Brother Guy Consolmagno with meteorites
Posted on 03/08/2012 2:04:14 PM PST by NYer
Brother Guy Consolmagno with meteorites
.- The astronomer for the Vatican Observatory, Brother Guy Consolmagno, S.J., says that his study of the universe through science has helped him better understand the person of Christ.
Despite people often having the “crazy idea” that science and religion conflict, science is “really one of our best principles for getting to know God,” he told CNA.
Br. Consolmagno – who also serves as the Vatican's curator of meteorites – spoke on March 3 at the Living the Catholic Faith Conference in the Archdiocese of Denver, Colo.
During his talk, titled “The Word Became Flesh,” the planetary scientist explained that modern atheists tend to understand God as being merely a force that “fills the gaps” in our understanding of the universe.
“To use God to fill the gaps in our knowledge is theologically treacherous,” Br. Consolmagno said, because it minimizes God to just another force inside the universe rather than recognizing him as the source of creation.
Those who believe in God should not be afraid of science, but should see it as a an opportunity that God gave humanity to get to know him better.
Br. Consolmagno said that he believes in God, “not because he is at the end of some logical chain of calculations” but because he “experienced what physics and logic can show me but cannot explain: beauty and reason and love.”
The primary difference between him and atheistic scientist Stephen Hawking is that he recognizes that God is not another part of the universe that explains the inexplicable, but rather “Logos” and “Reason itself.”
He spoke of the faith needed to embrace Christianity and said that although other world religions and philosophies can give us a rational view of the universe, “only the Gospel could tell us that Reason itself became flesh and dwelt among us” in the form of Jesus Christ.
The Incarnation is remarkable because it happened, Br. Consolmagno said, and also due to the way it occurred. In coming into the world as an infant, God “exercised a kind of supernatural restraint” which still respected the laws of nature.
The Vatican Observatory was established in 1891 by Pope Leo XIII near St. Peter's Basilica but was moved a few miles outside of Rome in 1935 when pollution made visibility difficult. The Vatican established a new division of the Observatory in Tuscon, Ariz. in 1980 and built its own telescope in 1987.
Catholic ping!
I always found that mathematics is also a great way to see the awesomeness of God.
Thank you, Brother.
Yes, a very interesting man who didn’t take the nominal path to his vocation.
I enjoyed the entire conference.
Thank-you Brother for all you do to help people find God in His creation.
That same afternoon Justice Scalia spoke to us for about half an hour.
Can you imagine that hasn’t made the MSM?
In before the obligatory Galileo reference...
Copernicus’ contemporaneous research into heliocentrism was funded by a bishop, and Copernicus dedicated his most famous book to the pope. So heliocentric theory wasn’t the driving force behind the confrontation between the pope and Galileo.
http://www.catholic.com/tracts/the-galileo-controversy
-——I always found that mathematics is also a great way to see the awesomeness of God.-——
Ask an atheist if they’be ever observed a number 7 in the wild. It’s fun!
Yes, because mathematics requires absolute logic.
Didn’t Sir Isaac Newton regard his discoveries as revealing God?
Biology does it for me, and I'm a Math major. (Or I was!)
ML/NJ
Great article, Thanks. As brilliant men knew for thousands of years—there is no separation of Faith and Reason. It is never possible.
It was never really considered possible until the Postmodernists, esp, by Marx who wanted to destroy the concept of God and Reason, so he could redesign man to his liking. Completely threw out all rationality (Natural Law Theory) and replaced it with his irrational “faith” in no God, no logic and no science.
Bookmark
Reality is like a huge (REALLY HUGE) machine or transmission. It all works together and it can all be explained and modeled in mathematical terms.
Nothing random...everything in its place. And infinitely beyond mankind's ability to fathom it.
Mathematics is an artform as well as a machine. It is logical and beautiful...and elegant.
I subscribe to the Astronomy Picture of the Day ping list. A few years back, they posted this image on Good Friday of Holy Week.
The Crown of Thorns Galaxy is located in the southern constellation known as Indus and is one of the brighter cluster of galaxies (BCG’s) so far photographed by Hubble.
Composed of uncounted stars, space dust and debris, it is quite an amazing and beautiful site. These type of BSGs are normally much older and quite large compared to their younger brethren, such as our own Milky Way Galaxy, which is a baby in age by comparison.
I don't believe in coincidence.
“The heavens declare the glory of God;
the sky displays his handiwork.
Day after day it speaks out;
night after night it reveals his greatness.
There is no actual speech or word,
nor is its voice literally heard.
Yet its voice echoes throughout the earth;
its words carry to the distant horizon.
In the sky he has pitched a tent for the sun.”
Psalm 19:1-4
“The heavens declare the glory of God;
the sky displays his handiwork.
Day after day it speaks out;
night after night it reveals his greatness.
There is no actual speech or word,
nor is its voice literally heard.
Yet its voice echoes throughout the earth;
its words carry to the distant horizon.
In the sky he has pitched a tent for the sun.”
Psalm 19:1-4
I don't believe in coincidence.
I don't either. Every weight, small and great, He placed on my conscience from the very beginning of my life has pointed to the Truth.
I didn't understand it initially...but time and maturity have borne it out.
He is all-wise and all-powerful, but also kind and gentle in the tiniest of matters!
And very personal!
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