Category Archives: Personal accounts

Twelve Lectures on the Connection Between Science and Revealed Religion – Nicholas Wiseman

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Book (and book excerpt) 448 pages (excerpt is 3200 words) Level: high school and above Nicolás Patricio Esteban Wiseman was Cardinal and first Archbishop of Westminster upon the re-establishment of the Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales in 1850. His discussions of religion and science in the early nineteenth century became well-known. The complete text of Wiseman’s lectures is available from Google Books (click here).  Click here for an excerpt selected by the Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Religion and Science (Inters.org), which is edited by the Advanced School for Interdisciplinary Research, operating at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome, and directed by Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti. In this excerpt Wiseman defends Rome as a center of learning and writes of various early figures in the church who promoted the study of mathematics or the natural world, including Clement of Alexandria: Clement of Alexandria … devoted several chapters of his learned Stromata to the vindication of his favorite studies. He observes very justly, that “varied and … Continue reading →

Why is the Sky Blue? (What Was God Thinking? Science Can’t Tell) – Eric Cornell

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Article 770 words Level: all audiences Physicist Eric Cornell writes on God and the blue sky. Cornell shared the Nobel Prize in Physics 2001 for synthesizing the first Bose–Einstein condensate in 1995. Cornell writes: Let me pose you a question, not about God but about the heavens: “Why is the sky blue?” I offer two answers: 1) The sky is blue because of the wavelength dependence of Rayleigh scattering; 2) The sky is blue because blue is the color God wants it to be. My scientific research has been in areas connected to optical phenomena, and I can tell you a lot about the Rayleigh-scattering answer. Neither I nor any other scientist, however, has anything scientific to say about answer No. 2, the God answer. Not to say that the God answer is unscientific, just that the methods of science don’t speak to that answer. Before we understood Rayleigh scattering, there was no sci­entifically satisfactory explanation for the sky’s blueness. The idea that … Continue reading →

James Clerk Maxwell – Science and Faith

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Article (two letter excerpts) 350 words Level: all audiences James Clerk Maxwell 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. Maxwell was a devout Christian who spoke of his faith in many of his letters. Below are two excerpts from letters which contain direct references to both his scientific work and his faith. The first is from a draft of a letter in 1875 regarding membership in “The Victoria Institute”: I think men of science as well as other men need to learn from Christ, and I think Christians whose minds are scientific are bound to study science that their view of the glory of God may be as extensive as their being is capable … Continue reading →

James Clerk Maxwell – A Student’s Evening Hymn

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Article (poem, PDF) 460 words Level: all audiences James Clerk Maxwell 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. Maxwell was a devout Christian, and a poet. Here we see both his interest in science and his faith reflected in one of his poems. Click here for Maxwell’s poem from The Life of James Clerk Maxwell: With a Selection from His Correspondence (1882). [Click here to download PDF]  

Continue reading →

Enrico Fermi – An Umbrian Farmer and the Religious Experience of a Starry Sky

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Article excerpt 450 words Level: all audiences A short recollection by physicist Enrico Fermi. Fermi notes: A venerable Hebrew prophet some three thousand years ago decreed: “The Heavens declare the glory of God.” One of the most celebrated philosophers of modern times wrote: “Two things fill me with awe, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.” That Umbrian farmer did not even know how to read. But in his heart, safeguarded by an honest and hard-working life, there was a small corner in which the light of God descended with a power not much inferior to that of the prophets and perhaps greater than that of philosophers. This excerpt has been selected by the Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Religion and Science (Inters.org), which is edited by the Advanced School for Interdisciplinary Research, operating at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome, and directed by Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti. Click here for Fermi’s discussion (English translation), from Inters.org. [Click here to … Continue reading →

St. Athanasius – The Harmony of the Universe: the Work of the Logos, Who Acts as a Musician

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Book excerpt 1300 words Level: university An excerpt from Against the Heathen (Contra Gentes), by Athanasius of Alexandria. This excerpt has been selected by the Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Religion and Science (Inters.org), which is edited by the Advanced School for Interdisciplinary Research, operating at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome, and directed by Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti. Athanasius writes: [B]y one and the same act of will He moves all things simultaneously, and not at intervals, but all collectively, both straight and curved, things above and beneath and intermediate, wet, cold, warm, seen and invisible, and orders them according to their several nature. For simultaneously at His single nod what is straight moves as straight, what is curved also, and what is intermediate, follows its own movement; what is warm receives warmth, what is dry dryness, and all things according to their several nature are quickened and organised by Him, and He produces as the result a marvellous and truly divine … Continue reading →

Science Does Not Need God… or Does It?

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

The Intelligent Design (ID) movement actually belittles God, makes her/him too small and paltry; while our scientific understanding of the universe, untainted by religious considerations, provides for those who believe in God a marvelous opportunity to reflect upon their beliefs.

Continue reading →

Origins and Creation

Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Article (PDF) 10 pages Level: high school and above Fr. George V. Coyne, S. J., Director of the Vatican Observatory from 1978 to 2006, writes that it is arguably difficult to find a more heated topic of discussion than that concerning the origins of the universe, and especially of life and of intelligence, and whether such origins can be understand without evoking a Creator God. Responses range from the extremes of a Stephen Hawking or a Pope Pius XII to almost all conceivable intermediate positions. What is one who is both a believing Christian and a scientist to make of all of this? Also available in First Steps in the Origin of Life in the Universe: Proceedings of the Sixth Trieste Conference on Chemical Evolution Trieste, Italy 18–22 September, 2000 (Springer, 2001). Click here for a shorter version of this paper; click here for a longer version. [Click here to download PDF] ~~~  

Continue reading →