• Article (blog post)
• 350 words
• Level: all audiences

Fr. Chris Corbally, S. J., an astronomer with the Vatican Observatory, reflects on Stephen Hawking’s book The Grand Design in a 2010 blog entry on the U.S. Catholic blog site (click here to read the post).

Quantum leaps of faith

Or: Why I should first read Stephen Hawking’s The Grand Design

Guest blog by Vatican astronomer Father Christopher Corbally, S.J.

The media has been highlighting some pretty provocative quotes from Stephen Hawking’s new book. One such runs: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.”

I’m a Catholic so I might react to this by thinking, “Who does Hawking think he is, God?” But I’m also a Jesuit astronomer with a deep respect for Hawking’s cosmology. If Hawking is talking from the “mechanical metaphor”, interpreting reality solely from physics and mathematics, then quantum gravity can give rise to spontaneous creation and be the physical reason there is something rather than nothing.

Notice the word “solely”. It leaves out the “metaphor” of philosophy, one that would speak of quantum gravity itself being contingent, since this law could “not be” at all. Quantum gravity does not have in itself the reason for its existence.

Philosophy can’t completely answer whether that reason is needed or the law of gravity “just happens.” But theology does answer this, an answer that invokes a Creator who creates out of infinite love and on whom the existence of all depends continually. That answer resonates with those who have the experience of that Creator, their God, in faith.

So, I need to read Hawking’s book to see whether he is mixing his metaphors or whether he essentially, if provocatively, is sticking to the physics in which lies his extreme competence. Meanwhile the media will rage that Hawking says that God did not create the Universe. To which might come the response: “Hawking did not create the Universe,” says God!

Guest blogger Father Christopher Corbally, S.J. is the vice director of the Vatican Observatory Research Group at the Mount Graham International Observatory in Arizona.
Guest blog posts express the views of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of U.S. Catholic, its editors, or the Claretians.

• Article
• 1800 words
• Level: all audiences

In this 2017 article in in the journal Nature, author David Wootton writes on the Protestant Reformation and the Copernican Revolution:

Were the Reformation and this revolution merely coincident, or did the Reformation somehow facilitate or foster the new science, which rejected traditional authorities such as Aristotle and relied on experiments and empirical information? Suppose Martin Luther had never existed; suppose the Reformation had never taken place. Would the history of science have been fundamentally different? Would there have been no scientific revolution? Would we still be living in the world of the horse and cart, the quill pen and the matchlock firearm? Can we imagine a Catholic Newton, or is Newton’s Protestantism somehow fundamental to his science? 

Wootton notes that “it is still widely argued by historians of science that the Protestant religion and the new science were inextricably intertwined, as Protestantism turned away from the spirituality of Catholicism and fostered a practical engagement with the world”.  Wootton’s argument, however, is that it this is not so: “If we are looking for the preconditions of modern science, it’s to Gutenberg [of the printing press], not Luther, that we should turn.”

Click here to download a PDF of this article from Nature.

• Article
• 7 pages
• Level: high school and above

This 2011 article in the Journal of Religion and Society is by Charles Brockhouse of Creighton University.  This article provides perspectives on science from two different Catholic scientists—Brockhouse directly, and indirectly Brockhouse’s father, Bertram Brockhouse, who shared the 1994 Nobel Prize in Physics.  Charles Brockhouse writes:

No consideration of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition would be complete without a treatment of the development of modern experimental (natural) science. Alas, such a work is beyond my expertise and available time as a practicing scientist and lecturer in the general area of genetics and molecular biology….  [T]his chapter offers a distillation of my personal framework. This perspective developed during a lifetime in a family largely formed of converts to Roman Catholicism (and many non-RCs who did not covert) who also placed an enormous emphasis on scholastic development and intellectual rigor.

Click here for this article with addition information, from Creighton University.

Click here for the article directly, from Creighton University.

Catholic Minions of Doom as portrayed in “Cosmos”

• Article
• 1000 words
• Level: all audiences

Religion is not part of the pages of Astronomy magazine, but “for some crazy reason, religion creeps into some popular science media”, usually in the form of “religious putdowns” such as were seen in the “Cosmos” TV series.  So writes Bob Berman in the August 2014 issue of Astronomy.  “The advocacy segments in shows like Cosmos may be well intentioned,” writes Berman, “but I fear they merely harden those who think science is a ‘position’ or ‘view’ of the world rather than an impartial portal to truth.”

Click here to access this article courtesy of Astronomy magazine.

• Article
• 1000 words
• Level: high school and above

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. Physicist Freeman Dyson and his colleagues write:

At a time when the young are lacking in motivation to take up scientific careers, and when science is subject to numerous criticisms, often abusive, or ill-informed, science needs to be as open as possible (among other things to the question of meaning) and should not seal itself off in a way which is characteristic of scientism.

This discussion was originally published in French in Le Monde (February 22, 2006) under the title “Pour une science sans a priori”.

Click here for an English translation of the Dyson et al discussion, from Inters.org.

Click here for the original Dyson et al discussion, from Le Monde.

• Book
• 264 pages
• Level: university

God’s Action in Nature’s World, edited by T. Peters and N. Hallenger, is a book of essays in honor of Robert John Russell.

In 1981 Robert John Russell founded what would become the leading center of research at the interface of science and religion, the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences. Throughout its twenty-five year history, CTNS under Russell’s leadership has continued to guide and further the dialogue between science and theology. Russell has been an articulate spokesperson in calling for “creative mutual interaction” between the two fields. God’s Action in Nature’s World brings together sixteen internationally-recognized scholars to assess Robert Russell’s impact on the discipline of science and religion. Focusing on three areas of Russell’s work – methodology, cosmology, and divine action in quantum physics – this book celebrates Robert John Russell’s contribution to the interdisciplinary engagement between the natural sciences and theology.

It includes an article by George Coyne, “Today’s Playing Field: Theology and Science”, pp. 173-188.  Click here for additional information from Routledge, the book’s publisher.  Click here for several editions that can be previewed via Google Books.