Part 2: Scientists

Here are a few scientists who agree with this.

The aim of this presentation ...

This aim of this presentation is to demonstrate that religion and science are not opposed to each other.

Human beings are both physical and spiritual. They also have a strong drive to know more. Many scientists are obviously religious and some “religious” people are eminent scientists. Here are a few examples.

Let’s start with a Bang…This is a picture taken in 1933 of Albert Einstein and Georges Lemaitre. Lemaitre was the first person to propose what is now called the Big Bang Theory.

Georges Lemaitre was a Belgian Catholic priest and a physicist. After he outlined his theory, at a conference in California, Einstein stood up and applauded. “This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened,” he said.

The Jesuits • Georges Lemaitre belonged to a Roman Catholic order

called the Jesuits. The Jesuits have always been involved in academic work at the highest level, including physics, astronomy, chemistry, psychology and so on.

• Many of them have been famous in their fields of study ...

Lunar experts – (or lunatics?)• Many of the craters shown

on maps of the moon are named after famous astronomers from past centuries.

• Thirty-five of these craters are named after famous astronomers who were also Jesuit priests.

Blaise Pascal, 1623-1662

• Blaise Pascal is still greatly admired as a brilliant mathematician and physicist who was way ahead of his time.

• He was also a Christian preacher who had religious visions. He said, “It is the heart that perceives God and not the reason.”

Now let’s evolve a little…

• Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) was a French priest, palaeontologist, biologist, and philosopher, who spent his life trying to integrate Christian theology with the theory of evolution.

Gregor Mendel, 1822-1884• Everyone who studies

biology knows that Gregor Mendel who pioneered research in hereditary theories was a monk.

• His famous experiments on pea plants were conducted in the monastery garden.

And there are many more...

• There are many thousands of other examples of scientists who were also religious. This is not surprising since for many centuries the church was the hub of education in Europe.

• Now look from another angle…

Another angle:The Templeton Prize

• Question: If you ask an international committee of highly qualified academics, of several different religions, to choose someone that they think has contributed to our understanding of God, what happens?

• Answer: You get The Templeton Prize.

The Templeton Prize

• In 1972 a man called John Templeton established an annual prize to be given to anyone who helps people to progress in spiritual thinking.

• The prize (£1 million) is for outstanding individuals who have devoted their talents to “expanding our vision of ultimate purpose and reality”.

• The prize is given to someone who “expands our understanding of the Divine”.

• And who has won this prize?

Templeton Prize winner 2009 Bernard d’Espagnat, a

French physicist and philosopher of science whose explorations in quantum physics “have shed light on the definition of reality and the limits of knowable science...”

... And expanded our understanding of the Divine.

Templeton Prize Winner 2008

• Michael Heller: mathematician, philosopher, cosmologist, theologian and priest. As Professor of Philosophy in Cracow, Poland, he “has developed strikingly original concepts on the origin and cause of the universe...”

• … And he has expanded our understanding of the Divine.

Templeton Prize winner, 2007• Charles Taylor, Professor of Philosophy at McGill

University, has published many books about human behaviour. He argues that problems such as violence and bigotry can only be solved by considering both their secular and spiritual dimensions...

• And he has expanded our understanding

of the Divine.

• Simple research shows that for most people there is no opposition between scientific knowledge and religious belief. People of many religions are involved in scientific research at the highest level.

• Many believers consider that if we expand our knowledge of the world, we also expand our knowledge of God.

• Conflicts do arise when advances in scientific knowledge appear to contradict religious beliefs. To discover how and why we must look carefully at particular cases…

Conflicts do arise...• The suggestion that science and religion are

opposed comes mainly from fundamentalists who do not recognise that religious language and scientific language operate at different levels.

• It is not only some religious people who are fundamentalists: many atheists are fundamentalists.

• The churches are not in the business of “doing science”, but sometimes they act as if they are.

Some ideas about how conflicts arise between science and religion will be given in the next

presentation: RELIGION AND SCIENCE, PART 3: WHY

CONFLICT?