One of the frequent attacks that Richard Dawkins levies against religion- in particular Christianity, the religion he was brought up in- is that it inhibits and stultifies intellectual progress. Certainly the Vatican has had a rather withering view of scientists for most of the past two hundred years and at times has proved slow to wake up to wonders of the cosmos that scientists have uncovered during that time. However.
Consider the following three discoveries:
(a) The Big Bang Theory
(b) Hubble's Law
(c) The Laws of Genetic Succession.
The Big Bang Theory:
The first proponent of the Big Bang Theory was a Belgian man called George Lemaitre. One of the most revered astrophysicists of his time, Lemaitre had put forward his theory of how the Universe began as early as 1931. Lemaitre's theory was subsequently confirmed by the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) which showed that the level of background microwave radiation was the same everywhere in the universe and therefore must have had a common point of origin.
Hubble's Law:
Most of us have probably heard of Hubble because the world's most famous telescope was named after him. Edwin Hubble, however is better known for the law which has forever become associated with his name: Hubble's Law. This law states that the redshift in light coming from distant galaxies is proportional to their distance. By applying this law astronomers can gauge the distance between objects such as galaxies and stars. However although accredited with the discovery back in 1929 it was in fact George Lemaitre who discovered the law first and who had published his paper on it in 1927. As such it is Lemaitre who can be accredited with laying down one of the fundamental principles of cosmology. Incidentally Hubble's - or, to give credit where credit is due- Lemaitre's law has been invoked to prove time and again that the universe is expanding at an increasingly higher rate.
The Laws of Genetic Succession:
The year 1865- Having spent a number of years cross-breeding various kinds of garden peas a gentleman called Gregor Mendel eventually formulated the foundational laws of what was to become the field of modern genetics from which men like Richard Dawkins would weave their rainbows! Thanks to Mendel and his successors in the field we now have the Human Genome Project which has undertaken to map out every human gene with a view to understanding how, for example, hereditary diseases are transmitted.
And this is where the Church comes inYou see neither Lemaitre nor Mendel could afford to spend as much time in their chosen pursuits as they would have possibly liked. Like Albert Einstein, who worked as a patent clerk during the day and worked on this theory of general relativity at night, Lemaitre and Mendel also held down steady day-time jobs. When he wasn't dabbling in astrophysics, Lemaitre heard confessionals and said mass in his capacity as a Roman Catholic Priest! For his part Mendel prayed in silence in his monastery as an Augustinian monk!
In other words three of the most important finds in science owe their initial discovery to men of God. Incidentally both of these men remained men of the cloth until their dying day. What's more their Church assisted them in their scientific endeavours and even promoted them : Lemaitre was promoted to monsignor in 1960 by Pope John XX111while Mendel was appointed chief abbot of his monastery following his discovery.
Are men like Lemaitre and Mendel to be called "delusional" as Sir Richard Dawkins would call them simply because they believed in God? Did their faith prevent them from asking the most profound questions a human mind can ask regarding the very nature of the Cosmos and the life flowing within it? Did not both men find a happy co-existence between two apparently disparate frames of reference namely religion and science?
Even if Einstein didn't have established faith systems in mind when he would mention the word "religion" it is perhaps fitting that we quote him here: "religion without science is lame and science without religion is blind". (Italics added) For men like Lemaitre and Mendel, awe-inspiring mystery was not meant to be left mysterious- it was meant to be explored. They did not believe that to have faith meant that one had to have blinkers on. Their faith in reason went hand in hand with a faith in a higher power.
Source:Faith Writers
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