The Great Dialogue

A “Lessons-To-Go” study
by Mark S. Pavlin
How science came to
challenge the way religion
addressed fundamental
questions of life and where
these world views stand today
The
Great Dialogue

Part 1: Introduction
The
Great Dialogue
How science came to

Mysteries are all around us
But the first of many things
that puzzle us is not a
murder mystery but an
existence mystery.

Mysteries are all around us
Why is there anything
rather than nothing?
And how can it be that
there is an “I” able to
ask this question?

How did everything (the universe) come to exist? What
is “stuff” (everything real, matter and energy) made of?
Is “space” real? Is space just nothing? How big is it?
Is Earth at the center of the universe? If not, what is?
Is “time” real? How old is the Earth? Who formed the
mountains? Do gods cause earthquakes and volcanos?
How did living stuff (“life”) come into existance? Is Earth
the only planet that has life (as we know it) on it?
Are human beings a special kind of life? If I am made of
“stuff”, like everything else, why is it I can think and other
stuff can’t? What does it mean to say I am “conscious?”
What is the meaning of it all? Is there some meaning,
direction, or purpose to life? If so, what?

Science - Two Perspectives - Faith
Broadly speaking, rational thought (reason) and trusting belief (faith) are
two approaches taken since the dawn of recorded history to try to answer
these questions. They are often seen, to this day, as antagonistic. Yet many
of the great scientific thinkers in Western history were devoutly religious.

Science - Two Perspectives - Faith
This study surveys the development in the history of Western thought of
the often difficult interaction of science and faith through the lives of
important figures in this great dialogue since the year 1600, a
development in which new ideas “changed everything” and challenged
the power and place of religion in the West.

Spiritual
Church
God-centered
Scripture
Faith
Certainty
Not only Nature
Beyond this life
Secular
Nation/state
Human-centric
Observation
Reason
Skepticism
Nature only
This life only
Before we begin...Are you on one side or the other?

What is in your wallet?
This study will use terms that are often taken for granted, like “faith”,
“truth”, “knowledge” and “reality.”
The meaning of these terms may be clear to you but a person from
another city/culture/country may have something else in their head.
They carry around a different picture in their mind, just like
they might have a different currency in their wallet.
The same goes for other “common sense” concepts
such as space, time, matter and energy.
What assump-
tions do you make
everyday about the
world around you? How
did you come to know what
you know?

St. Paul says that everyone knows
The wrath of God is being revealed from
heaven against all the godlessness and
wickedness of people, who suppress the
truth by their wickedness, since what may
be known about God is plain to them,
because God has made it plain to them.
For since the creation of the world God’s
invisible qualities— His eternal power and
divine nature— have been clearly seen,
being understood from what has been
made, so that people are without excuse.
- Rom. 1:19-20
Paul is saying that by
observing Nature, i.e.
the natural world or
reality, we should all
know that a powerful,
supernatural God
exists and we should
all know about His
“qualities” and should
behave rightly.
What do you think? Are all human beings endowed from birth with a
firm and clear knowledge of God and of how to be good (not wicked)?

How do we come to know something, to accept something as true?
 Empiricism: I perceive, observe, measure and/or assess something
using one of the five senses, which may be magnified/altered with an
device such as a thermometer, telescope, pH meter, etc.
 Rationalism : After I think about something and it makes sense to me
(it is reasonable), I accept it as true
 Authority: Someone tells me (parent, teacher, mentor, friend,
spouse, TV program, etc.); acceptance depends on trust. A variation
is reading about something in a book, magazine newspaper, or
website. The ultimate source may be tradition or an empirical study
 Revelation: A supernatural entity reveals something to me, perhaps
in a vision or through inspiration, perhaps a text or an insight
 Intuition: I just know; I can’t tell you how or why I know, I just feel it
is true; call it “gut instinct”.
Gaining knowledge

The branch of philosophy that considers how we go
about “knowing” anything is Epistemology, a name
derived from the Greek word for knowledge, which
also gives us the word “epistle”
Gaining knowledge

The branch of philosophy that considers how we go
about “knowing” anything is Epistemology, a name
derived from the Greek word for knowledge, which
also gives us the word “epistle”
Gaining knowledge
How can people be misled by each of
these ways of learning/knowing?
Give real-life examples.
What things can you do to increase trust
in a given source of knowledge?

We begin this study in about the year 1600,
when Europe was out of what we now call the
Middle Ages. Literacy is on the rise, trade is
booming, and much of Europe is Protestant.

Knowledge before the world changed
 All living things are special, very different from inanimate things
like earth, air, and water
 But human beings are unique among living things; people are the
end, the crown of God’s creation, superior to all animals
 Whereas animals possess a body (physicality) and function only
by instinct, human beings possess a body and a rational mind
(self-awareness) with emotions and a spirit (soul)
 All the great lights of the heavens, the sun,
moon, and the stars revolve around the
earth. And all are unblemished spheres
fixed to a great crystal dome
 God intended people to live in a nur-
turing place, which was the center
of the universe, until people sinned
(“fell”) and evil entered the world.

Around the year 1600, how
we thought about knowledge changed

The pace of gaining knowledge got a “kick-start” in 1450 with
the invention of the printing press/moveable type but really
began to pick up steam starting around the beginning of the
17th century, a time we now call the Enlightenment.

This period followed soon after the Protestant Reformation,
was closely tied to it, but was secular in nature, essentially
non-religious and often perceived as heretical.
It is not to be confused with the Renaissance which refers to
the flourishing of the creative arts (architecture, music,
painting, sculpture, etc.) starting in about the 15th century.
It has no connection at all with the same term applied to reaching
the state of perfect oneness (Nirvana) as taught in Buddhism.
The pace of gaining knowledge got a “kick-start” in 1450 with
the invention of the printing press/moveable type but really
began to pick up steam starting around the beginning of the
17th century, a time we now call the Enlightenment.

Method, not madness
Sir Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626)
 English statesman, jurist, orator, author
 MP, Attorney General and Lord Chancellor
 Influential as advocate and practitioner of
what is now called the scientific method
 A founder of the “scientific revolution”.
 Held to a philosophy of empiricism (Greek
for “observation”) i.e. seeing is believing
 “Essays, Religious Meditations, and Places of Persuasion and
Discussion” (1597) popularized the inductive method for correct in-
quiry (gather data, then generalize), now called the Baconian Method
 Demanded a planned procedure of investigating all things….
 Ushered in a new rhetorical and theoretical framework for developing
knowledge which did not cite Scripture or Church Tradition.

All is matter
Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679)
 English political philosopher- “Leviathan” (1651), established the
foundation for Western political thought on social contract theory.
 Developed such political fundamentals as indiv-
iduals have rights, the equality of all citizens,
the artificial character of the political order, and
all legitimate political power is "representative“
based on the consent of the people
 In an age in which religion was still a dominant
influence in civil society and fighting between
religious factions was violent…
 ...Hobbes came out boldly and openly with an
atheistic philosophy of absolute materialism
 “Every part of the universe is {matter} and that
which is not {matter} is no part of the universe.”

Rene Decartes (1596 – 1650)
 French mathematician, writer, and
rationalist philosopher
 Works are studied closely to this day, esp.
“Meditations on First Philosophy”
 He was a devout Catholic but was suspect-
ted of impiously “probing God”
 He devised the coordinate system bearing
his name for analysis of equations
 “Father of Analytical Geometry”, work
crucial to the development of calculus
 His search for a firm basis on which to
build a system of thought led him to state
“cogito ergo sum”– thinking itself, even if
in error or misguided, was firm ground.
“Common sense is the best-
distributed commodity in the
world: everyone is convinced
he is well-supplied with it.”
Searching for solid ground

Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662)
 French mathematician, writer, inventor, theo-
logian and physicist (the SI unit of pressure is
named in his honor)
 Made important contributions in areas as di-
verse as fluid dynamics, calculating machines,
geometry, and, especially, probability theory
 A devout Catholic, his most influential relig-
ious work, Pensées, ("Thoughts") was to be a
sustained examination and defense of the
Christian faith
Pascal
Portrait
by Darren
McAndrew
(2018)
The devout gambler
 Although he died before completing it, it was published “as
is” (1669) and thereafter became a classic still read today
 His famously said one should “bet” on God because the re-
ward was great if He was as good as Christians said He was.

human behavior is determined. Freedom is only our capacity to
know that we are determined
 In his Ethics, he opposed mind–body dualism, physical and mental
realms are the same thing, a theory called monism
 His writings were condemned/banned by the Dutch Reformed Church.
Challenging orthodoxy
Baruch Spinoza (1632 – 1677)
 Dutch philosopher who laid the groundwork for
the Enlightenment, modern biblical criticism
and modern conceptions of the self
 Came (after his death) to be considered one of
the great rationalist thinkers of the 17th century
 Contended that God exists but is the same as all
Nature (pantheism). God is therefore impersonal
 He held that everything that happens occurs
through the operation of necessity – even

John Locke (1632-1704)
There is no knowledge except that derived from
experience, be it of the mind or of nature.
Locke, writing in the aftermath of the European
wars of religion, formulated a classic reasoning
for religious tolerance:
(1) Secular judges, especially those of the State,
cannot dependably evaluate the truth-claims of
competing religious standpoints;
(2) Even if they could, enforcing a single "true
religion" would not have the desired effect, because
belief cannot be compelled by violence;
(3) Coercing religious uniformity would lead to more social
disorder than allowing diversity.
Questioning religious truth

Serving orthodoxy
 Anglo-Irish clergyman, philosopher, physicist,
mystic, and mathematician
 Educated at Trinity College (Dublin) where he
later lectured in Divinity and Hebrew;
 Took Holy Orders in the Church of Ireland and
served as Dean of Dromore and of Derry.
 Began (1725) a project of founding a college
in Bermuda for training ministers and mission-
aries (he never secured funding for it)
 Lived in Rhode Island from 1728-1732, then returned to England to
work in London, helping start a hospital for abandoned children
 Appointed as Bishop of Cloyne, Ireland (1734 until his death).
 Famously held that all material substances are only ideas in the mind
of a perceiver and therefore cannot exist without being perceived.
Bishop George Berkeley (1685 - 1753)

Are not two sparrows sold for a
penny? Yet not one of them falls
to the ground outside of your Father’s care. Even the hairs of your
head are all numbered... So don’t be afraid; you are worth more
than many sparrows. - Mt. 10:29-31
"But, you say, surely there is nothing easier than for me to imagine
trees, for instance, in a park... and nobody by to perceive them... The
objects of sense exist only when they are perceived; the trees therefore
are in the garden...no longer than
while there is somebody there
to perceive them.“
- Concerning the Principles
of Human Knowledge (1710)
If a tree falls in the forest... (or a sparrow)?
Materialists reject this out-of-hand,
but is it so different from what Jesus
told us about the Father?

Reason opposing all religion
 Probably an atheist, but at the time,
few people were so bold as to aver
in public that the Biblical God of the
Christian majority did not exist.
 Famously denied that we could have
direct knowledge of observed enti-
ties and rejected the reality of the
things we call “cause” and “effect”
 Posed the “problem of induction”– rules of logic did not permit our
common expectations of one event following another, e.g. “the sun will
rise today because it always has”, and, “all swans are white”
 In other words, “common sense” may indeed be something we all have,
but it is not (strictly) rational. Therefore, even empiricism is limited; doubt
and skepticism are unavoidable facts of human existence
 And besides, lots of things are not “black” or “white”....
David Hume (1711 - 1776)

 is the mean (or average)
 σ is the standard deviation
 σ2 is the variance
Characteristics of living things are almost never simply “black” or “white”,
“this” or “that”; instead they take on values distributed over a range.
Many times, a plot of the frequency of the occurrence of particular values
takes on the shape known familiarly to us as the “bell-shaped curve.” It is
described by the elegant equation:
Even though most (68%) mem-
bers of a large, ideal population
have a value within one standard
deviation of the mean, all mem-
bers of the population are valid;
i.e. being above or below the
average doesn’t imply a member
is “good” or “bad”.
Value

Deviation from the mean is normal
 German mathematician and physicist
 Made so many significant contributions to
mathematics to earn acclaim as “the
greatest mathematician since antiquity“
 Had an exceptional influence in many fields
of science also (e.g. magnetism)
 First to derive what is now called the
Gaussian probability distribution, or normal
distribution (previous slide)
 Although formally a member of St. Albans
Evangelical Lutheran church in Göttingen, he
was not active in his church, yet he approved
of his son’s becoming a Christian missionary
and supported toleration of all religions.
Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855)
“God does arithmetic.”
- Carl Friedrich Gauss

Are Christians “outliers”?
....love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. - Gal. 5:22-23
Just as a thought exercise, assume that people have some quantity or
level of ability of the nine spiritual gifts listed in Paul’s letter to the
Galatian Christians and that this quantity follows a Gaussian distribution.
What percentage of people, Paver, will likely have a level of all nine
attributes within 1 standard deviation of the average?
Paver = (0.68)9 = 0.031 meaning “only” 3.1% are “average”
What percent of people, Pexcel, will likely have a level of all nine attri-
butes greater than 1 standard deviation above average?
Pexcel = (0.16)9 = 6.87 x 10-8 or 69 people out of a billion
Since there are only about 7 billion people on the entire Earth, this
means, in effect, that only about 500 people should be so gifted. That a
much large number were so gifted and were all Christians would be a
powerful witness to the presence of the Holy Spirit acting in this way.

Are Christians “un-Enlightened”?
“Enlightenment thinking, breaking away from {classical} tradition in
order to make us reasonable and to enable each of us to think and act
for himself or herself, fostered its own tradition ... of scientific
investigation, individualism and rights with attendant institutions built
upon its values... {it} thereby contributed not only to the grand disco-
veries of the modern world but also to its greatest tragedies.
But just as the Christian faith has no stake in people
being a part of any old community, so {Christians}
have no stake in affirming any old tradition....
Christian ethics arise out of the very specific tradition
of Jesus of Nazareth and the Church formed in faith-
fulness to his way.”
- from “Resident Aliens” by Stanley
Hauerwas and William Willimon
Stanley Hauerwas(b. 1940) is an American theologian and ethicist
who taught at the U. of Notre Dame, Duke, and the U. of Aberdeen.

Part 2: In The Beginning
The
Great Dialogue
How science came to

When God began creating the heavens and the earth,
the earth was a shapeless, chaotic mass with the Spirit
of God brooding over the dark vapors.
Then God said,
“Let there be light.”
And light appeared.
And God was
pleased with it...
- Gen. 1:1-3 (TLB)
The LORD… has established
the world. It shall never be moved - Ps. 93 [NRSV]

For thousands of years, people “knew”
that The Earth was the center of the
universe. The sun, the moon, and the
stars all revolved around us. These
“lights” in the heavens were fixed
in their places by God, perfect
orbs, unblemished, and
unchanging.

In 1543, this understanding of the
heavens and the place of humankind
in the universe was shaken.

Revolution (of the earth)
A Polish Catholic canon (un-ordained churchman), administrator, and
currency expert, Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 – 1543) used precious spare
time over 30 years to make astronomical observations that led him to
build and carefully support a heliocentric model of the solar system.
 Since Holy Scripture placed the Earth at
the center, this model contradicted
Church teaching
 With the Reformation underway, helio-
centism, though not entirely new, was a
danger to anyone promoting it.
 Copernicus put his data, calculations, and
arguments in a definitive work, “On the
Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres”, but
delayed trying to ready it for publication.

Revolution (of the earth)
Copernicus was not a professor so he had no pupils. But, improbably, with
no invitation or introduction, a German astronomer and mathematician
showed up at his home begging to study under him.
For two years, Georg Joachim Rheticus, a Lutheran who studied at Zürich
and the University of Wittenberg (where he received a MA, 1536) did so.
He encouraged Copernicus to publish his book, carried the manuscript
back to Nuremberg, Germany and oversaw its preparation for publication
in 1543 just two months before Copernicus died at age 70.
Catholics and Protestants united in condemning it.
Luther: “This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy!
But sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to
stand still not the earth
Calvin: “Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above
that of the Holy Spirit?”
Suppressed for 100 years, the theory spread slowly anyway and eventually
found a courageous supporter in staunchly Catholic Italy, known today as...

...the first scientist
 Used an improved telescope to perform
paradigm-breaking observations supporting
a Copernican view of the solar system
 Reported seeing mountains on the moon,
phases of Venus, satellites orbiting Jupiter,
and black spots on the sun
 Worked in applied science and technology,
inventing an improved military compass and
other instruments
 Was first investigated (1615) by the Roman
Inquisition; they admonished him, ordering
Recognition as “The Father of Modern Science“ goes not to Copernicus
but to Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) the Italian physicist, mathematician,
and astronomer who:
that his findings could be published only as “theory” not as fact.

This pious Lutheran supported Galileo
Johannes Kepler (1571–1630), German Lutheran who earned a living teach-
ing mathematics and casting horoscopes, a contemporary of Galileo, gained
acclaim for his laws of planetary motion that gave support to him and to the
Copernican view of the solar system.
 To Kepler, the physical universe was an expression
of the image of God; Sun corresponding to the
Father, stars to the Son and space to the Holy Spirit.
 Despite his piety, employment in Catholic strong-
holds (Graz, then Prague) put him in jeopardy.
 Even after he moved to Protestant Linz, Austria he
was suspected of holding “Calvinist heresies” and
so was barred from taking Communion; enemies
even had his mother imprisoned as a witch
 He corresponded with Galileo, supported his observations and offered
a range of speculations about the implications of his discoveries.
"I am merely thinking God's thoughts after Him“ - Johannes Kepler

By his early 20’s he was convinced that God’s design of the solar system
was geometric: the 5 Platonic solids inscribed/circumscribed by spheres
to give 6 layers, corresponding to the six known planets circling the Sun.
He devoted the rest of his life to testing and refining his theory using
data gathered by the great Danish observational astronomer (his boss
for 12 years), Tycho Brahe
In order to precisely match calculations and data for the orbital shape
and velocity of Mars, he had to use three simple but unorthodox “rules”
or “laws” (above) that he extended to all planets, laws of motion that
provided a base on which an Englishman stood to shake the world.

“And yet, it still moves”
 Galileo defended his views in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World
Systems (1632), which appeared to attack Pope Urban VIII
 Infamously, the Inquisition found him "vehemently suspect of heresy“
 His sentence was light: banning the “Dialogue”, recanting all heretical
writings, forbidding publication of any other works in the future, and
restricting him to his home in Florence for the rest of his life.
He used this time well, receiving visitors
and completing one of his finest works,
Two New Sciences, even after going
blind. He died in 1642 at age 77.
The four largest moons of Jupiter that he
discovered are still called Galilean Moons
No one knew that the greatest scientist
who ever lived, that Englishman who
valued Kepler’s data, was born that same
year on Christmas Day.

That man was the greatest scientist of the age, the
English polymath Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
 He pioneered the study of light (optics) and
invented calculus just to be able to solve
difficult physical problems
 His “laws” of motion are still the basis of much
of modern physics and mechanics
 A devout Christian, he wrote as much on
Biblical chronology and theology as he did on
physics and mathematics yet he rejected the
doctrine of the Trinity
Moved by genius
Eccentric, reclusive, sensitive to criticism, Newton matured to become
President of the Royal Society and serve ably as Master of the Royal Mint.
 As a member of the Cambridge University faculty, he was required
to be a Church of England clergyman but he objected to ordination
and dodged it with the help of an influential patron.

Not moved by angels
His most important work, “Principia Mathematica” (1687) was published
with encouragement and funding by Edmond Halley (of comet fame). In
this work Newton showed with mathematical
rigor how a natural force he named “gravity”
ruled the motion of the “stuff”
(mass) of planets, oceans, and
people, which is why no one falls
off the earth.
That all things obeyed natural “laws”
overthrew the accepted wisdom of
Divine ordering of the cosmos, and
rejected invoking supernatural
causes, (e.g. that angels moved the
planets and stars) to explain natural
phenomena.
F = Gm1m2/r2

Honor given
Newton was the 2nd scientist to be
knighted (after Sir Francis Bacon).
His remains lie in honor before the
choir screen in Westminster Abbey.
The inscription beneath his marble
monument reads, in part:
“Here is buried Isaac Newton
who by a strength of mind al-
most divine, and mathematical
principles peculiarly his own,
explored the course and figures
of the planets, the paths of
comets, the tides of the sea, the
dissimilarities in rays of light...”

By the second half of the 18th century, every-
one knew that there were six planets circling
the Sun in accord with the laws clarified by
Isaac Newton. Until a German Lutheran
musician added one more to the list.
That Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel (1738–1822)
mastered the oboe, harpsichord and violin by
the time he was a teenager was not surprising
since his father was an oboist in a military band.
He moved from Hanover to England in 1755
and began using the name William Herschel.
In 1766 he became Director of Public Concerts
in the fashionable city of Bath, eventually
Moved by music...
composing church music, 24 symphonies, and numerous concertos.
His sister, Caroline Herschel (1750–1848), came to live with him in 1772.

Herschel was well-positioned to engage with the many "philosophical
gentleman" who visited the famous resort. His intellectual curiosity and
interest in music led him to astronomy.
With the help of Caroline and brother, Alexander,
a skilled craftsman, he constructed his own tele-
scopes (he gained an international clientele,
eventually selling 60 of them).
After 8 years of nighttime observations, he hap-
pened to see an object he thought was a comet
since it appeared to be a resolvable disk.
It turned out to be a previously unknown planet,
named Uranus after the Greek god of the sky and
father of Cronus (Saturn).
...to expand the solar system
Caroline Herschel, for years William’s assistant, developed into a first-
rate astronomer of her own, discovering several comets and compiling a
catalogue of 2,500 nebulae.

No, not even of the solar system. Today we know that
there are eight planets orbiting the star we call the Sun
which resides at the center of “our” solar system.
Is the Earth the center of the universe?
The Earth is the 3rd planet
out from the Sun, the 5th
largest. It is, then in no
special place, no special size.

The American astronomer Edwin Hubble (1889-1953), one of the most
important astronomers of all time, has name-recognition today because it
is attached to the most powerful telescope ever sent into outer space.
 As one of Oxford University's first Rhodes Scholars, he studied law but
after returning to the US earned a PhD from the University of Chicago,
in astronomy (1917) using the facility of the Yerkes Observatory.
 Hubble took a staff position (1919) at the Mount Wilson Observatory
near Pasadena, CA, run by the Carnegie Institution
for Science, remaining there for his entire career.
Expanding the universe
"We do not know why we are born into the world,
but we can try to find out what sort of a world it is
— at least in its physical aspects."
 At the time, the Milky Way Galaxy was the entire
universe, people thought. He caused a sensation
when he overturned this view with a popular
article published (1924) in the New York Times.

Georges Lemaître (1894-1966), Belgian priest and professor of physics,
The Catholic University of Louvain, was the first to propose that the red-
shift of light from nearby “nebulae” signaled that the universe is expanding.
He assumed that these “nebulae” were galaxies and that the red-shifted
light meant they were moving away from the Earth and from each other.
He published his seminal paper (1927) two years before Hubble went public
with his data, making the same proposal.
Astronomers including Hubble himself were not aware
of Lemaître’s findings because the paper came out in a
little-known Belgian journal and in French.
Lemaitre's theory appeared for the 1st time for the
general reader on science and technology subjects
in English in a 1932 issue of Popular Science.
...though a Catholic priest has priority

A beginning for time and space
In 1931 Lemaître
suggested that this
expansion, projected
back in time, meant
that in the past all the
mass of the universe
was concentrated into
a single point, where
time and space them-
selves came into exis-
tence. His was the first
statement of what we
call Big Bang Theory.
The Hubble-Lemaître Law is, in its simplest form: v = H0D
The law states that the velocity at which a galaxy moves away
from the Earth is proportional to its distance from Earth.

How did everything come into existence?
Followed by hyper-speed-of-light inflation?
Inflation is the event that many astrophysicists postulate occurred over a tiny
fraction of time (10−36 to 10−32 seconds) after the initiation of the Big Bang.
During inflation, space expanded by a factor of ca, 1026. Following the
inflationary period, the universe continued to expand, but at a less rapid rate.
Quantum fluctuations are temporary appearances of
particles out of nowhere, allowed by the uncertainty
principle which states that for paired variables such as
position and momentum or energy and time, it is im-
possible to have a precisely determined value of each
member of the pair at the same time.
Would you believe, a quantum fluctuation?

Everything came ex nihilo (from nothing)?

The Sun, admittedly an ordinary
star, is, in its own way, a miracle.
It is an enormous sphere of super-
compressed, super-hot hydrogen
and helium slowly being converted
by nuclear fusion to heavier ele-
ments, a process (unknown until
the 20th century) that supplies the
planets with the vital radiant energy
we call “sunlight”.
The Sun is very special
*The Sun has 333,000 times the mass and
1.3 million times the volume of the Earth.
The Sun will consume its nuclear fuel
in about 5 billion years, then turn into
a “red giant”, growing so large that it
will engulf and incinerate Mercury,
Venus, and the Earth.

The Earth is very special
as to destroy life, an oxygen-rich atmosphere which provides an ozone-
rich upper layer absorbing the most damaging UV radiation, and a crust
containing a large number of the heavy elements (especially carbon,
nitrogen, calcium, and iron) vital for living things.
shield that deflects lethal “solar
wind”, a single large moon that
helps deflect asteroid strikes,
relatively mild tectonic activity with
some volcanism but not so much
Earth may be merely 1 of 8 planets
orbiting a run-of-the-mill star but it
is a very special place in many ways.
It possesses oceans of liquid water,
a moderate average surface tem-
perature, a modest tilt (which gives
it seasons), a strong magnetic

The advances in astronomy since the 1930’s are legion. In the size of
optical telescopes, the development of radio telescopes. In digital light
acquisition technology with immense data storage and processing.
And in space exploration,
which enabled the posi-
tioning and operation in
outer space of numerous
instruments, including the
Hubble Space Telescope.
Among the large number of men and
women who work in this exciting
branch of science, one theoretical
cosmologist deserves mention for
both his genius and his striving against
a terrible physical challenge.

 Many honors, including the Presidential
Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian
award in the United States (2009).
 Writer of science books including a best-
seller, A Brief History of Time, in which he
discusses his own theories and cosmology
in general.
Stephen William Hawking (1942-2018)
 Theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and Director of Research at the
Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge.
 Was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at of Cambridge from 1979
to 2009, the position held by Sir Isaac Newton.
 Developed the framework of general relativity for gravitational
singularities (“black holes”) and the radiation they emit (now called
Hawking radiation).

It is not true that nothing escapes from a black hole (artist’s
conception, below). Actually, some radiation does. This means
they are neither “black”
nor “holes”.
It also means that
if they don’t accrue
mass constantly, they will
slowly “evaporate”.

Hawking suffered from a rare early-onset, slow-progressing form of
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis ("ALS" or Lou Gehrig's disease) diagnosed
when he was 21 (in 1963). His doctors gave him a life expectancy of two
years. Instead, the disease paralyzed him gradually.
Even after the loss of speech, he was still able to communicate via a
Stricken by disease
speech-genera-
ting device that
he controlled
with a handheld
switch and later
with a single
cheek muscle.

Though a life-long atheist, Hawking found recognition from the Roman
Catholic Church as a long-time member of the Pontifical Academy of
Sciences. This academy includes 80 global leaders in science from a
variety of backgrounds and beliefs. He attended the group’s annual
meeting in 2016 and “spoke” on “The Origin of the Universe.”
He credited that Catholic
physicist priest Georges
Lemaitre (a past president of
the Pontifical Academy) as the
father of the Big Bang theory.
The theory was developed in
detail by George Gamow
starting in 1945. Gamow was
also an atheist as were a
number of other prominent
astrophysicists.
Blessed by the Pope

Part 3: Not By A Flood
The
Great Dialogue
How science came to

Then, in 1785, how we
understood the Earth changed

 James Ussher (1581-1656), Archbishop of Armagh,
Primate of Ireland, published a chronology of the
history of the world based on literal reading of
the Bible, the result of a lifetime of scholarly study
 Influenced by belief that the Earth's age was 6,000
yrs (4,000 before the birth of Christ + 2,000 after)
he set the time of Creation as the night preceding
October 23, 4004 BC (by the Julian calendar)
 This corresponded to the 6 days of Creation ac-
cording to 2Pe. 3:8 which noted that "one day is
with the Lord as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day"
 Ussher's chronology was a considerable feat of scholarship. It required
expertise in Bible scholarship, ancient history, biblical languages,
astronomy, and ancient calendars
 But it meant that time was short – only a few hundred years at most
before the end of the world was due.
In 1650, time was short

Puzzles there were
Almost everybody knew (and puzzled over)
why there were seashell fossils found on
even the highest mountains
Leonardo da Vinci recorded in his notes
(ca. 1500) shortcomings of the Biblical flood
narrative as an explanation for fossil origins:
"If the Deluge had carried shells for distances…
it would have carried them mixed with various
other natural objects all heaped up together.
But even at distances from the sea we find oysters all together and also
the shellfish and the cuttlefish and all the other shells which congregate
together, found all together dead; and the solitary shells are found
apart from one another as we see them every day on the seashores.
And we find oysters together... among which some... with their shells
still joined together, indicating that they were left there by the sea.”

The “father” of stratigraphy...
Nicholas Steno (1638-1686) Danish anatomist, geologist and clergyman,
gained acclaim for anatomical studies performed according to the then
still novel “scientific” method of careful observation without merely
repeating what the classic authors (Aristole, Galen) taught.
His dissection of the head of a shark led him to propose a hypothesis for
the formation of rock layers and the fossils they contain that became
crucial to the development of modern geology.
Steno reasoned that solids suspended in
water would sink slowly to a lake/ocean
bottom in horizontal layers, a simple but
profound principle now called “original
horizontality.” Debris such as shark
teeth, clam shells, etc. would be buried
in these layers and eventually become
part of rock layers. Deviations from the
horizontal must be due later uplifts.

...became a “father” of the church
Born into a Lutheran family, Steno converted to Catholicism in 1667.
After his conversion, his interest in studying fossil waned,
giving way to an interest in studying theology.
At the beginning of 1675, he decided to become
a priest. After only four months of instruction
he was ordained.
Because he was a native Danish speaker, he
was appointed Vicar Apostolic of Nordic
Missions and Titular Bishop of Titopolis
by Pope Innocent XI.
Steno played an active role in the Counter
Reformation in Northern Germany.
100 years passed before the branch of science
we know as geology began in earnest due to the work of...

The Father of Modern Geology
...James Hutton (1726 – 1797), Scottish
geologist, physician, chemical manufacturer,
naturalist, and experimental agriculturalist
 Educated at Edinburgh, Paris and Leiden,
earning a Doctor of Medicine degree (1749)
 Built the first UK plant for the manufacture
of ammonium chloride, used for dyeing,
metalworking and as smelling salts
 Made improvements in farming practices
and studied canal building operations
 He wrote that he was “very fond of studying the surface of the earth
and was looking with anxious curiosity into every pit or ditch or bed
of a river that fell his way”
Hutton was the first to propose that earth’s formations and features
were the result of the operation of natural, not divine, processes,
employing observation and careful reasoning to the study of the land.

Uniformitarianism
 Axiomatic that laws of nature operate “uniformly”, i.e. all apply in the
same way to all things (no exception) everywhere, at all times.
 In 1785, after 25 years of study, he gave a seminal paper to the
Royal Society of Edinburgh, “Theory of the Earth; or an
Investigation of the Laws Observable in the Composition,
Dissolution, and Restoration of Land upon the Globe”
 Geological structures we see today are best
explained by invoking processes familiar
to us, that operate...
“…without inventing
extra, fancy, or un-
known causes, however
plausible in logic...”
“The present is the key to the past“ – Scottish geologist Charles Lyell

Go slow
 Rather than accept the Ussher
chronology (a world only 6,000
years old), Hutton maintained that
the Earth must be much older
 Displacement/change in land
forms can happen in a short
period of time as in a catastrophe
quake or flood
 But observed geology is consistent
with formation by very slow
processes and meant that the
Earth had to be ancient, its history
extending almost indefinitely into
the past.

Not by a flood
His conclusions placed him
in opposition with Church’s
position that all rocks were
deposited by one enormous,
(Biblical) flood that occurred
only a few thousand years
ago, not all that long after
the Creation.
Hutton’s theory was de-
nounced as atheistic.
Restatements and clarifica-
tions of his ideas by John
Playfair (1802) and Charles
Lyell (1830’s) popularized
the concepts of repeating
cycles of uplift and erosion.

How old are you, Mother Earth?

Decaying with age
Assessing the age of a rock requires that you measure the amount of two
paired elements in a sample, one an appropriate radioactive “parent,” the
other its decay product, or “daughter.”
The relative amounts of these two elements yields the sample’s age given
the known decay rate of the parent (which physicists have measured to a
high degree of precision for most radioisotopes) and assuming that rate of
decay is (1) constant over time and (2) doesn’t depend in which kind of
rock the element resides.
Example: Ur235 (uranium) atoms
can, by emitting particles made of
2 protons + 2 neutrons, change
into Th231 (thorium) atoms which
then decay into atoms of Pb207
(lead). The process is ½ complete
in 704 M years. So if a sample’s
Ur235/Pb207 = 1.00, then it must be
about 700 M years old.

How old are you, Mother Earth?
Today geologists date the age of the Earth at
about 4.5 billion years based on radioactive
isotopic age dating of meteorite material,
consistent with the age of the oldest-known
terrestrial minerals (zircon from W. Australia).

In 1859, how we understood
all living things, human
beings included, changed

Before: the order of creation is orderly
 God created day and night
 Then the sky, dry land,
and the oceans
 Then plants and trees
 Then sea creatures and air
creatures (birds)
 Then, on the final creative
day, land animals and...
 ...lastly, humankind
This seems quite a sensible sequence [physics.. geology.. botany..
zoology] of “upward” progression from the inanimate to the animate
and from the “lower” forms of animal to the “higher” forms.
The last of God’s handiwork was the best, the most special of all.

Fill the earth
Then God said, “Let the waters teem with fish
and other life, and let the skies be filled with
birds of every kind.”
So God created sea animals and every sort of
fish and every kind of bird. God looked at them
them with pleasure... To the birds he said, “Let your numbers increase.
Fill the earth!” Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth every kind of
animal—cattle and reptiles and wildlife of every kind.” And it was so and
God was pleased. - Gen. 1:20-25

InHisimage
“Then God said, “Let us
make mankind in our
image, in our likeness,
so that they may rule
over the fish in the sea
and the birds in the sky,
over the livestock and all
the wild animals, and
over all the creatures that
move along the ground.”
So God created mankind
in his own image, in the
image of God he created
them; male and female
he created them.
- Gen. 1:26-27 (NIV)

InHisimage
“Then God said, “Let us
make mankind in our
image, in our likeness,
so that they may rule
over the fish in the sea
and the birds in the sky,
over the livestock and all
the wild animals, and
over all the creatures that
move along the ground.”
So God created mankind
in his own image, in the
image of God he created
them; male and female
he created them.
- Gen. 1:26-27 (NIV)
Everything made by
God was for the
benefit of human
beings; to feed them
and to serve them, as
rulers of all His
creation.
Genesis Creation Sermon VII. “And God
Created Man and Woman” by Jacob Lawrence

When I consider your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
The moon and the stars which You set in place, what is mankind that
You are mindful of us, human beings that You care for us?
You made us a little lower than angels and crowned us with glory
and honor. You made
mankind rulers over the
works of Your hands;
You put everything
under our feet:
Flocks and herds,
animals of the wild,
birds in the sky, and
fish in the sea….
- Ps. 8: 3-8
God says humans rule

The one who changed it was
born in 1809 in Shrewsbury,
England, baptized as an in-
fant in St. Chad’s Anglican
Church, and raised a
good Unitarian.
Where did we come from?

He studied for the clergy, but then…
 One of his grandfathers was the
Wedgewood, who made a fortune
in the ceramics industry
 His other grandfather, Eramus, was a
philosopher and physician of note
 Charles Darwin grew up dutifully
learning medical practice at the side
of his physician father but showed an
absorbing interest in “natural
philosophy” instead, so Dad..
 ..sent him to Cambridge to earn a
BA degree as the first step towards
becoming an Anglican minister.
Although a good student, he excelled in collecting beetles.

…went on a voyage around the world
His botany professor volunteered him to be a suitable (though novice)
“gentleman naturalist” onboard the HMS Beagle, to serve more as a (self-
funded ) companion for the Captain than as a botanical collector.
The 5 year-long voyage (1831-1836) circled the world, charted the coast-
line of South America, explored Chile and stopped to study the Galapagos
Islands and Pacific
atolls, then crossed
the to Australia.
The reports, notes,
specimens and
travel accounts he
regularly sent back
to England made
Darwin....

…. a scientific celebrity
In these years, while intensively
speculating on botany and zoology,
he also agonized over the religious
implications of his conclusions with
his devout Unitarian wife, Emma.
Finally, Darwin and Alfred Russel
Wallace jointly announced the new
theory, evolution by natural
selection, in two papers given to
the Linnean Society of London on
July 1, 1858.
After returning, he never left England again but spent 20 years analyzing
his specimens and formulating and recording support for a new theory
regarding the distribution and transmutation of living species
It was the publication of his two books on the theory
that caused an uproar whose echos are still heard today.

“Origin” and “Descent”
On the Origin of Species (1859) proved unexpectedly popular (all 1,250
first edition copies sold) but only moderately controversial.
In it he proposed that the many different kinds of plants, insects, fish, and
mammals were not designed and created individually by God to play an
appointed role in Nature…
…but, instead, competed fiercely with one another for vital resources.
Some organisms thrived, reproduced successfully, and passed on to their
progeny the physical traits and behavior instincts needed to sur-vive.
Others had fewer offspring and gradually became extinct.
The Descent of Man (1871) caused a furor because it proposed that
humans, like animals, were no exception. Homo sapiens had evolutionary
ancestors too, a shared past with all other living things.
From about age 40, Darwin stopped attending church services. On
Sundays while his family did so, he would go for a walk. Yet he remained
close friends with his local vicar and continued to play a leading part in
the work of the church, an admitted agnostic, but never an atheist.

...but as one
tiny twig at
the end of...
Today we see human beings not as the glorious climax of the
development of life, the end, the goal of a linear “chain of beings”...
...a very
large
Bush of
all Life.
... one
tiny
branch
of...

When Charles Darwin died (1882),
England accorded him the honor of
burial in Westminster Abbey
He rests next to his friend, the bril-
liant polymath John Herschel (son of
astronomer William Herschel)...
...only a few steps away from
Sir Isaac Newton.
He and the rest of the scientific world
were unaware that an Augustinian
monk working in a monastery in Brno,
in what is now the Czech Republic, had
already supplied an important clue to
the secrets of evolution.
At rest with honor

The patient work of Father Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) demonstrated
that the inheritance of traits in pea plants followed particular patterns,
now referred to as the “Laws of Mendelian Inheritance.”
Unfortunately, his results were published (1866) in an obscure journal
unavailable to scientists who could recognize their importance. Only after
his death did he receive credit as the founder of the science of genetics.
But how was it done? Without a suitable mechanism, a “code”, the
favorable traits of any living thing would not be passed to a new
generation and natural selection and evolution would not be possible.

In 1953, two young men,
chemists at the University
of Cambridge, England,
helped by data obtained
by a women X-ray
crystallographer, cracked
the code to the secret of
life, a code using a mere
4 “letters” embedded in
the molecule familiar to
us today as DNA.
A-T / C-G

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) was first isolated by Friedrich Miescher in
1869 but no one had any idea what it was doing in the cells of living
organisms.
Various scientists thought it might
play a role in heredity.
The key to life is DNA
Then in 1953, its molecular
structure, consisting of 2 helical
coils built of sugar-phosphate
groups held tightly together by
heterocyclic base pairs, was
worked out by Francis Crick and
James Watson, whose model-
building efforts were guided by
X-ray diffraction data acquired by
Raymond Gosling, a post-doc
working under Rosalind Franklin.

The discovery of the structure of DNA
marked a milestone in the history of
science and the start of a new branch,
molecular biology. It yielded ground-
breaking insights into genetics and
protein synthesis and led to genetic
engineering, gene sequencing, and
monoclonal antibodies, thus giving
birth to a billion $ biotech industry.
Current advances in genetic fingerprinting, forensics, the
mapping of the human genome, and the promise of gene
therapy, all have their origins in the contribution of
Watson, Crick and Franklin. Today, the double helix has
become a cultural icon, represented in sculpture, visual
art, jewelry, toys and language.

Part 4: Everything you thought
you knew is weird
How faith and reason address
fundamental questions of
existence, reality and the
meaning of life
The
Great Dialogue
How science came to

Last time: a steady divergence in language
The scientific perspective
Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton,
and Herschel see a “clockwork”
cosmos, its many stars and planets
moving in order by themselves.
Da Vinci, Steno, and Hutton see the
Earth as dynamic, always changing
shape but only very slowly, over a vast
stretch of time, not suddenly in a Flood.
Darwin, Wallace, Watson and Crick see
all living things as relatives; the earth-
worm and the elephant have DNA in
common; there is no evidence that any
living thing, human beings included
being the result of special creation.
The religious perspective
The Son {Jesus} is the image of
the invisible God, the firstborn
over all creation.
For in him all things were
created: things in heaven and
on earth, visible and invisible,
whether thrones or powers or
rulers or authorities; all things
have been created through
him and for him.
He is before all things, and in
him all things hold together.
- Col. 1:15-17

over all creation.
him and for him.
- Col. 1:15-17
Yet, as scientific knowledge grew, even as the Church grud-
gingly stepped away from insisting that the direct action of
God was responsible for many natural phenomena, scientists,
even the most important, remained devout Christians.

over all creation.
him and for him.
- Col. 1:15-17
Yet, as scientific knowledge grew, even as the Church grud-
gingly stepped away from insisting that the direct action of
God was responsible for many natural phenomena, scientists,
even the most important, remained devout Christians.
Perhaps faith in God - and in the work of the Father in
creation, of Jesus Christ in salvation, and of the Holy Spirit in
sanctification - remained of central importance in people’s
lives because the world, even as the beginning of the 20th
century approached, remained full of mysteries.

Magnetism had always been a mystery
It wasn’t until 1819-1831 that a number of researchers, including Hans
Christian Orsted, André-Marie Ampère, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Jean-
Baptiste Biot, and Michael Faraday, established a connection between
magnetism and electricity. But both phenomena remained mysterious.
It wasn’t until the 12th century that Euro-
pean sailors, seeing that a magnetized
needle floating in a bowl of water tended
to point north, used this compass (1839
model, right) as an aid to navigation.
Whereas everyone was familiar with the downward tug of gravity and the
beauty of light, the force of magnetism was truly mysterious.
People since ancient times noticed that lodestones (naturally magnetized
pieces of the mineral magnetite) could attract
iron. But the same stone did not attract copper,
tin, gold, or many other things.
What was this magical force?

A genius for Christianity & mathematics
Maxwell amazed people with his familiarity with
the Bible, memorizing large sections. His intellec-
tual understanding of Christianity grew rapidly
during his Cambridge years along with his know-
ledge of science.
The first one to recognize that electricity, magnetism and light are mani-
festations of the same phenomenon was a devout Christian, passionate
about both his faith and his science, an undoubted genius, the Scottish
mathematician James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879).
.Born to a wealthy family in Edinburgh, he showed advanced ability
in geometry and mathematics as a child, published a math-
matical paper at 14, began attending the Univ. of Edin-
burgh at 16 and earned a math degree from the Univ.
of Cambridge at 23.
There he joined an exclusive debating society, “The Apostles”, where
he sought to work out his understanding of the two regimes.

Maxwell brought mathematical rigor to
the study of electricity and magnetism, in-
troducing the concept of the electromagnetic
field governed by a set of differential equations
now named after him.
In a 2000 survey, 100 prominent physicists voted Maxwell to be the 3rd
greatest physicist of all time, behind only Newton and Einstein.
Working on thermodynamics, he devised the famous thought experiment
now known as Maxwell's Demon, in which an imaginary being uses infor-
mation to sort particles by energy, thus apparently violating the 2nd Law.
orthogonal electric and magnetic
fields, one generating the other as
the wave propagates through
empty space.
A demon for equations
Light, then, is a wave
consisting of

As 1900 dawned, light was still puzzling
Prevailing theories, including
that of Maxwell, could not cor-
rectly model how light intensity
varied with its wavelength for
the radiation emitted by a hot
emitter. or “blackbody.”
It was more than a puzzle for physicists, it
was an embarrassment, known at the
time as the “Ultraviolet Catastrophe.”
Solving this puzzle required
accepting an equally puzzling
and radical hypothesis.

In 1900, German physicist Karl Ernst (“Max”) Planck (1858-1947), pro-
posed that light energy is directly proportional to its frequency (v) and can
exist only in discrete “packets” or “quanta”. This hypothesis resolved the
blackbody problem of radiation physics and led to many related develop-
ments together now known as Quantum (Latin for “how much”) Mechanics.
The proportionality constant
(h) that relates light energy
and frequency was named
in his honor.
Planck received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918 for
his ground-breaking work on quantum theory.
Light comes in “packets”??
Planck was a life-long Lutheran (served as his church’s
warden for 28 yr), advocating tolerance for alterna-
tive views and religions. The theologian, Adolf von
Harnack, was a neighbor and close friend in Berlin.

In a 1937 lecture, "Religion and Science”, he said that religious symbols
and rituals related directly to a believer's ability to understand holiness
and to worship God. And that, while these symbols provided imperfect
understanding of Divinity, atheists were wrong to deride the importance
such symbols. Both science and religion wage a "tireless battle against
skepticism and dogmatism, against unbelief and superstition."
Planck on science and religion
In 1948, the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, the premier German scientific institution,
was renamed the Max Planck Society which now includes 83 institutions.
Yet, Planck broke with the
traditional view of Biblical
miracles: "faith in miracles
must yield... before the steady
and firm advance of the facts
of science so that its total
defeat is undoubtedly a
matter of time.“

But then, in 1905, how we
understood (or didn’t) matter,
energy, space and time changed

Many people contributed but...
...few can comprehend it, even today, since...
...what has changed is happening at the subatomic level
...or at velocities approaching the speed of light.

 The speed of light (c) is a constant regardless of the motion of the light
source or the observer, an hypothesis called “special relativity”, and
 The energy content of mass is given by the simple equation E = mc2
This young guy had a really good year
In April 1905, after working for five years as an exam-
iner at the Federal Office for Intellectual Property in
Bern, Switzerland, and studying and writing scientific
papers in his spare time, a 26 year-old German man
completed his doctoral dissertation and was granted
a PhD from the University of Zürich.
Incredibly, he also authored 4 groundbreaking papers
that same year, papers in which he showed that:
 Light acting as a packet of energy explained the
photoelectric effect
 Random molecular collisions account for Brownian
motion of particles
More about this young man after mention of the work of two other scientists...

Quantum leaps
Bohr was awarded
the Nobel Prize in
Physics in 1922.
.
Niels Bohr (1885–1962) was a
Danish physicist who had a
foundational insight as to the
origin of quanta, proposing in
1913 that an atom’s electrons
revolve in stable “orbits” about
the nucleus, with each orbit corres-
ponding to a certain set energy level.
Electrons can “jump” to a higher orbit by absorbing
light having exactly a quantum of energy equal to a
“step” from one orbital to another or “fall” to a
lower energy orbit by emitting a quantum of energy.
“Everything we call real is made of what cannot be regarded as real.”
Bohr, though impressed by the writings of the Christian philosopher Soren
Kierkegaard, was a confirmed atheist.

Electrons are tiny: 1,800 times
less mass than a proton
and having no size
(no volume).
What about matter matters?
Inside an atom, an electron, bearing a – charge, is “bound” to a specific
regions centered on the core of protons (each bearing a + charge) and
neutrons (no charge), but they don’t move in a simple near-circular path.
Electrons “occupy” (are most likely to be found in) a space of a certain
shape, called an orbital (not to be confused with an orbit).
Only two electrons can occupy one orbital
and only if they have different and
opposite “spins.”

Making waves
Erwin Schrodinger (1887–1961) was an Austrian
physicist (later a naturalized Irish citizen) who
advanced the quantum theory and contributed to
many other areas of science including statistical
mechanics, thermodynamics, dielectrics, electro-
dynamics, general relativity, and cosmology.
He is especially known for developing the state wave
equation of a quantum-mechanical system, an ex-
pression that now bears his name and, in its most
generalized form is:
H(Ψ) = E(Ψ)
Schrodinger was raised Lutheran in a religious household
but as an adult he called himself an atheist. Yet he had strong interests in
Eastern religions and he used religious symbolism in his works. He believed
scientific work in a metaphorical sense was an approach to Divinity.
Schrodinger was
awarded the Nobel
in Physics in 1933.
.

The cat comes (or does not come) back
Probably much more familiar to non-scientists than his wave equation is
Schrodinger’s thought experiment (a hypothetical puzzle) involving a cat
which is both alive and dead simultaneously (such a state is known to
physicists as a superposition) as a result of its being exposed to (or not
exposed to) deadly poison that is (or is not) released by a subatomic event
that occurred (or did not occur).
The thought experiment is often featured in discussions of the weirdness
of the quantum world but
Schrodinger meant it as a
ridiculous paradox to ex-
pose flaws in the reason-
ing of the 3 co-authors of a
1935 publication, the “EPR
paper”, one of whom (the
“E”) was that former
patent clerk......

Genius is relative
Einstein was
awarded the Nobel
in Physics in 1921.
.
A few slides can only touch on the life and contributions of that young
patent clerk turned theoretical physicist, Albert Einstein (1879–1955)*.
*His Wikipedia article lists 22 biographical books and 232 article citations
Among his achievements was the theory of
gravitation called “general relativity” according to
which the attraction between massive bodies results
from the warping of space and time.
General relativity is now essential for modern astro-
physics, providing the basis for understanding,
among other things, black holes, gravitational lenses,
and gravity waves
In 1919 observations taken during a solar eclipse con-
firmed Einstein’s prediction that light would follow a
curved path as it passed the Sun. He gained worldwide
recognition overnight, becoming the first ever scientific
celebrity (even though few could understand his theories).

Group photo of the 29 attendees of the Fifth Solvay International Conference
(1927) where the world's most notable physicists met to discuss quantum theory.
Although the leading figures were Einstein and Bohr, 17 were or would became
Nobel Prize winners, including the one woman attendee, Marie Curie.

Einstein, the ethical humanist
Einstein’s parents were non-observant Ashkenazi Jews but son Albert
attended a Catholic elementary school (in Munich) from age 5-8. As he
matured, his interests were in mathematics, physics and music (he was an
accomplished violinist) not in any organized religion or personal God.
However, because of his Jewish heritage, it was dangerous for him to live
in Germany when the Nazi party rose to power in
1933. He took refuge in Belgium then England then
America, settling in Princeton, NJ (home, right) and
becoming a US citizen in 1940.
He stated that he was not an atheist, preferring to
label himself a "deeply religious nonbeliever.“
When asked if he believed in an afterlife, he replied,
"No. And one life is enough for me."
He was an ardent pacifist and affiliated with non-religious humanist and
Ethical Culture groups in the UK and US. He observed, "Without ethical
culture, there is no salvation for humanity."

Today: it’s hardly elementary
The “Standard Model” is
the accepted scientific
theory of matter and
energy. It is , however,
extraordinarily difficult
to comprehend. The
number of subatomic
“particles” is truly mind-
boggling, their proper-
ties, well, “quarky”.

The strong web of science is...
Is a non-theistic rationalistic world view replacing an outmoded religious
one? Is faith obsolete? Dangerous to continued human progress?
As we ponder these questions, we must also probe and question the
assumptions that underpin science.
This study can only note that there is a branch of philosophy designated
“philosophy of science” and that it is a challenging intellectual discipline.
The advances in science and technology since Copernicus, Galileo,
and Newton are amazing and can be rightly admired and celebrated.
Christians who took a defensive “God-of-the-
gaps”* stance were repeatedly embarrassed.
*God is responsible for pheno-
mena that science can’t explain.
It pictures science as many intercon-
nected strands of facts, ideas and
theories tied to another, all forming a
strong net, the whole based on...

.... FAITH. Science, like religion, appears to be a faith-based endeavor
that is immersed in the mysterious. And every increase in “knowledge”
brings a less concrete grasp on “reality”.
Scientists name things. So the force that moves moons, planets, and
stars is “gravity”. But just naming something doesn’t tell us what it is.
Scientists measure things. So the unit of measure of the property called
“mass” is an arbitrary hunk of stuff (until 2018, a 1 Kg cylinder of
platinum-iridium alloy kept in Paris), no help as to what mass is.
Scientists calculate things. Equations describe what is “real” for things
too small (atoms), too far away (quasars) or too weird (quarks) to study
with the senses; so comprehending reality, is impossible for most of us.
Scientists use models to aid explanation. The solar system (planets orbit-
ing the Sun) once served as a model for the atom (things named “elec-
trons” orbiting a core of protons/neutrons). But models are not reality.
What is reality? People of science and of faith are working on it.
...based on faith and immersed in mystery

Science - Two Perspectives - Religion
This study concludes with:
1. A summary of the perspectives of science and religion
2. The official position of the United Methodist Church
3. The views of two well-known and well-respected thinkers
and writers, one a scientist, one a theologian
4. Your thoughts and comments.

Science - Two Perspectives - Religion
 All things are matter/energy
 Events are periodic/replicable
 Truth is based on careful ob-
servation and measurement
 Inductive reasoning then
provides general theories
 Good ones predict new
results, must be falsifiable
 Lead to uses = technology
 Can cause moral issues but
cannot address them
 Nature is not all; there are
places/beings beyond nature
 Important events are unique
 Truth is based on revelation
 Reasoning is like that of philo-
sophy, wisdom, and art
 Proclaims faith in a Deity
 Results= “right” doctrine, living
(morality) and practice (ritual)
 Offer meaning to life and hope
for an afterlife

United Methodism on science & theology
“We recognize science as a legitimate interpretation of God’s natural
world. We affirm the validity of the claims of science in describing the
natural world, though we preclude science from making authoritative
claims about theological issues…
Science and theology are complementary rather than mutually in-
compatible. We therefore encourage dialogue between the scientific
and theological communities…
- The Book of Discipline of the UMC (2004)

Two eminent scholars of science & theology
American paleontologist, evolution-
ary biologist (1941-2002), Professor,
Harvard University, and historian of
science, one of the most influential
and widely read authors of popular
science of the 20th century.
Swiss Roman Catholic priest, theo-
logian (b. 1928) and prolific author,
Professor of Theology, University of
Tübingen since 1960 (now Emeritus)
and, since 1995, President, Found-
ation for a Global Ethic.
Dr. Stephen Jay Gould Rev. Hans Küng

Stephen Jay Gould: different realms
“Science tries to document the factual character of the natural world and
to develop theories that coordinate and explain these facts. Religion...
operates in the equally important, but utterly different, realm of human
purposes, meanings, and values, subjects that... science might illuminate
but can never resolve... {He calls} this central principle of respectful non-
interference accompanied by intense dialogue between the two distinct
subjects... NOMA or “Non-Overlapping Magisteria” -Rocks of Ages (1999)

Hans Küng: distinctive spheres
“The Bible does not describe any scientific facts but interprets them...
{Biblical and scientific} levels of language and thought need always to be
neatly separated if the fatal misunderstandings of the past on both sides,
science and theology, are to be avoided.
Scientific language and religious language are no more compatible than
scientific language and poetic language.”
The best relationship between these two “worlds” is neither confrontation
nor harmony but...“complementarity involving critical and constructive
interaction...in which the distinctive spheres are preserved, all illegiti-
mate transitions are avoided and all absolutizings are rejected, but in
which people attempt to do justice to reality as a whole in all its
dimensions, in mutual questioning and enrichment.”
` - The Beginning of All Things (2005)

ScienceandReligion
What do you think? Are they incompatible? Is serious dia-
logue possible? If so, in what way would it be productive?

The End
The
Great Dialogue
Many more lively and informative
Scripture-based studies are
available on SlideShare.
Find them using the keyword
“lessonstogo”
Mark S. Pavlin
msp.291@charter.net

The Great Dialogue

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