heavy subject, Fr. Robinson breaks down religion, science and the various philosophies behind each in such an easily-digestible way. I think this book should be a must-read for all college-bound students. It provides an excellent overview of the most well-known religions and scientific thoughts of the last 2,500+ years. If you are curious to understand the differences in these areas, I highly recommend reading this book.
May 10, 2020
Very interesting book, but it's not a walk in the park! Fr Robinson presents a worldview that is either completely foreign or greatly misunderstood in our current culture. Adopting a realist worldview, does indeed impact how one approaches sciences from physics to biology, but it also has an impact on every intellectual pursuit, including political and social sciences, history.
It's not easy for a relatively fresh graduate from a university (me) to understand and apply it, I'll probably have to read more books on the topic.
If anyone has any books to recommend on the realist philosophy, I'd be very grateful!
It's not easy for a relatively fresh graduate from a university (me) to understand and apply it, I'll probably have to read more books on the topic.
If anyone has any books to recommend on the realist philosophy, I'd be very grateful!
October 17, 2018
A great book by a catholic priest and professor in philosophy. He sets the record straight on religion and science. Informative and insightful as he takes you on a journey through history and into our current time showing how our reality is shaped and influenced by science and religion. The book addresses both spectrums of the debate from the quack, Robert Sungenis to the intellectual arrogance of Lawrence Krauss. An essential resource for all catholics.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews