Jim Hylen, “A Natural World-view”
by alexeyburov
For less than an hour, Jim gave a wonderful talk, devoted to a dense, very informative review of modern physics, where apparently all the most important issues were covered. Many thanks, Jim! At the very end, a few slides were devoted to metaphysical aspects, reflecting Jim’s naturalistic worldview. Next meeting, Dec. 6, we’ll hopefully concentrate on the metaphysical aspects of the naturalism, or scientism, criticized so much in the past by some of our speakers :)
Fermi Society of Philosophy 
Hi Jim,
I really appreciated the presentation you gave on Nov 22. Unfortunately, I had a review on Dec 6 and could not attend the follow up discussion. So, I am offering to you a few thoughts as thank you for your excellent presentation.
At the end of your talk you compared the creation account in Genesis 1 with scientific understanding. It made me read again some pages from an excellent short book*: “In the Beginning … A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall” by Joseph Ratzinger (at that time Bishop of Munich, before taking on a big job in Rome). I often found in this book good answers to my questions and very useful insights. So, I want to share with you a few interesting points in the first pages:
“… the Bible is not a natural science textbook, nor does it intend to be such. It is a religious book, and consequently one cannot obtain information about the natural sciences from it.” (pag 4)
“The Bible is thus the story of God’s struggle with human beings to make himself understandable to them over the course of time; but it is also the story of their struggle to seize hold of God over the course of time. Hence the theme of creation is not set down once and for all in one place; rather, it accompanies Israel throughout its history…” (pag 9)
Accounts of creation may be found in several point of the Bible: in Genesis 1, in Genesis 2, in the Psalms, and in the beginning of the Gospel of John. “… the images are free and they correct themselves ongoingly” (pag. 15)
Ratzinger underlines that creation became a dominant theme during the Babylonian exile, when Israel had to face the hardship of exile and the Babylonian creation account, according to which there is something sinister, demonic in each human being:
“Hence this creation account may be seen as the decisive “enlightenment” of history and as a breakthrough out of the fears that had oppressed humankind. It placed the world in the context of reason and recognized the world’s reasonableness and freedom. But it may also be seen as the true enlightenment from the fact that it put human reason firmly on the primordial basis of God’s creating Reason, in order to establish it in truth and in love” (pag 14)
Finally, I would like to share with you that the more my life goes on the more I understand that I have to start from experience in order to use my reason at its best in addressing life fundamental questions. I need to find a good way to present this point, and then it may be the subject for a presentation at a Friday mtg.
Please, let me know if you would like to discuss any of these points. And see you soon at future mtgs of the Fermi Society of Philosophy.
Have a nice and joyful new year!
Giorgio
* Joseph Ratzinger, ‘In the Beginning …’ A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall, Wm. E. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids (MI), 1995.