One of the great insights of Judaism was the concept of “creatio ex nihilo”, Creation from Nothing, as first mentioned in 2 Maccabees 7:28. Many people misunderstand this to think it merely means creation in a vacuum, but even a vacuum is not “nothing” – it contains space, time, and the laws of physics. Indeed space and time themselves are created; and thus their creation occurs outside of space and time, as the articles below describe.
A Most Strange Debate
A post by Christopher Graney on the Catholic Astronomer website, featuring a (fictional) discussion on the idea of the multiverse and the nature of the infinite, involving the 17th century philosophers Philips Lansbergen, Johann Georg Locher, Thomas Digges and Giovanni Battista Riccioli, the ancient Roman poet Lucretius, the twentieth-century historian of science Alexandre Koyré, and physicists Brian Greene and Max Tegmark, from today!
Continue reading →Across the Universe: Tending Towards Paganism
Insisting on a universe that needs a direct intervention of God to accomplish some things but not others reduces God to not much more than a functional equivalent of Jupiter, god of thunder, or Ceres, goddess of grain.
Continue reading →Br. Guy Consolmagno at University of Illinois: The Unfinished Cosmos: Creation, God, and Hawking’s Grand Design
Video 97 minutes Level: all audiences Br. Guy Consolmagno of the Vatican Observatory delivered a lecture on “The Unfinished Cosmos: Creation, God, and Hawking’s Grand Design” at the University of Illinois on March 7th, 2013. The event was hosted by the St. John’s Catholic Newman Center at the University of Illinois. … Continue reading →
Can Something Come From Nothing? Faith and Science Communication Breakdown
A post by Fr. James Kurzinski on the Catholic Astronomer website. “…creation is not a change from “nothing” into “something,” but rather creation is the fact that things have come into existence, and is a question of metaphysics and not of science.”
Continue reading →Contemporary Cosmology and “Creatio ex Nihilo”
Article 4800 words Level: university In this paper by Gabriele Gionti, S.J., an astronomer with the Vatican Observatory Research Group, Gionti notes the problem in thinking of God as the “cause” of the Big Bang in the same way that certain versions of deism think of a “demiurge” god. He notes how there has long been a close relation between cosmology and religion, as the beauty and harmony human beings see looking at the skies invokes the idea of an architect of this harmony. But he argues that Georges Lemaître was right in stressing a separation between theological and scientific methods. [Click here to download PDF] … Continue reading →
Emilie Du Châtelet: Selected Philosophical and Scientific Writings
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 →
God is dead; long live the eternal God
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 →
God’s Universe
Book 160 pages Level: high school and above A short book by Harvard University astronomer and historian of science Owen Gingerich, published in 2006 by Harvard University Press. Gingerich addresses whether “mediocrity” (the “Copernican Principle”) is a good idea, whether a scientist dare believe in design, and the idea of questions without answers (persuasion vs. proof in science). From the publisher: We live in a universe with a very long history, a vast cosmos where things are being worked out over unimaginably long ages. Stars and galaxies have formed, and elements come forth from great stellar cauldrons. The necessary elements are present, the environment is fit for life, and slowly life forms have populated the earth. Are the creative forces purposeful, and in fact divine? Owen Gingerich believes in a universe of intention and purpose. We can at least conjecture that we are part of that purpose and have just enough freedom that conscience and responsibility may be part of the … Continue reading →
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – The Ultimate Origin of Things
Article (book excerpt) 3800 words Level: high school and above Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is credited with the invention of the mathematics of Calculus. Isaac Newton is also so credited, but it is the notation and language of Leibniz that is used in modern calculus. Here Leibniz argues that reason points to the existence of a being outside the universe who governs it and built it: In addition to the world or aggregate of finite things, there is some unique Being who governs, not only like the soul in me, or rather like the Ego itself in my body, but in a much higher relation. For one Being dominating the universe not only rules the world but he creates and fashions it, is superior to the world, and, so to speak, extra mundane, and by this very fact is the ultimate reason of things. For the sufficient reason of existence can be found neither in any particular thing nor in the whole … Continue reading →
Is Big Bang Cosmology In Conflict With Divine Creation?
Book chapter (PDF) 8 pages Level: university A chapter by Fr. William R. Stoeger, S. J., a physicist with the Vatican Observatory, written for the book The Heavens Proclaim: Astronomy and the Vatican: “By considering the recent educated scientific speculation on what may have led to the Big Bang and the Planck era, we shall find that quantum cosmology – and the physics upon which it relies – promises to reveal a great deal, but cannot provide an alternative to the traditional philosophical notion of divine creation, creation from nothing, in accounting for the universes’s ultimate origin.” Topics include What Is the Big Bang?; The Planck Era and “the Beginning” of the Universe; Insights from Quantum Cosmology; The Basic Insight of Creatio ex Nihilo; Conclusion. [Click here to download PDF] … Continue reading →
Quantum Cosmology and Creation
Any attempt to simply identify the nothing (nihilo) of the theologians with the quantum fluctuations of one of the preexisting states or with the unbounded regime of quantum cosmology would only create confusion. But the one concept may illuminate the other.
Continue reading →The New Physics and the Old Metaphysics (The Nash Lecture at Campion College, University of Regina)
Video (50 minutes) or a presentation by Br Guy Consomagno on how advances in modern physics work with traditional metaphysics. God is not one force among many, to be invoked to explain evolution or the big bang, but the author of the universe that allows evolution or the big bang to occur.
Continue reading →The Philosophy of St. Bonaventure On Creation – Étienne Gilson
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 →
Thomas Aquinas – On Creation and Time
Book excerpt 1600 words Level: university This discussion on creation and time, from the Summa contra Gentiles of Thomas Aquinas, contrasts and compares in interesting ways with the modern understanding of the origin of the universe as described in the “Big Bang” theory (in which neither matter, nor time, nor space exist prior to the “bang”). For example, St. Thomas argues that the act of creation is not a change of one thing that exists into another thing. Rather, appealing to both reason and to St. Basil, St. Thomas argues that both material things and time itself were formed when God created the universe, a process which St. Thomas argues was instantaneous. He says, “And so it is that holy Scripture proclaims the creation of things to have been effected in an indivisible instant; for it is written: ‘In the beginning God created heaven and earth’ (Gen. 1:1). And Basil explains that this beginning is ‘the beginning of time’.” This excerpt … Continue reading →
Understanding the Interplay Between Creatio Ex Nihilo and Creatio Continua
A post by Fr. James Kurzinski on the Catholic Astronomer website. “A key difference between modern physics and Augustine is that Augustine’s understanding of change also implies the change of our spiritual lives and our relationship with God. Therefore, what we find in the early Church is a tantalizing exploration into how and why things come into existence (from a philosophical and theological standpoint). This change does not happen in a moment, but is an ongoing process of continual creation by God. “
Continue reading →What Was In The Beginning? Chardin, Pickstock, and the Song of Creation.
A post by Fr. James Kurzinski on the Catholic Astronomer website. “What is amazing is that whether it is through the music of gravitational waves or the divine utterances of the Word made flesh, our consciousness points us to not only the things of the tangible world, but also the transcendent.”
Continue reading →A Most Strange Debate
A post by Christopher Graney on the Catholic Astronomer website, featuring a (fictional) discussion on the idea of the multiverse and the nature of the infinite, involving the 17th century philosophers Philips Lansbergen, Johann Georg Locher, Thomas Digges and Giovanni Battista Riccioli, the ancient Roman poet Lucretius, the twentieth-century historian of science Alexandre Koyré, and physicists Brian Greene and Max Tegmark, from today!
Continue reading →Across the Universe: Tending Towards Paganism
Insisting on a universe that needs a direct intervention of God to accomplish some things but not others reduces God to not much more than a functional equivalent of Jupiter, god of thunder, or Ceres, goddess of grain.
Continue reading →Can Something Come From Nothing? Faith and Science Communication Breakdown
A post by Fr. James Kurzinski on the Catholic Astronomer website. “…creation is not a change from “nothing” into “something,” but rather creation is the fact that things have come into existence, and is a question of metaphysics and not of science.”
Continue reading →God is dead; long live the eternal God
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 →
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – The Ultimate Origin of Things
Article (book excerpt) 3800 words Level: high school and above Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is credited with the invention of the mathematics of Calculus. Isaac Newton is also so credited, but it is the notation and language of Leibniz that is used in modern calculus. Here Leibniz argues that reason points to the existence of a being outside the universe who governs it and built it: In addition to the world or aggregate of finite things, there is some unique Being who governs, not only like the soul in me, or rather like the Ego itself in my body, but in a much higher relation. For one Being dominating the universe not only rules the world but he creates and fashions it, is superior to the world, and, so to speak, extra mundane, and by this very fact is the ultimate reason of things. For the sufficient reason of existence can be found neither in any particular thing nor in the whole … Continue reading →
The Philosophy of St. Bonaventure On Creation – Étienne Gilson
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 →
Thomas Aquinas – On Creation and Time
Book excerpt 1600 words Level: university This discussion on creation and time, from the Summa contra Gentiles of Thomas Aquinas, contrasts and compares in interesting ways with the modern understanding of the origin of the universe as described in the “Big Bang” theory (in which neither matter, nor time, nor space exist prior to the “bang”). For example, St. Thomas argues that the act of creation is not a change of one thing that exists into another thing. Rather, appealing to both reason and to St. Basil, St. Thomas argues that both material things and time itself were formed when God created the universe, a process which St. Thomas argues was instantaneous. He says, “And so it is that holy Scripture proclaims the creation of things to have been effected in an indivisible instant; for it is written: ‘In the beginning God created heaven and earth’ (Gen. 1:1). And Basil explains that this beginning is ‘the beginning of time’.” This excerpt … Continue reading →
Understanding the Interplay Between Creatio Ex Nihilo and Creatio Continua
A post by Fr. James Kurzinski on the Catholic Astronomer website. “A key difference between modern physics and Augustine is that Augustine’s understanding of change also implies the change of our spiritual lives and our relationship with God. Therefore, what we find in the early Church is a tantalizing exploration into how and why things come into existence (from a philosophical and theological standpoint). This change does not happen in a moment, but is an ongoing process of continual creation by God. “
Continue reading →What Was In The Beginning? Chardin, Pickstock, and the Song of Creation.
A post by Fr. James Kurzinski on the Catholic Astronomer website. “What is amazing is that whether it is through the music of gravitational waves or the divine utterances of the Word made flesh, our consciousness points us to not only the things of the tangible world, but also the transcendent.”
Continue reading →Br. Guy Consolmagno at University of Illinois: The Unfinished Cosmos: Creation, God, and Hawking’s Grand Design
Video 97 minutes Level: all audiences Br. Guy Consolmagno of the Vatican Observatory delivered a lecture on “The Unfinished Cosmos: Creation, God, and Hawking’s Grand Design” at the University of Illinois on March 7th, 2013. The event was hosted by the St. John’s Catholic Newman Center at the University of Illinois. … Continue reading →
The New Physics and the Old Metaphysics (The Nash Lecture at Campion College, University of Regina)
Video (50 minutes) or a presentation by Br Guy Consomagno on how advances in modern physics work with traditional metaphysics. God is not one force among many, to be invoked to explain evolution or the big bang, but the author of the universe that allows evolution or the big bang to occur.
Continue reading →Is Big Bang Cosmology In Conflict With Divine Creation?
Book chapter (PDF) 8 pages Level: university A chapter by Fr. William R. Stoeger, S. J., a physicist with the Vatican Observatory, written for the book The Heavens Proclaim: Astronomy and the Vatican: “By considering the recent educated scientific speculation on what may have led to the Big Bang and the Planck era, we shall find that quantum cosmology – and the physics upon which it relies – promises to reveal a great deal, but cannot provide an alternative to the traditional philosophical notion of divine creation, creation from nothing, in accounting for the universes’s ultimate origin.” Topics include What Is the Big Bang?; The Planck Era and “the Beginning” of the Universe; Insights from Quantum Cosmology; The Basic Insight of Creatio ex Nihilo; Conclusion. [Click here to download PDF] … Continue reading →
Quantum Cosmology and Creation
Any attempt to simply identify the nothing (nihilo) of the theologians with the quantum fluctuations of one of the preexisting states or with the unbounded regime of quantum cosmology would only create confusion. But the one concept may illuminate the other.
Continue reading →Emilie Du Châtelet: Selected Philosophical and Scientific Writings
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 →
God’s Universe
Book 160 pages Level: high school and above A short book by Harvard University astronomer and historian of science Owen Gingerich, published in 2006 by Harvard University Press. Gingerich addresses whether “mediocrity” (the “Copernican Principle”) is a good idea, whether a scientist dare believe in design, and the idea of questions without answers (persuasion vs. proof in science). From the publisher: We live in a universe with a very long history, a vast cosmos where things are being worked out over unimaginably long ages. Stars and galaxies have formed, and elements come forth from great stellar cauldrons. The necessary elements are present, the environment is fit for life, and slowly life forms have populated the earth. Are the creative forces purposeful, and in fact divine? Owen Gingerich believes in a universe of intention and purpose. We can at least conjecture that we are part of that purpose and have just enough freedom that conscience and responsibility may be part of the … Continue reading →