Along with taxes, death is one of the great certainties of life. However, the inevitability of death was not at all obvious to many intellectuals in the 17th century. Protestants like Francis Bacon believed that the only reason people died was that human nature had been corrupted by Adam’s Fall – if it hadn’t been for the Fall, human beings would have been naturally immortal. But with the emerging science of paleontology in the 19th century, coupled with Darwin’s theory of evolution, the belief that any of our human ancestors were naturally immortal became increasingly implausible. It’s therefore tempting to suppose that the story of Adam’s Fall is a prime example of where faith and science have come into conflict, and from which science has emerged with a resounding victory. There are, however, a couple of reasons for resisting this narrative.
Firstly, as Prof Peter Harrison argues in his book The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science (2007), the pioneers of the scientific method didn’t see themselves as challenging Christian beliefs such as the doctrine of the Fall. Rather, it was their theological considerations of such doctrines that actually gave rise to the scientific method. Bacon is widely considered to be the father of scientific empiricism, but what motivated him was the conviction that before the Fall, Adam had a perfect knowledge of the natural world.
Bacon therefore thought that we might be able to regain this knowledge if we developed techniques that helped us to overcome the damage the Fall had done to our nature. That we age and die was thought to be one of the damaging consequences of the Fall, but another consequence was that our cognitive powers and our senses had been greatly diminished. Our weak intellect meant that what Adam knew couldn’t be discovered by philosophical speculation – it could only be discovered by a meticulous examination of the world around us. And because our senses had been damaged, we needed to develop artificial means to investigate what had once been clear for Adam to see. The Protestant understanding of the Fall was therefore instrumental in laying the foundations for modern science.
Although virtually no scientists today believe that the first human beings were naturally immortal, there are still some scientists who are inspired by the possibilities suggested in Genesis. For instance, the Methuselah Foundation takes its name from the oldest person in the Bible, someone who lived to a grand old age of 969. Members of the Methuselah Foundation believe that through advances in medicine, it will soon be possible to extend the human lifespan significantly. It remains to be seen whether the Methuselah Foundation will achieve their current goal of making 90 the new 50 by the year 2030, but the fact that there are still scientists around today who are inspired by biblical stories about humanity’s original longevity does somewhat challenge the science-faith conflict narrative.
There is however a second and more Catholic reason for not thinking of the Fall as an example of science and faith being in conflict, for according to Catholic tradition, Adam was not naturally immortal. Adam was only immortal via a preternatural gift from God, that is, through a gift that raised Adam’s humanity beyond what was natural. So unlike the Protestant doctrine of the Fall, the Catholic doctrine is not making some claim about human nature that has subsequently been disproved by modern science.
Science has nothing to say about what kind of preternatural gifts God could have bestowed on the first human beings. So what the Church asks us to believe about the First Adam is no more implausible than what the Church asks us to believe about the Second Adam. We can’t assent to these beliefs if we rely purely on our natural cognitive powers and what science can teach us, but we can assent to these beliefs if our minds are opened to the gift of Faith.
Protestants can certainly be credited for the important role they played in the development of modern science, but there is a danger that their understanding of the Fall can lead people to become overly confident in the power of science to solve all humanity’s problems. Modern science has led to many positive developments in our world, and also to many negative ones, but what science can’t lead us to is eternal life. For this we need Jesus Christ, and during the month of November, we pray especially for the faithful departed, that the life that doesn’t belong to them by nature may be enjoyed by them as God’s eternal gift.
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