What do you think?
20 Answers: Faith and Science
20 Faith & Science will clear away misconceptions and help you understand—and explain to your friends and family—the complex but ultimately harmonious relationship between religious and scientific truth. A False Dilemma of Truth Didn’t the Church persecute Galileo? Aren’t faith and reason two separate and distinct kinds of truth? Why do Christians believe in the biblical creation story when science has disproved it? How can the modern world take religions seriously when they oppose scientific advancements like birth control and stem-cell research? In this booklet you’ll find smart, solid answers to these questions and many more. 20 Faith & Science will clear away misconceptions and help you understand—and explain to your friends and family—the complex but ultimately harmonious relationship between religious and scientific truth. Booklet form. 7 x 5 inches. 59 pages.
Paperback
Published January 1, 2014
About the author
Trent Horn
27 books387 followersAfter his conversion to the Catholic faith, Trent Horn pursued an undergraduate degree in history from Arizona State University. He then earned a graduate degree in theology from Franciscan University of Steubenville and is currently pursuing a graduate degree in philosophy from Holy Apostles College.
Trent is a regular guest on the radio program Catholic Answers Live, a lecturer who speaks across the country on issues related to the Catholic faith, and the author of two books, Answering Atheism and Persuasive Pro-life.
Trent is a regular guest on the radio program Catholic Answers Live, a lecturer who speaks across the country on issues related to the Catholic faith, and the author of two books, Answering Atheism and Persuasive Pro-life.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 29, 2017
Some good news first, this series has just been expanded from 20 to 23 books and I believe more will release in the fall expanding it even further. Of the 23 books now available Trent Horn has written 10. His books are always great reads. And I can say the same for this one.
This past Lent I did the 20 Answers Challenge, read all 20 books in the Catholic Answers series (that were available at the time). Currently you can get all 20 books for 50% off, an amazing deal, so get them with this deal while you can! They are really great reads. I have rated 18 of the 20 with 5 out of 5 stars, and the other two got 4 stars. I hold a BA in Religious Studies with a focus on Roman Catholic Thought, and I love the clarity of through and the format of this series. My son age 9, recently came home from school saying kids were bugging him because he wants to be a scientist priest when he grows up. This book is a little beyond him but I cannot wait until he is a little older to share it with him. The 20 questions that Trent answers in this volume are:
1. Didn't the Catholic Church condemn science and as a result send us into the medieval "Dark Ages"?
2. Did the Catholic Church teach that the Earth was flat?
3. Did the Catholic Church condemn human dissection and so stifle understanding of the human body?
4. If the Church was so hospitable to science, then why did it kill the ingenious scientist Giordano Bruno?
5. Why did the Church torture and imprison Galileo for his belief that the Earth revolved around the sun?
6. Doesn't the concept of faith, or believing without evidence, contradict the concept of reason, which means to follow the evidence where it leads?
7. Why can't I just have faith in science as the way to understand the world?
8. Isn't all of the evidence for God just "God of the gaps" reasoning? Won't science eventually explain everything that religion cannot?
9. Hold on a minute. Hasn't science shown that something can indeed come from nothing and that moral behavior exists among chimpanzees and could have come from evolution?
10. How can you trust the Bible when the book of Genesis contradicts the theory of evolution by saying the world was created in six twenty-four-hour days 6,000 years ago?
11. How do Catholics view intelligent design?
12. How can you say God created the universe when science has proven that humans are just an insignificant speck within it?
13. Hasn't science proven there is no such thing as a soul?
14. Why is the Church opposed to stem cell research that could provide medical breakthroughs for millions of people?
15. Why doesn't the Church accept the American Psychological Association's conclusion that homosexuality is not disordered?
16. Why does the Church oppose fertility treatments that can help infertile couples have a baby?
17. Why doesn't the Church support the use of contraceptives that have been scientifically proven to reduce rates of unintended pregnancies as well as sexually transmitted diseases?
18. Does the Church believe that some vaccines are bad because they come from "aborted babies"?
19. How do you explain the fact that the majority of scientists are atheists?
20. What have religious people ever done for science?
The introduction of this booklet states:
"Didn't the Catholic Church ban science in the Middle Ages in order to protect the Faith? Wasn't Galileo tortured for proving the Church was wrong about the sun orbiting the Earth? Didn't Columbus bravely defy a Church that believed he would sail off the edge of a flat planet?
These and many other myths about the relationship between the Catholic Church and science are just that: myths. In fact, you can find the origins for many of them in two books written more than a hundred years ago: Andrew Dickson White's A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896) and John Draper's History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874).
Today, historians have largely abandoned the conclusions reached by Draper and White, who promoted what is now called "the conflict thesis," the belief that science and religion are at odds. In the book Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction, science historian Colin Russell writes, "The conflict thesis, at least in its simple form, is now widely perceived as a wholly inadequate intellectual framework within which to construct a sensible and realistic historiography of Western science. . . . At different phases of their history, science and religion were not so much at war as largely independent, mutually encouraging, or even symbiotic."
Unfortunately, as Mark Twain said, "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes." The purpose of this booklet is to help the truth catch up to the lies about the Catholic Church and to show that there is no contradiction in worshipping the God who created the universe and in using science to explore and understand that creation."
And this book then goes on to counter many of those lies and misconceptions about the church and its stance on science over the years. He debunks a lot of myths, and provides a reality check from historical sources. Of particular interest were the chapters on Intelligent Design and the section on Stem Cell research.
No to be honest not all of the answers in this book are easy to take, especially in a western culture that has drifted so far from its roots. But the book does give clear concise answers that are in alignment with church teaching. This book was a bit more of a surprise than some of the other books. But in many ways that made it even a more important read for me.
This is a wonderful book in an amazing series!
Read the review on my blog Book Reviews and More and reviews of other books from Catholic Answers.
Note: This book is part of a series of reviews: 2017 Catholic Reading Plan!
This past Lent I did the 20 Answers Challenge, read all 20 books in the Catholic Answers series (that were available at the time). Currently you can get all 20 books for 50% off, an amazing deal, so get them with this deal while you can! They are really great reads. I have rated 18 of the 20 with 5 out of 5 stars, and the other two got 4 stars. I hold a BA in Religious Studies with a focus on Roman Catholic Thought, and I love the clarity of through and the format of this series. My son age 9, recently came home from school saying kids were bugging him because he wants to be a scientist priest when he grows up. This book is a little beyond him but I cannot wait until he is a little older to share it with him. The 20 questions that Trent answers in this volume are:
1. Didn't the Catholic Church condemn science and as a result send us into the medieval "Dark Ages"?
2. Did the Catholic Church teach that the Earth was flat?
3. Did the Catholic Church condemn human dissection and so stifle understanding of the human body?
4. If the Church was so hospitable to science, then why did it kill the ingenious scientist Giordano Bruno?
5. Why did the Church torture and imprison Galileo for his belief that the Earth revolved around the sun?
6. Doesn't the concept of faith, or believing without evidence, contradict the concept of reason, which means to follow the evidence where it leads?
7. Why can't I just have faith in science as the way to understand the world?
8. Isn't all of the evidence for God just "God of the gaps" reasoning? Won't science eventually explain everything that religion cannot?
9. Hold on a minute. Hasn't science shown that something can indeed come from nothing and that moral behavior exists among chimpanzees and could have come from evolution?
10. How can you trust the Bible when the book of Genesis contradicts the theory of evolution by saying the world was created in six twenty-four-hour days 6,000 years ago?
11. How do Catholics view intelligent design?
12. How can you say God created the universe when science has proven that humans are just an insignificant speck within it?
13. Hasn't science proven there is no such thing as a soul?
14. Why is the Church opposed to stem cell research that could provide medical breakthroughs for millions of people?
15. Why doesn't the Church accept the American Psychological Association's conclusion that homosexuality is not disordered?
16. Why does the Church oppose fertility treatments that can help infertile couples have a baby?
17. Why doesn't the Church support the use of contraceptives that have been scientifically proven to reduce rates of unintended pregnancies as well as sexually transmitted diseases?
18. Does the Church believe that some vaccines are bad because they come from "aborted babies"?
19. How do you explain the fact that the majority of scientists are atheists?
20. What have religious people ever done for science?
The introduction of this booklet states:
"Didn't the Catholic Church ban science in the Middle Ages in order to protect the Faith? Wasn't Galileo tortured for proving the Church was wrong about the sun orbiting the Earth? Didn't Columbus bravely defy a Church that believed he would sail off the edge of a flat planet?
These and many other myths about the relationship between the Catholic Church and science are just that: myths. In fact, you can find the origins for many of them in two books written more than a hundred years ago: Andrew Dickson White's A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896) and John Draper's History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874).
Today, historians have largely abandoned the conclusions reached by Draper and White, who promoted what is now called "the conflict thesis," the belief that science and religion are at odds. In the book Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction, science historian Colin Russell writes, "The conflict thesis, at least in its simple form, is now widely perceived as a wholly inadequate intellectual framework within which to construct a sensible and realistic historiography of Western science. . . . At different phases of their history, science and religion were not so much at war as largely independent, mutually encouraging, or even symbiotic."
Unfortunately, as Mark Twain said, "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes." The purpose of this booklet is to help the truth catch up to the lies about the Catholic Church and to show that there is no contradiction in worshipping the God who created the universe and in using science to explore and understand that creation."
And this book then goes on to counter many of those lies and misconceptions about the church and its stance on science over the years. He debunks a lot of myths, and provides a reality check from historical sources. Of particular interest were the chapters on Intelligent Design and the section on Stem Cell research.
No to be honest not all of the answers in this book are easy to take, especially in a western culture that has drifted so far from its roots. But the book does give clear concise answers that are in alignment with church teaching. This book was a bit more of a surprise than some of the other books. But in many ways that made it even a more important read for me.
This is a wonderful book in an amazing series!
Read the review on my blog Book Reviews and More and reviews of other books from Catholic Answers.
Note: This book is part of a series of reviews: 2017 Catholic Reading Plan!
December 20, 2017
As a Catholic engineer, I was particularly excited to read this book. This book not only met but exceeded my expectations, and I couldn’t put the book down. Horn addresses a wide array of topics in this short booklet: misconceptions about Church history and famous scientists, the reasons science doesn’t disprove religion, and how faithful Catholics can respond to accusations they are anti-science. What I liked about the style of questions was they sounded like questions opponents of Catholicism on the grounds of science might ask even though to a Catholic reader, they may seem odd. In fact, I have actually been asked some of these questions. By addressing the questions of this style, Horn presents more realistic apologetics scenario. I admired Horn’s responses because he answered the questions intelligently and also addressed why many were the wrong questions to be asking. I cannot recommend this book enough!
September 7, 2026
This booklets shows its age with asking some questions which are no longer as popular within current discourse, and is lacking in its persuasiveness, examples like the death of Hypatia or the arrest of Galileo happened not because of their science but by Christians nonetheless. It makes the case for faith weak as why can Christian politics or an unflattering writing about a pope be the case for your death or arrest. The booklet also makes note of how science cannot make moral claims which is true but why pigeonhole the naturalistic position, it felt as though science and faith were opposites to be necessarily reconciled rather then fields that exist among other fields which can either be reconciled or not. Perhaps the goal of the booklet should have been how to reconcile philosophy and science as that would provide a lot more of a balanced perspective of different worldviews (although this would have been outside of the scope of the booklet).
February 6, 2022
This one read a little less Trent Horn-ish, than a previoys 20 Answers book of his, which made it less quirky. This one also kept it short, but shared why the Church is in no way Anti-Science, but instead asks the question, just because Science can, should it? Science cannot tell us what is moral, only what's possible and physically true. If you have been taught that the Catholic Church represses science, or that Christians cannot also believe in what science teaches, this is a good book to start showing you the truth.
August 28, 2023
Finally, the answers my science-pilled brain was looking for
September 6, 2016
A great run through on why Catholicism and faith in general are not opposed to science. Trent Horn answers all the big questions directly, effectively, and efficiently. Highly recommend giving this to friends who believe the church is opposed to science or reading it yourself to defend the faith.
June 6, 2022
I thought this was a really clear book and good to understand.
April 28, 2017
A concise, well written booklet that answers the most common objections to the connections between faith and science.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews