Two thoughts: they may be suspect, and instead find themselves in the affirmation of the priority of being, in the prevalence, on everything, of the human, of the fragility, but also of the astonishing, vertiginous beauty of the human being. They meet in the search for a revelation of meaningful, profound, essential meanings that recall the being, the existence, the meaning of the principle and the end. Two examples: a religious, a chemist. Gianfranco Ravasi, theologian, biblist, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, says that between spirituality and rationality between faith and science can create a creative tension. Remember what John Paul II said: science purifies religion from superstition and religion purifies science from idolatry and false absolutes. Vincenzo Balzano, a chemist, a professor emeritus at the University of Bologna, asks if he believes in God, yes, and does not believe that there is a contradiction with his work as a scientist.
Science gives answers about how not why, she says. One can think that the universe was born from the Big Bang that becomes energy, matter and finally human life. All steps of evolution can be considered inexplicable. But what was before the Big Bang? If one must consider that we are the fruit of a day without yesterday, then a scientist can safely believe in God.
An ancient issue, which at the time of the third millennium should already be resolved. Instead, there is a pseudoideological residue that a scientist can not believe in beyond, in the other, in a thought superior to human thought and inconceivable, should not accept the astonishment of the phenomena and expressions of the world. It should only consider what is rational, comprehensible, demonstrable. But perhaps it is the exact opposite, because if there is something called God, or case or chaos, the scientist is probably closer to that, so he can, or must, believe it more. The scientist knows perfectly well that science has not explained everything and will probably never be able to explain it, that there will always be something incomprehensible, unmistakable. A mystery that provokes and challenges any intelligence. It seems to me that it was a gentleman named Albert Einstein to say that the one who does not admit the unfathomable mystery can not even be a scientist.
Science, faith, art are ways in which the universe is seen or not seen to try to understand what is the substance that composes it, how it is composed, what was there before And again, what will happen next and after. In fact, there are more questions that pose the answers they give. But it is the questions that are an attraction. Questions about the missing element on the mesh in the network that can not be traced on the ring of the chain that seems missing, but which is perhaps only hidden somewhere because someone tries to find out where it is hidden.
Faith says, it exists. Science says: for now I suspect it exists, then I'll let you know why, from when, as long as it will exist. Sometimes - often between the two positions, the literature intrudes, complicating the game: it affirms, denies, conciliates, raises questions, insinuates reticence, raises doubts by touching the walls of certainty.
I first reported the affirmation of a chemist. Now comes to mind a song by Fabrizio De 'Andre, one of those extraordinary rewritings of some poems from Edgar Lee Masters's "Spoon River Antology", which reads "The Chemical", those verses that say: "From Chemical one day I had the power to marry elements and make them rebel, but men never understood / why they mingled with love, giving a joy and pain to a game. " Before he had said, "But watch the hydrogen silence in the sea / look at the oxygen at its side sleeping: / only a law I can understand / could marry without letting them burst." Already. That chemical law he knew. The Law of Love, on the other hand, does not. Like men combine through love, he does not know how to understand it, maybe he can not.
A man looks at the world according to the needs, the seasons he lives, the experiences he finds, the stories that involve him, the facts that happen to him, the feeling that prevails in a moment. He does not always look at him the same way. He can look at him happily, desperately, with relief, with anger, with the disenchantment of rationality, with the enchantment of the imagination. Certainly there are situations in which a scientist thinks the poem's poem or makes the sign of the cross. There are situations where a poet recovers his uncertain chemical knowledge to explain what's in a pill. There are situations in which those who believe that the universe has been created by a fiat of God reflects upon the discoveries of physics to confirm what he believes or to be torn from the suspicion that what he believes is only partially true or that he is For nothing is true.
But the almost incredible grace of thought is in its ability to follow different, sometimes seemingly irreconcilable, ways of knotting emotions, perceptions, feelings, knowledge, skills of different nature and different origins, combining contradictions without turning them into conflicts. You can be a man of faith, a man of science, a poet man at the same time, simply because you are men. There is no contradiction. But if there were, then one could also justify with the humble and vanity claim of being men.
The chemist of Fabrizio De 'Andrè fails to understand why men combine through love. No chemist, no physicist, no priest of any religion, no philosopher, no poet has been able to understand it so far, nor has he been able to understand why men get rid of hate and battle. Here, the human being is one of the greatest mysteries in the universe. Maybe the bigger.
Every science, every faith, every poem finds themselves confronted and to deal with the wonder of this mystery. Everytime. Everywhere. I can not say, no one could say, if there will be a time when the mystery will be solved. But if it needs to be resolved, most likely our relationship with others and with ourselves, our very existence could become very boring.