{"id":75645,"date":"2019-07-02T10:37:52","date_gmt":"2019-07-02T16:37:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=75645"},"modified":"2019-07-02T10:37:52","modified_gmt":"2019-07-02T16:37:52","slug":"theists-and-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2019\/07\/theists-and-science.html","title":{"rendered":"Theists and Science"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Titan,<\/a>
A 2005 NASA artist\u2019s speculative depiction of the surface of Titan. (public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

It seems that mushy-headed and irrational theists can still contribute to science despite their total estrangement from reality and logic:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBYU helps NASA prep for human mission to Mars through study of martian dust particles\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jani Radebaugh<\/a>, a planetary scientist and a professor in the Department of Geology at Brigham Young University who specializes in volcanology, geomorphology, and planetary geology, is among those who are involved in NASA\u2019s Dragonfly project<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNASA\u2019s Dragonfly Will Fly Around Titan Looking for Origins, Signs of Life\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dr. Radebaugh has also participated in events sponsored by the Interpreter Foundation<\/a>. \u00a0See, for example,<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cJani Radebaugh on \u201cThe Outer Solar System: A Window to the Creative Breadth of Divinity\u201d\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Also see her introduction to the keynote address (\u201cAstronomy, God, and the Search for Elegance\u201d) by\u00a0Brother Guy Consolmagno SJ, the Vatican astronomer, at the Interpreter Foundation\u2019s second conference on science and religion, which was held in 2016:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAstronomy, God, and the Search for Elegance\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cGuest opinion: Does science destroy religion and scripture?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

In other science news:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHubble spies slow-motion fireworks in space\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

This one is relevant to the story about Dragonfly above, but most especially it raises the question of the constraints of orthodoxy and consensus and peer pressure in science (as in other fields of inquiry):<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Pitfalls of Searching for Alien Life\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

On an entirely different topic:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cDo Statins Increase the Incidence of Diabetes?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

One of the three men who shared the the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics\u00a0is Professor Kip Thorne, of the California Institute of Technology:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dr. Thorne was born in\u00a0Logan, Utah,\u00a0in\u00a01940, to two active Latter-day Saint professors at\u00a0Utah State University. \u00a0He was raised in the Mormon faith<\/a>, but\u00a0he now describes himself as\u00a0atheist.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

He\u2019s long been well-known, even beyond scientific circles. \u00a0For one thing,\u00a0he resigned his Richard Feynman Professorship of Theoretical Physics at Caltech in 2009 in order to involve himself in\u00a0writing and movie making, and his first film project was\u00a0Interstellar<\/i>, on which he worked\u00a0with\u00a0Christopher Nolan.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The fact that he\u2019s an ex-Mormon atheist has led some critics to cite him as an illustration of Mormonism\u2019s supposed incompatibility with science.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

This seems to rest upon a fairly clear\u00a0non sequitur<\/em>. \u00a0The fact that Kip Thorne is an ex-Mormon atheist who has won a Nobel Prize no more demonstrates that his ex-Mormonism contributed to winning the Nobel than Richard Feynman\u2019s occasional bongo-drumming in Pasadena nightclubs proves that playing the drums secured his status as a Nobel laureate in 1965.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s hear what Kip Thorne\u00a0himself<\/em>\u00a0has had to say on the subject.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

On 21 June 2013,\u00a0The Guardian<\/em>\u00a0published a profile of Kip Thorne titled\u00a0\u201cKip Thorne: physicist studying time travel tapped for Hollywood film: Film will splash one of Thorne\u2019s big ideas \u2013 traversable wormholes through space and time \u2013 across popular culture.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0Here\u2019s a passage from that article:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThorne grew up in an academic, Mormon family in Utah but is now an atheist. \u2018There are large numbers of my finest colleagues who are quite devout and believe in God, ranging from an abstract humanist God to a very concrete Catholic or Mormon God. There is no fundamental incompatibility between science and religion. I happen to not believe in God.\u2019\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I find it regrettable that Professor Thorne left the faith of his family and his childhood, but I doubt that he would say that having having left Mormonism\u00a0contributed in any significant way to his scientific abilities\u00a0or to his winning the Nobel Prize in Physics.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 It seems that mushy-headed and irrational theists can still contribute to science despite their total estrangement from reality and logic: \u00a0 \u201cBYU helps NASA prep for human mission to Mars through study of martian dust particles\u201d \u00a0 Jani Radebaugh, a planetary scientist and a professor in the Department of Geology at Brigham Young […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nTheists and Science<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    It seems that mushy-headed and irrational theists can still contribute to science despite their total estrangement from reality and\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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