Main themes

Since science began, it has been encountering religious faith. The relationship was at first one of opposition, fortunately outmoded today by recognition of boundaries and respect for autonomies. Yet we should not content ourselves with the easy and lazy paths of juxtaposition. Science asks faith questions, and faith asks science some. There is, or there should be, a mutual listening and a common listening to the universe. This is certainly not the time for an easygoing concordism, false and illusory, but for an alliance where everyone has something to say and learn. That alliance, hopefully useful for both science and faith, may even prove useful for man and the world, if it is true that today marks the beginning of a cultural metamorphosis wherein men of knowledge and men of values are more than ever called to dialogue. Engaging in this dialogue, not through indifference or mistrust, but in the emergence of timely values, enriching everyone, are the stakes and the challenge of the course described here. Offered optionally to students in the sciences as to those in theology, every year this course should confront one or two different contemporary questions, the problem evolving in terms of the progress of science and theology. Finally; it should be noted that since a number of courses have already treated questions on the borders between faith and science in the ethical domain, there will be a tendency to favour more speculative questions, of a general and properly scientific nature.