Gazing At The Stars And Finding God

In an interview about their forthcoming book, Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial?, Brother Guy Consolmagno and Father Paul Mueller – both Jesuit priests who are planetary scientists at the Vatican Observatory – respond to a question about whether or not science “disproves” the Bible:

Guy: Science doesn’t prove. Science describes. The Bible isn’t a book of propositions to be proved or disproved; it’s a conversation about God. So that question presupposes a radically false idea of what science is, and what the Bible is.

Paul: We never ask if science disproves Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, though the play includes statements that are at odds with modern science. We never ask if science disproves Maximilian Kolbe’s self-sacrificing love, though his own knowledge of science would be seventy years out of date today. Lovers don’t look to science to prove the reality of their love. Why on earth would we want to go to science for proof of the reality of God’s love?

Their thoughts on how the Bible does – and does not – inform their scientific inquiry:

Paul: Science gets along just fine, thank you, without needing to make any reference at all to the Bible. But if you’re going to do science at all, you have to first presuppose that the natural world is somehow orderly and intelligible. Our expectation that the world is that way emerges from the Biblical creation stories. Of course the Bible also informs our moral framework for thinking about how to use our scientific knowledge – will we use science for domination and power, or for service and love?

Guy: Revealed religion helps me understand why I want to do science. Science – understanding this physical world we live in – is something everyone wants to do. It’s what an infant is trying to do when he wants to touch and taste everything in reach; it’s what a toddler is trying to do when she keeps asking, “Why?” I found the hunger for science in my students when I was a Peace Corps teacher in the third world. So, why? Why this hunger? What are we really hungry for?

It reminds me of what the German theologian (and Jesuit) Karl Rahner called the “wovorher” and “woraufhin” – the thing outside us we are looking for, and the thing inside us that drives us to look. Ultimately it is the hunger for God: God the Creator. When you understand that, it changes the way you do science. The temptation is to do science for honor or glory, or financial success, or tenure. But those aren’t the deeper reasons why we’re driven to ask why. And achieving them won’t satisfy that hunger.

(Photo of a monastery under the stars by Soren Schaper)