John Paul II: On the limits of natural science

Pope St. John Paul II

“TO DESIRE a scientific proof of God would be equivalent to lowering God to the level of the beings of our world, and we would therefore be mistaken methodologically in regard to what God is. Science must recognize its limits and its inability to reach the existence of God: it can neither affirm nor deny his existence.”

(L’Osservatore Romano, 7-15-85, Italian edition)


 “ANY SCIENTIFIC hypothesis on the origin of the world, such as the hypothesis of a primitive atom from which derived the whole of the physical universe, leaves open the problem concerning the universe’s beginning. Science cannot of itself solve this question: there is needed above all that human knowledge that rises above physics and astrophysics and which is called metaphysics; there is needed above all the knowledge that comes from God’s revelation.”

(The Discourses of the Popes from Pius XI to John Paul II to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences 1936-1986, p. 82.)

~Pope St. John Paul II