Richard Winmill has kindly alerted me to an interview with the Director of the Vatican Observatory and President of the Vatican Observatory Foundation, Guy Consolmagno S.J., in the Wall Street Journal:
“The idea that you read the Bible like it was the Chilton’s manual for how to repair your Volkswagen —that’s literalism. It’s a very modern idea,” says Dr. Consolmagno. “You don’t find that in the church fathers. You don’t find that in the rabbis of the time of Jesus. That’s not the way they interpreted it. All literature in ancient times started out as poetry.”
Educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Arizona, Dr. Consolmagno is an American Jesuit brother who holds a doctorate in planetary science and who is a leading participant in research into the astronomy of our solar system.
Cosmology, Dr. Consolmagno says, should not be dragged into religious arguments.
“It always makes the science come first and God come at the end of your chain of reasoning,” he says. “To a scientist who’s a believer, it goes the other way around. I’ve already experienced God. I’ve already had religious experiences. I’ve already had things that have made me look at the universe and say: ‘What’s going on?’ Whether they’re tragedies like the death of a loved one or miracles like the birth of a loved one, there are things that make you say, ‘I’m experiencing something that’s more than physical things can explain. Where did this come from?’ Or maybe it’s just something as simple as: ‘I exist. Why do I exist? Why does anything exist? Why does existence itself exist?’ ”
Facing such questions, Dr. Consolmagno offers a hypothesis: “Let’s assume that there’s a God that’s outside nature, who is responsible for the existence of the universe,” he says. “When I start with that axiom, does the universe make sense? Does the universe make more sense than if I assume it’s all done by random chance? Am I able to see things I couldn’t see before? Am I able to understand things I couldn’t understand before? Is it an axiom that works?
“And to me, yes—that’s the answer.”
You may recall that Dr. Consolmagno gave an excellent keynote address at the Interpreter Foundation’s 2014 symposium on science and religion:
“Brother Guy Consolmagno SJ – Keynote Address: Astronomy, God, and the Search for Elegance”
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