Science complements religion: Vatican astronomer

Br Guy Consolmagno, SJ, told Real Life’s John Cowan that people who try to do this, as some religious scientists and apologists do, are “building their house on sand”.

That is because the scientific method always tries to find out what is wrong with a line of thought, he said.

“If it turns out I was wrong, then you get really excited. You go okay, I’ve learned something new. But in the process, it means the science that I thought I knew back when I was trying to glue it to Genesis or something, turns out to be wrong, at which point that gluing is wrong.

“If that’s why you believe in God, then that God that you believe in is going to be a false God.”

Br Consolmagno, who is visiting Aotearoa New Zealand, said he doesn’t believe science will ever prove or disprove the existence of God, because “it would be a boring universe to live that way”.

He added that, despite perceptions, that’s not how people come to faith in the first place.

“When I’m confronted with a scientific problem, I don’t start out with experiments and reason and come to a conclusion. Rather, I look at it and I go ‘I’ll bet you it’s that, let’s see’.

“And after I’ve made that leap, which you may want to call a leap of faith, then you can go back and stack up the bit of logic and see if you can figure out a way to get from here to there.

“I think the apologists are doing the same thing. They already believe in God because they’ve already experienced God, and they’re using the apologetics as a way to try to show people how you can find a God.

“But it’s a God they’d already leapt to; it’s not a God they derived at the end of their logic.”

Br Consolmagno said that religion and the sciences should be seen as complementary disciplines, rather than competing ideologies.

Science engages in the physical universe, “because that’s where you find joy – and joy to me is where you find God”.

“. . . [M]y religion, my search for God, my hunger to be with God is what makes me want to be a scientist – and my science is how I can live out that hunger that I have for God.”

FULL STORY

Real Life: Vatican’s top astronomer Guy Consolmagno on faith, science and searching for God – NZ Herald (By Matt Burrows/NewsTalkZB)

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