Science Finds God
PHYSICIST AND CHRISTIAN
He shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering the principles that underlie the laser. "As a religious person, I strongly sense. . .the presence and actions of a creative being far beyond myself and yet always personal and close by," he says. Now at the University of California, Berkeley, Townes believes that recent discoveries in cosmology reveal "a universe that fits religious views"--specifically, that "somehow intelligence must have been involved in the laws of the universe."
WILLIAM STOEGERASTRONOMER AND JESUIT PRIEST
Stoeger, who joined the Jesuits at 17, now teaches at the University of Arizona and is a member of the Vatican Observatory. "I did have one conflict between science and religion, in sixth or seventh grade," he says. "I got a book on paleontology from my uncle Don, so I read it only at night when no-one else was around. This conflict [between evolution and Genesis] was wonderfully resolved in high school," Stoeger says, when a priest showed him that the Bible could be read metaphorically.
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Posted By: jef4 @ 07/03/2008 9:45:54 PM
Comment: I found this article fascinating because it reflects my own experience. I was raised Catholic and attended Catholic grade school and University, both of which drove me to periods of atheism. It was science that solidified my belief in a Creator. The idea that the universe came from nothing and for no reason was rejected as far back as ancient Greece.
There must be a power, energy or force responsible for the Big Bang. Suggestions to the contrary remind me of "Mommy, the bowl fell off the table all by itself and broke itself."
The power that caused the universe is what most folks call God. I think it was Max Planck who said the though the universe might be "A matrix in the mind of God." That thought reappears in Thornton Wilder's play "Our Town." Stephen Hawking said that "It becomes increasingly difficult for me to believe that the Universe was created other than by a being who intended it to have an intelligence like us." Newton, despite his now discredited Clockwork Universe, was a religious man himself. And his idea of a universe that ran like a clock prompted the question ???Who wound up the clock????
Both scientists and theologians rely of both reason and faith. For example, scientists accept on faith that the laws of physics are uniform and theologians use reason when they study ancient secular scripts to supplement and/or confirm Holy Scriptures.
Congratulations on a well done article that many publications would have avoided.