Youcat commented through CCC. Question n. 41 – Part I.

YOUCAT Question n. 41 - Part I. Does science make the Creator superfluous?

(Youcat answer) No. The sentence “God created the world” is not an outmoded scientific statement. We are dealing here with a theo-logical statement, therefore a statement about the divine meaning (theos = God, logos = meaning) and origin of things.      

A deepening through CCC

(CCC 282) Catechesis on creation is of major importance. It concerns the very foundations of human and Christian life: for it makes explicit the response of the Christian faith to the basic question that men of all times have asked themselves (Cf. NA 2): "Where do we come from?" "Where are we going?" "What is our origin?" "What is our end?" "Where does everything that exists come from and where is it going?" the two questions, the first about the origin and the second about the end, are inseparable. They are decisive for the meaning and orientation of our life and actions.      

Reflecting and meditating 

(Youcat comment) The creation account is not a scientific model for explaining the beginning of the world. “God created the world” is a theological statement that is concerned with the relation of the world to God. God willed the world; he sustains it and will perfect it. Being created is a lasting quality in things and an fundamental truth about them.

(CCC Comment)

(CCC 285) Since the beginning the Christian faith has been challenged by responses to the question of origins that differ from its own. Ancient religions and cultures produced many myths concerning origins. Some philosophers have said that everything is God, that the world is God, or that the development of the world is the development of God (Pantheism). Others have said that the world is a necessary emanation arising from God and returning to him. Still others have affirmed the existence of two eternal principles, Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, locked, in permanent conflict (Dualism, Manichaeism). According to some of these conceptions, the world (at least the physical world) is evil, the product of a fall, and is thus to be rejected or left behind (Gnosticism). Some admit that the world was made by God, but as by a watch-maker who, once he has made a watch, abandons it to itself (Deism). Finally, others reject any transcendent origin for the world, but see it as merely the interplay of matter that has always existed (Materialism). All these attempts bear witness to the permanence and universality of the question of origins. This inquiry is distinctively human.     

(This question: Does science make the Creator superfluous? is continued)