Category Archives: Science, Religion & Society

Astronomy, Religion, and the Art of Storytelling

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Video 48 minutes Level: All audiences This March 2020 video presentation by Brother Guy Consolmagno, SJ, Director of the Vatican Observatory, was made for The Catholic Theological Union’s Science For Seminaries conference. Consolmagno says that one thing astronomy and religion have in common is that they are both interested in the big questions; and they depend on the art of storytelling to present their strange and wonderful ideas in ways that people can understand, appreciate, and evaluate. Consolmagno examines why stories are fundamental to our understanding of religion; when being a good storyteller is essential in doing science; and how way we tell these stories influences how we think about the big ideas.    

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The Ethics of Exploration: Planetary Astronomy

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Article 3000 words Level: all audiences Br. Guy Consolmagno, S.J. of the Vatican Observatory writes that while we might not expect many ethical questions to arise in astronomy, since it is a science based on remote observations of distant objects, such questions do crop up nevertheless. He addresses some of these in this 2008 paper. [Click here to download PDF]    

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The most important thing you can do to fight climate change: talk about it

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Video 17 minutes Level: all audiences A 2019 TED Talk by climate scientist and evangelical Christian Katherine Hayhoe.  Hayhoe argues that rehashing data and facts does not help with achieving mutual understanding and progress on the subject of climate change.  Rather, what is needed is that we talk with each other, and the key to that is to connect over shared values like family, community and religion.    

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One of America’s top climate scientists is an evangelical Christian

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Article 2300 words Level: all audiences This 2019 article written by Dan Zak of the Washington Post discusses Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University, and a lead author on the U.S. government’s latest National Climate Assessment. Hayhoe is an evangelical Christian. Her husband is a pastor of a non-denominational Christian church.  Hayhoe is known for being able to lead and foster discussions on climate science with a broad range of people.  Zak writes: Her skills of communication do seem miraculous by the standards of modern climate politics: She can convert nonbelievers — or, to put it in her terms, make people realize that they’ve believed in the importance of this issue all along. She knows how to speak to oilmen, to Christians, to farmers and ranchers, having lived for years in Lubbock, Tex., with her pastor husband. She is a scientist who thinks that we’ve talked enough about science, that we need to talk more about … Continue reading →

Science + religion

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Article 3200 words Level: high school and above Tom McLeish argues in this 2019 article from Aeon for the importance of theology in addressing and understanding modern scientific questions. Noting that the idea of science and religion as being in conflict has long been intellectually unsupportable, McLeish, who is professor of natural philosophy in the Department of Physics at the University of York in the UK, asks: All well and good – so the history, philosophy and sociology of science and religion are richer and more interesting than the media-tales and high-school stories of opposition we were all brought up on. It seems a good time to ask the ‘so what?’ questions, however, especially since there has been less work in that direction. If Islamic, Jewish and Christian theologies were demonstrably central in the construction of our current scientific methodologies, for example, then what might such a reassessment imply for fruitful development of the role that science plays in our … Continue reading →

Dealing with Darwin

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Book 265 pages Level: university In this 2014 book published by Johns Hopkins University Press, author David N. Livingstone explores reactions to Charles Darwin’s ideas among different groups of people with apparently the same religious beliefs. The groups he considers are all people with ties to Scottish Presbyterianism. Livingstone shows that these different groups all responded to Darwin in dramatically differing ways. From this Livingstone argues that what might be considered “religious” opposition to Darwin’s ideas, or to other ideas in science, might not be “religious” at all. If “religion” was the driving force in the how these Presbyterians responded to Darwin, then we would expect their responses to be somewhat similar. But since their responses were not, then other factors such as “place, politics, and rhetoric” must carry the greater weight in religious engagements with evolution and other ideas. The full title of the book is Dealing with Darwin: Place, Politics, and Rhetoric in Religious Engagements with Evolution. From … Continue reading →

The Secret History of Science and Religion

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Radio program 90 minutes in 3 segments Level: all audiences This series aired on the BBC Radio 4 in 2019 and is hosted by Nick Spencer of Theos Think Tank in the UK. The show features accomplished scholars such as John Hedley Brooke and Bernard Lightman, and touches on scientific figures ranging from Robert Grosseteste to Isaac Newton to James Clerk Maxwell to Georges Lemaître. Spencer argues that the supposed conflict between science and religion hinges on ideas about what it means to be human. Therefore often the conflict is not really about religion and science in the usual way that people think about them. For example, Spencer interviews Fern Elsdon-Baker (Professor of Science, Knowledge and Belief in Society at Birmingham University in the UK), whose research suggests that professed atheists reject a strictly materialistic evolutionary explanation for human origins at a similar rates as professedly religious people. Click here to access the web site of this program, courtesy of … Continue reading →

Seeking the Face of God: The Lives and Discoveries of Catholic Scientists

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Audio series 3 hours Level: all audiences This is a series of conversations between Dr. Guy Consolmagno, S. J., Director of the Vatican Observatory, and Dr. Michelle Francl-Donnay, professor of chemistry and the chair of the chemistry department at Bryn Mawr College, and an adjunct scholar of the Vatican Observatory. The interviews are published by Now You Know Media. From the web site of Now You Know: In Seeking the Face of God, two leading scientists from the Vatican Observatory debate what it means to be a practicing Catholic and a professional scientist. Tracing back across 1,000 years of history, you’ll reflect on the role of faith in science…. Beginning with a brief overview of the history of science, Consolmagno and Francl-Donnay highlight Catholic contributions to medicine, mathematics, computer science, astronomy, and chemistry before arriving at the question of our place in the cosmos. While some, like Gregor Mendel, are famous for their discoveries, Consolmagno and Francl-Donnay introduce you to … Continue reading →

Claiming Darwin

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Article 4000 words Level: high school and above This article by Myrna Perez Sheldon was published in 2015 in Cosmologics Magazine, which is a project of the Science, Religion, and Culture program at Harvard Divinity School.  Sheldon discusses the impact on evolutionists of both the resurgence of Creationism and Stephen Jay Gould’s ideas about “punctuated equilibrium” during the 1970’s and 1980’s.  She notes that Gould framed Charles Darwin as a historical figure who had been influenced by his time and place. According to Gould, Darwin’s theory did come down to explaining natural order without recourse to God, but largely because of Darwin’s own historical context—“all the higher order harmony that used to be seen as the source of evidence for God’s benevolence is epiphenomenal upon the struggle of something lower for personal gain. That’s all.” If this framing sounded a great deal like “Adam Smith’s economics translated into nature,” it was “no accident” according to Gould. Gould went on to … Continue reading →

From Cosmologics: On Darwin and Place

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Articles (two) 4500 words (total) Level: high school and above These are two articles related to work by David Livingstone of Queen’s University, Belfast, who gave the 2015 Dudleian Lecture at Harvard Divinity School.  They were published in Cosmologics Magazine, which is a project of the Science, Religion, and Culture program at Harvard Divinity School. Click here to access “David Livingstone: Putting Darwinism in Its Place” from Cosmologics Magazine.  This is an excerpt from Livingstone’s book Dealing with Darwin: Place, Politics and Rhetoric in Religious Engagements with Evolution. Livingstone argues that how Darwin’s ideas were received varied widely. In some places Darwin’s ideas were rejected. He notes how some sought to cast “Darwinism and Catholicism as twin allies against the inductive truths of science and the revealed truths of scripture. It thus became possible to conflate as a single object of reproach an old enemy—popery—and a new one—evolution…. these were indeed the enemies of God.” Others welcomed Darwinism as endorsing … Continue reading →