Along with the more specific discussions in the other sections, here are also a number of resources where scientists of faith reflect on how they personally approach questions of faith and life.
Being Human and Christian in a Darwinian World: An Appreciation of Józef Zycinski
Article 29 pages Level: university This article,by Phillip R. Sloan was published in Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture in 2012. Sloan (who is professor emeritus in the program of liberal studies and in the graduate program in history and philosophy of science at the University of Notre Dame and whose research specializes on the history and philosophy of life science from the early modern period to contemporary molecular biology) writes: This article is not intended to question the general validity of the Darwinian theory of species transformism by natural selection which I consider to be the best available scientific explanation of the origins and diversity of the organic forms we see around us. I am also concerned to engage with what John Haught has termed “unedited” Darwinian theory—Darwinian theory as accepted and discussed generally within the scientific community—rather than pursuing discarded alternative neo-Lamarckian, orthogenetic, and strong teleological evolutionary theories. I also do not minimize the detailed debates … Continue reading →
Biology in a Christian University
Article 5600 words Level: all audiences Alister McGrath is the Andreas Idreos Professor in Science and Religion at the University of Oxford. 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. In “Biology in a Christian University” McGrath writes: The complexity and importance of discussions about biological evolution, human identity and human beliefs is of such importance that it is essential to establish an informed forum within which they can be discussed and explored. Modern biology is beginning to rediscover the notion of teleology, and explore its possible implications. Might evolution be much more directed as a process than might hitherto have been realized? Might we begin to speak of islands of stability (Conway Morris) in biological space? This important discussion requires a community which is both biologically and theologically informed … Continue reading →
Cosmology, Evolution and Christian Faith
Journal Article 9700 words Level: university In this paper, published in the journal Higher Education of Social Science, Fr. George V. Coyne, S. J., Director of the Vatican Observatory from 1978 to 2006, writes: To what extent can what we know from science about the evolution of life in the universe influence our religious attitudes? And, on the other hand, to what extent can religious thought make a contribution to our scientific understanding of the origins and evolution of life in the universe? This twofold question poses the serious risk of transgressing upon the epistemological independence of the various disciplines: theology, philosophy, astrophysics, biology and cosmology, and creating, thereby, more confusion than understanding. It is, therefore, necessary to maintain a consistent posture of preserving the integrity of each of the disciplines, especially that between the natural sciences and theology. Click here for the full text of Fr. Coyne’s paper from Higher Education of Social Science. … Continue reading →
Extraterrestrial Life
An 8 minute video of a conversation with Vatican astronomers Br. Guy Consolmagno and Fr. Chris Corbally on the religious singificance of discovering extraterrestrial life. “Some theoloogians don’t make God big enough.”
Continue reading →From Modern Research in Astrophysics to the Next Millennium for Mankind
Book chapter (PDF) 10 pages Level: university A paper by Fr. George V. Coyne, S. J., Director of the Vatican Observatory from 1978 to 2006, that was published by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (PAS) in a volume on Science and the Future of Mankind. [Click here to download PDF] … Continue reading →
Is the Tension Between Faith and Science ‘Merely’ a Breakdown in Communication?
A post by Fr. James Kurzynski on The Catholic Astronomer. “Can the perceived tension between evolution and God as Creator be fully addressed by clarifying a breakdown in communication over the word “random?” Of course, the answer is no. As is the case with many strained relationships, there isn’t just one issue that leads to a breakup. Nevertheless, I do feel that these explorations are needed for both believer and non-believer if we are to move away from faith and science as adversaries and toward a position of faith and science as dialogue partners in search of truth.”
Continue reading →John Henry Newman – on Darwin’s Theory of Evolution
Article (letter) 500 words Level: high school and above John Henry Newman writes about Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, and asks what people find atheistic about it. Newman writes: It does not seem to me to follow that creation is denied because the Creator, millions of years ago, gave laws to matter. He first created matter and then he created laws for it — laws which should construct it into its present wonderful beauty, and accurate adjustment and harmony of parts gradually. We do not deny or circumscribe the Creator, because we hold he has created the self acting originating human mind, which has almost a creative gift; much less then do we deny or circumscribe His power, if we hold that He gave matter such laws as by their blind instrumentality moulded and constructed through innumerable ages the world as we see it. Click here for an excerpt selected by the Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Religion and Science (Inters.org), which is edited by the … Continue reading →
Kenneth R. Miller – To Find God in All Things: Grandeur in an Evolutionary View of Life
Video 56 minutes Level: high school and above Kenneth R. Miller, a biologist at Brown University and author of a widely-used textbook for high school biology, gives the St. Albert Award Lecture at the inaugural conference of the Society of Catholic Scientists. Miller gives an overview of conflicts that have arisen when people have opposed teaching evolution as subject matter in high school, discusses the tendency of some scientists to frame evolution in exactly the way foreseen by those who oppose its teaching, and provides a contrasting view of evolution: a view that “Finds God in All Things”. Click here for an article from Our Sunday Visitor entitled “Catholic scientists discuss faith’s role in work”, on the first conference of the Society of Catholic Scientists—“Origins”—held April 21-23, 2017 in Chicago. Click here for the Society of Catholic Scientists “Origins” conference page. … Continue reading →
Life as We Know It
Article 3000 words Level: all audiences A 2012 article from Notre Dame Magazine, by Michael J. Crowe, a historian of science with the University of Notre Dame, and Christopher M. Graney. Crowe and Graney write: The Aristotelians were wrong; the Copernicans were right. Our home is not the center of the universe; it is merely one planet circling one star in an incomprehensibly vast universe. But what is the deeper significance of this important claim? David Wootton suggests an answer in his recent biography, Galileo: Watcher of the Skies. The Copernican theory, he writes, “[O]ffered a view of the cosmos in which humankind, and the things that matter to humankind — love and hatred, virtue and vice, mortality and immortality, salvation and damnation — were irrelevant. Far from embodying a scheme of values, far from embodying a telos or purpose, [this] universe appeared to be indifferent to moral and metaphysical issues, and even indifferent to our own existence. . . . Galileo’s … Continue reading →
Like the Universe, Our Mission Must Evolve: Reflections of a Jesuit Scientist
Article 3 pages Level: all audiences In this article published in the journal Conversations on Jesuit Higher Education, Fr. George V. Coyne, S. J., Director of the Vatican Observatory from 1978 to 2006, concludes: Ignatian mission is a participation in the intrinsically missionary nature of the Church, the concrete presence of the Creator among his cocreators. God is continually encountering the world in new and creative ways because the world he created is responsive to his continual encounter. Ignatius sent his men into that world and sought to free them of any encumbrance to a free and total commitment to the world in whatever way their talents would best serve the Church. And their mission was to evolve just as the universe itself is in evolution. But for any individual Jesuit, Jesuit partner or Jesuit institution the evolution of mission must be in consort with the intrinsically missionary Church. The wisdom of God in emptying himself to create a world which shares … Continue reading →
Maria Sibylla Merian – Wondrous Transformations (1647-1717)
Article (book chapter) 29 pages Level: high school and above The 2017 book Lost Science: Astonishing Tales of Forgotten Genius by author Kitty Ferguson consists of ten free-standing chapters covering different figures from the history of science. The chapter on Maria Sibylla Merian focuses on her studies of insects, and especially the transformations of caterpillars into moths or butterflies. Merian was for a while a member of a Lutheran pietist community called the “Labadists”, and she viewed the insect transformation as common miracles of God, writing: These wondrous transformations have happened so many times that one is full of praise for God’s mysterious power and his wonderful attention to such insignificant little creatures and unworthy flying things…. Thus I am moved to present God’s miracles such as these to the world in a little book. Click here for information from Sterling Publishing, publisher of Lost Science: Astonishing Tales of Forgotten Genius. Click here for a preview of this chapter. Click here … Continue reading →
Matrix Thinking: An Adaptation at the Foundation of Human Science, Religion, and Art
Article 28 pages Level: university A paper by Margaret Boone Rappaport and Fr. Christopher Corbally, an astronomer with the Vatican Observatory, published in Zygon: The Journal of Religion and Science. From Zygon: Abstract: Intrigued by Robinson and Southgate’s 2010 work on “entering a semiotic matrix,” we expand their model to include the juxtaposition of all signs, symbols, and mental categories, and to explore the underpinnings of creativity in science, religion, and art. We rely on an interdisciplinary review of human sentience in archaeology, evolutionary biology, the cognitive science of religion, and literature, and speculate on the development of sentience in response to strong selection pressure on the hominin evolutionary line, leaving us the “lone survivors” of complex, multiple lines of physical and cultural evolution. What we call Matrix Thinking—the creative driver of human sentience—has important cognitive and intellectual features, but also equally important characteristics traced to our intense sociability and use of emotionality in vetting rational models. Scientist, theologian, and … Continue reading →
Modern Cosmology, a Resource for Elementary School Education
Book chapter (PDF) 9 pages, 7000 words Level: all audiences A book chapter from the 2001 book The Challenges for Science. Education for the Twenty-First Century, published by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. In this chapter Fr. George Coyne, S. J., Director of the Vatican Observatory from 1978 to 2006, writes: (1) We should start teaching children from where they are at present, their current knowledge, interests, fears, and so on; (2) all of us humans, those who teach and those who are taught, “have been made in heaven”, it has been said. This refers to the well known need for stellar nucleosynthesis to provide the chemical abundances required for life in the universe. It has been indicated that one of principal goals of teaching children should be an awareness of this birth of ours from star dust, if only at an elementary level. I would suggest that the didactic order be reversed and that this awareness should be the beginning … Continue reading →
The Girl Who Drew Butterflies
Book 130 pages Level: all audiences This is a book about Maria Sybilla Merian, written for readers at the middle school level and up. The author is Joyce Sidman, and it was published in 2018 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Merian was a scientist who carefully studied caterpillars, butterflies, and moths and the plants on which they fed—and she was an artist who made beautiful drawings of the creatures that she studied. Merian wrote that “one is full of praise at God’s mysterious power and the wonderful attention he pays to such insignificant little creatures”. While the book is primarily about Merian’s studies, the author also discusses Merian’s religion, which played a large role in her life. From the author’s web page: Everyone knows that butterflies come from caterpillars, right? Not in the 17th century, they didn’t. How would they have known? Metamorphosis took place in hidden places. There were no books describing this process, or Monarch kits to send away for. … Continue reading →
What God “Whispers” through Radio Telescopes
Article 2500 words Level: all audiences Jennifer Wiseman is a senior astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, where she serves as the senior project scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope. She is also Director of the Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion (DoSER) program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Wiseman writes: Radio telescopes, and indeed all telescopes, reveal a universe of complexity and beauty that speaks of great care and creativity in its design. This very reality tells us that our lives mean more than simply survival. Indeed, we can even see that God is very good for even choosing to make a universe of beauty that leads to life, and thus everything good must proceed from God. 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 … Continue reading →
Being Human and Christian in a Darwinian World: An Appreciation of Józef Zycinski
Article 29 pages Level: university This article,by Phillip R. Sloan was published in Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture in 2012. Sloan (who is professor emeritus in the program of liberal studies and in the graduate program in history and philosophy of science at the University of Notre Dame and whose research specializes on the history and philosophy of life science from the early modern period to contemporary molecular biology) writes: This article is not intended to question the general validity of the Darwinian theory of species transformism by natural selection which I consider to be the best available scientific explanation of the origins and diversity of the organic forms we see around us. I am also concerned to engage with what John Haught has termed “unedited” Darwinian theory—Darwinian theory as accepted and discussed generally within the scientific community—rather than pursuing discarded alternative neo-Lamarckian, orthogenetic, and strong teleological evolutionary theories. I also do not minimize the detailed debates … Continue reading →
Biology in a Christian University
Article 5600 words Level: all audiences Alister McGrath is the Andreas Idreos Professor in Science and Religion at the University of Oxford. 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. In “Biology in a Christian University” McGrath writes: The complexity and importance of discussions about biological evolution, human identity and human beliefs is of such importance that it is essential to establish an informed forum within which they can be discussed and explored. Modern biology is beginning to rediscover the notion of teleology, and explore its possible implications. Might evolution be much more directed as a process than might hitherto have been realized? Might we begin to speak of islands of stability (Conway Morris) in biological space? This important discussion requires a community which is both biologically and theologically informed … Continue reading →
Cosmology, Evolution and Christian Faith
Journal Article 9700 words Level: university In this paper, published in the journal Higher Education of Social Science, Fr. George V. Coyne, S. J., Director of the Vatican Observatory from 1978 to 2006, writes: To what extent can what we know from science about the evolution of life in the universe influence our religious attitudes? And, on the other hand, to what extent can religious thought make a contribution to our scientific understanding of the origins and evolution of life in the universe? This twofold question poses the serious risk of transgressing upon the epistemological independence of the various disciplines: theology, philosophy, astrophysics, biology and cosmology, and creating, thereby, more confusion than understanding. It is, therefore, necessary to maintain a consistent posture of preserving the integrity of each of the disciplines, especially that between the natural sciences and theology. Click here for the full text of Fr. Coyne’s paper from Higher Education of Social Science. … Continue reading →
From Modern Research in Astrophysics to the Next Millennium for Mankind
Book chapter (PDF) 10 pages Level: university A paper by Fr. George V. Coyne, S. J., Director of the Vatican Observatory from 1978 to 2006, that was published by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (PAS) in a volume on Science and the Future of Mankind. [Click here to download PDF] … Continue reading →
Is the Tension Between Faith and Science ‘Merely’ a Breakdown in Communication?
A post by Fr. James Kurzynski on The Catholic Astronomer. “Can the perceived tension between evolution and God as Creator be fully addressed by clarifying a breakdown in communication over the word “random?” Of course, the answer is no. As is the case with many strained relationships, there isn’t just one issue that leads to a breakup. Nevertheless, I do feel that these explorations are needed for both believer and non-believer if we are to move away from faith and science as adversaries and toward a position of faith and science as dialogue partners in search of truth.”
Continue reading →John Henry Newman – on Darwin’s Theory of Evolution
Article (letter) 500 words Level: high school and above John Henry Newman writes about Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, and asks what people find atheistic about it. Newman writes: It does not seem to me to follow that creation is denied because the Creator, millions of years ago, gave laws to matter. He first created matter and then he created laws for it — laws which should construct it into its present wonderful beauty, and accurate adjustment and harmony of parts gradually. We do not deny or circumscribe the Creator, because we hold he has created the self acting originating human mind, which has almost a creative gift; much less then do we deny or circumscribe His power, if we hold that He gave matter such laws as by their blind instrumentality moulded and constructed through innumerable ages the world as we see it. Click here for an excerpt selected by the Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Religion and Science (Inters.org), which is edited by the … Continue reading →
Life as We Know It
Article 3000 words Level: all audiences A 2012 article from Notre Dame Magazine, by Michael J. Crowe, a historian of science with the University of Notre Dame, and Christopher M. Graney. Crowe and Graney write: The Aristotelians were wrong; the Copernicans were right. Our home is not the center of the universe; it is merely one planet circling one star in an incomprehensibly vast universe. But what is the deeper significance of this important claim? David Wootton suggests an answer in his recent biography, Galileo: Watcher of the Skies. The Copernican theory, he writes, “[O]ffered a view of the cosmos in which humankind, and the things that matter to humankind — love and hatred, virtue and vice, mortality and immortality, salvation and damnation — were irrelevant. Far from embodying a scheme of values, far from embodying a telos or purpose, [this] universe appeared to be indifferent to moral and metaphysical issues, and even indifferent to our own existence. . . . Galileo’s … Continue reading →
Like the Universe, Our Mission Must Evolve: Reflections of a Jesuit Scientist
Article 3 pages Level: all audiences In this article published in the journal Conversations on Jesuit Higher Education, Fr. George V. Coyne, S. J., Director of the Vatican Observatory from 1978 to 2006, concludes: Ignatian mission is a participation in the intrinsically missionary nature of the Church, the concrete presence of the Creator among his cocreators. God is continually encountering the world in new and creative ways because the world he created is responsive to his continual encounter. Ignatius sent his men into that world and sought to free them of any encumbrance to a free and total commitment to the world in whatever way their talents would best serve the Church. And their mission was to evolve just as the universe itself is in evolution. But for any individual Jesuit, Jesuit partner or Jesuit institution the evolution of mission must be in consort with the intrinsically missionary Church. The wisdom of God in emptying himself to create a world which shares … Continue reading →
Matrix Thinking: An Adaptation at the Foundation of Human Science, Religion, and Art
Article 28 pages Level: university A paper by Margaret Boone Rappaport and Fr. Christopher Corbally, an astronomer with the Vatican Observatory, published in Zygon: The Journal of Religion and Science. From Zygon: Abstract: Intrigued by Robinson and Southgate’s 2010 work on “entering a semiotic matrix,” we expand their model to include the juxtaposition of all signs, symbols, and mental categories, and to explore the underpinnings of creativity in science, religion, and art. We rely on an interdisciplinary review of human sentience in archaeology, evolutionary biology, the cognitive science of religion, and literature, and speculate on the development of sentience in response to strong selection pressure on the hominin evolutionary line, leaving us the “lone survivors” of complex, multiple lines of physical and cultural evolution. What we call Matrix Thinking—the creative driver of human sentience—has important cognitive and intellectual features, but also equally important characteristics traced to our intense sociability and use of emotionality in vetting rational models. Scientist, theologian, and … Continue reading →
Modern Cosmology, a Resource for Elementary School Education
Book chapter (PDF) 9 pages, 7000 words Level: all audiences A book chapter from the 2001 book The Challenges for Science. Education for the Twenty-First Century, published by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. In this chapter Fr. George Coyne, S. J., Director of the Vatican Observatory from 1978 to 2006, writes: (1) We should start teaching children from where they are at present, their current knowledge, interests, fears, and so on; (2) all of us humans, those who teach and those who are taught, “have been made in heaven”, it has been said. This refers to the well known need for stellar nucleosynthesis to provide the chemical abundances required for life in the universe. It has been indicated that one of principal goals of teaching children should be an awareness of this birth of ours from star dust, if only at an elementary level. I would suggest that the didactic order be reversed and that this awareness should be the beginning … Continue reading →
What God “Whispers” through Radio Telescopes
Article 2500 words Level: all audiences Jennifer Wiseman is a senior astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, where she serves as the senior project scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope. She is also Director of the Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion (DoSER) program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Wiseman writes: Radio telescopes, and indeed all telescopes, reveal a universe of complexity and beauty that speaks of great care and creativity in its design. This very reality tells us that our lives mean more than simply survival. Indeed, we can even see that God is very good for even choosing to make a universe of beauty that leads to life, and thus everything good must proceed from God. 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 … Continue reading →
Extraterrestrial Life
An 8 minute video of a conversation with Vatican astronomers Br. Guy Consolmagno and Fr. Chris Corbally on the religious singificance of discovering extraterrestrial life. “Some theoloogians don’t make God big enough.”
Continue reading →Kenneth R. Miller – To Find God in All Things: Grandeur in an Evolutionary View of Life
Video 56 minutes Level: high school and above Kenneth R. Miller, a biologist at Brown University and author of a widely-used textbook for high school biology, gives the St. Albert Award Lecture at the inaugural conference of the Society of Catholic Scientists. Miller gives an overview of conflicts that have arisen when people have opposed teaching evolution as subject matter in high school, discusses the tendency of some scientists to frame evolution in exactly the way foreseen by those who oppose its teaching, and provides a contrasting view of evolution: a view that “Finds God in All Things”. Click here for an article from Our Sunday Visitor entitled “Catholic scientists discuss faith’s role in work”, on the first conference of the Society of Catholic Scientists—“Origins”—held April 21-23, 2017 in Chicago. Click here for the Society of Catholic Scientists “Origins” conference page. … Continue reading →
Life as We Know It
Article 3000 words Level: all audiences A 2012 article from Notre Dame Magazine, by Michael J. Crowe, a historian of science with the University of Notre Dame, and Christopher M. Graney. Crowe and Graney write: The Aristotelians were wrong; the Copernicans were right. Our home is not the center of the universe; it is merely one planet circling one star in an incomprehensibly vast universe. But what is the deeper significance of this important claim? David Wootton suggests an answer in his recent biography, Galileo: Watcher of the Skies. The Copernican theory, he writes, “[O]ffered a view of the cosmos in which humankind, and the things that matter to humankind — love and hatred, virtue and vice, mortality and immortality, salvation and damnation — were irrelevant. Far from embodying a scheme of values, far from embodying a telos or purpose, [this] universe appeared to be indifferent to moral and metaphysical issues, and even indifferent to our own existence. . . . Galileo’s … Continue reading →
The Girl Who Drew Butterflies
Book 130 pages Level: all audiences This is a book about Maria Sybilla Merian, written for readers at the middle school level and up. The author is Joyce Sidman, and it was published in 2018 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Merian was a scientist who carefully studied caterpillars, butterflies, and moths and the plants on which they fed—and she was an artist who made beautiful drawings of the creatures that she studied. Merian wrote that “one is full of praise at God’s mysterious power and the wonderful attention he pays to such insignificant little creatures”. While the book is primarily about Merian’s studies, the author also discusses Merian’s religion, which played a large role in her life. From the author’s web page: Everyone knows that butterflies come from caterpillars, right? Not in the 17th century, they didn’t. How would they have known? Metamorphosis took place in hidden places. There were no books describing this process, or Monarch kits to send away for. … Continue reading →