Category Archives: God as Creator

Emilie Du Châtelet on the existence of God

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Article 6 pages Level: high school and above Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise Du Châtelet, wrote, among other things, a translation and commentary on Isaac Newton’s Principia (published posthumously in 1759), and a physics textbook for her son, entitled Institutions de Physique (Foundations of Physics, published in 1740).  The second chapter of this textbook was addressed to the question of God’s existence. [Click here to download PDF]   … Continue reading →

Emilie Du Châtelet: Selected Philosophical and Scientific Writings

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Book 424 pages Level: high school and above Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise Du Châtelet, wrote, among other things, a translation and commentary on Isaac Newton’s Principia (published posthumously in 1759), and a physics textbook for her son, entitled Institutions de Physique (Foundations of Physics, published in 1740).  This collection of her philosophical and scientific writings, edited by Judith P. Zinsser, includes translations of substantial portions of these works and others.  Zinsser’s translation of Institutions contains all of the Preface (discussing, among other things, the utility of mathematics and the usefulness of experiments), all of the first chapter (discussing principles of knowledge and reasoning), all of the second chapter (which contains logical arguments for the existence of God and for determining the basics of God’s nature), as well as chapters on time, matter, motion, and force.  Emilie Du Châtelet was a complex person—she sought education and access to the world of science at a time when women were largely … Continue reading →

Isaac Newton – God and the Universe in the ‘General Scholium’ of the Principia

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Book chapter 5 pages Level: university Isaac Newton is arguably the most important scientist of all. His Principia Mathematica (written in Latin, and first published in 1687), in which he develops a physics of the solar system to compete with the “vortex theory” of René Descartes, is arguably his most important work, for it developed the physics still taught in classrooms and used in science and engineering today. Newton sees in this physics and in the solar system the action of God. Newton is often said to have written more about theology than about mathematics and physics, although his views on the nature of God were unorthodox and much of what he wrote regarding matters relating to religion was never published. From the ‘General Scholium’: This most beautiful System of the Sun, Planets, and Comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being. And if the fixed Stars are the centers of other like systems, … Continue reading →

God is dead; long live the eternal God

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Article (blog post) 1200 words Level: all audiences A post on The Catholic Astronomer blog by Vatican Observatory astronomer Br. Guy Consolmagno, S. J., commenting on Stephen Hawking’s ideas regarding God: Hawking does us an important favor by eliminating [a certain] image of God. The “god” that Stephen Hawking doesn’t believe in is one I don’t believe in either. God is not a force to be invoked to swell a progress, start a scene or two, and fill the momentary gaps in our knowledge. God is the reason why existence itself exists. God is the reason why space and time and the laws of nature can be present for the forces to operate that Stephen Hawking is talking about. What’s more, I believe in such a God not because of the absence of any other explanation for the origin of the universe, but because of the person of Jesus Christ — in history, in scripture, and in my own personal … Continue reading →

Creation Reveals God’s Glory – St. John Paul II

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Article 1000 words Level: all audiences Pope John Paul II in a March 1986 General Audience discusses creation and scriptural references to how creation proclaims the glory of God : A new dimension of God’s glory begins with the creation of the visible and invisible world. This glory is called “exterior” to distinguish it from the previous one. Sacred Scripture speaks of it in many passages and in different ways. Some examples will suffice. Psalm 19 proclaims: “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork…. There is no speech, nor are there words whose sound is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world” (Ps 19:1, 2, 4). The Book of Sirach states: “The sun looks down on everything with its light, and the work of the Lord is full of his glory” (42:16). The Book of Baruch has a very singular and evocative … Continue reading →

James Clerk Maxwell and the equations of light

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Article 5000 words Level: university An article about physicist James Clerk Maxwell, by historian and philosopher of science Thomas Forsyth Torrance. Maxwell, a devout Christian, is one of the most important figures in the history of science. Students in physics courses everywhere study “Maxwell’s Equations” that mathematically describe electromagnetic waves. These waves include light, radio, x-rays, etc. They are how astronomers learn about the universe and they are the basis of all wireless communication technology, including smart phones. Torrance writes about Maxwell: [I]t is certainly clear that the kind of physical science which he advocated is much more congenial to Christian theology than that which developed when absolute notions of space and time were arbitrarily clamped down upon the empirical world and had the effect of reducing understanding of it to a hard and closed mechanistic system. For Clerk Maxwell himself rigorous scientific inquiry and simple devout Christian faith were life-long partners, each in its own way contributing to the strength … Continue reading →

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences – Eugene P. Wigner

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Article 6400 words Level: university Physicist Eugene Wigner discusses the remarkable fact that the universe is understandable in terms of mathematics. Wigner received half of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 “for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles”. Wigner writes: There is a story about two friends, who were classmates in high school, talking about their jobs. One of them became a statistician and was working on population trends. He showed a reprint to his former classmate. The reprint started, as usual, with the Gaussian distribution and the statistician explained to his former classmate the meaning of the symbols for the actual population, for the average population, and so on. His classmate was a bit incredulous and was not quite sure whether the statistician was pulling his leg. “How can you know that?” was his query. “And what is this symbol here?” “Oh,” said the statistician, … Continue reading →

The Philosophy of St. Bonaventure On Creation – Étienne Gilson

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Article (book excerpt) 2800 words Level: university The twentieth-century French philosopher Étienne Gilson writes on St. Bonaventure and Aristotle: All order, in fact, starts from a beginning, passes through a middle point and reaches an end. If then there is no first term there is no order; now if the duration of the world and therefore the revolutions of the stars had no beginning, their series would have had no first term and they would possess no order, which amounts to saying that in reality they do not in fact form a series and they do not precede or follow one another. But this the order of the days and seasons plainly proves to be false…. In St. Bonaventure’s Christian universe there is, in reality, no place for Aristotelian accident; his thought shrinks from supposing a series of causes accidentally ordered, that is to say, without order, without law and with its terms following one another at random. Click here … Continue reading →