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Father George Coyne and the fertile cosmos |
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By Father Robert Barron
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Wednesday, 13 January 2010 |
I had the great pleasure a few days ago to sit down for lunch with Father George Coyne, S.J., the man who was, for many years, the director of the Vatican Observatory, which is headquartered in both Castel Gandolfo and Tucson, Ariz.
Father Coyne is a Jesuit priest as well as a formally trained astronomer and astrophysicist, and this combination has made him one of the great ambassadors for the church to the world of science. In a sense, his very person refutes the claim heard in so many quarters today that faith and reason stand in implacable opposition.
I was especially eager to speak with Father Coyne because my work in
apologetics and evangelization has convinced me that the “problem” of
science and religion is so often a stumbling block for those to whom we
are striving to preach the Gospel. Whether the issue is evolution, the
big bang, biblical interpretation or intelligent design, it appears to
many as though “science” is standing in the way of classical religion.
The question of God
Our conversation was wide-ranging, but I would like to concentrate on
just a few points that I consider to be of particular importance.
First, we discussed the question of God and God’s relationship to the
world. One of the most fundamental mistakes that people make, Father
Coyne argued, is to construe God as one being among many within the
cosmos, as though God is an unusually great and impressive thing
alongside of the planets, galaxies and stars.
The problem with this way of thinking is that it undermines God’s
status as the creator of the heavens and the earth, the one who brings
the whole of finite reality into being from nothing. The Creator of the
universe cannot be an object within the universe; the Maker of all
things cannot be situated within the nexus of conditioned causes, just
as the architect is not part of the building he designed or the author
of a book one of the characters in it.
We shouldn’t, therefore, look for God as part of the “mechanics” of
nature, as though he enters in a fussy way alongside of other competing
causes. In accounting for the emergence of a planet, for example, we
wouldn’t appeal to the detritus of a star, hydrogen gas, God, and the
gravitational force! God is, instead, the answer to a different kind of
question, viz., “Why is there something rather than nothing?”
This is precisely why Fr. Coyne is impatient with the advocates of
intelligent design, who hold that, at certain points in the
evolutionary process, God intervened to fine-tune things. He feels that
this is not only scientifically superfluous but finally insulting to
God. It’s also why he disagrees with one of his colleagues, the
Anglican priest-scientist, John Polkinghorne, who argues that the
indeterminacy of quantum mechanics gives God “room to work” as he
pushes, pulls, and influences the cosmos.
Once again, the problem is an interventionist construal of the
God-universe relationship. For the same reason, he disagrees with the
Christopher Hitchenses and Richard Dawkinses of the world who maintain
that “science” disproves the existence of God by showing that he is not
ingredient in the causal processes of nature. Both the “new” atheists
and the advocates of intelligent design need to get a clearer sense of
who God is.
How God acts
This leads to the second issue that I would like to discuss: how
precisely should we understand God’s activity vis-à-vis the universe
that he brings into being?
Father Coyne put a great deal of stress on what he called the
“fertility” of the cosmos. Contemporary astronomy has disclosed to us
not simply how enormously big the universe is, but how fecund, rich
and, if I can put it this way, how effervescent it is. There are more
than 100 billion galaxies in the universe, each one of which contains
on the average 100 billion suns; this means that there are roughly
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the cosmos!
More to it, as stars have passed out of being, they have given rise to
second and third generation descendants (our sun is a third generation
star), which contain heavier and more complex elements, so that there
is a kind of astral evolution that mimics the evolution of life forms
on earth. Nature, Father Coyne concludes, has a sort of
directionality.
Though there are plenty of examples of corruption and decomposition in
the universe, we can discern clearly enough a general movement in the
direction of ever greater complexity and ontological density. The
classical philosophers and scientists bequeathed to us the vision of an
ordered and rather tidy universe; modern researchers are giving us a
cosmos that is not nearly as neat, but far more explosive, fascinating
and rife with possibility.
And, in this, we see perhaps most clearly how God relates to the world
that he makes. Long ago, the Psalmist said, “The heavens proclaim the
glory of God.” Father Coyne might interpret that biblical passage as
follows: God, who is supremely creative and effervescently alive, has
brought into being a universe that imitates him and glorifies him in
its own fertility, complexity, and creativity. God doesn’t fussily
fine-tune his world; he allows it to be an icon of the divine life.
I’m so grateful to Father George Coyne and his colleagues, who, amidst
the “Sturm und Drang” of the religion/science debate, have shown a way
forward.
Father Robert Barron, a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago, is the
Francis Cardinal George Chair of Faith and Culture at the University of
St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary in Mundelein, Ill. He runs a
global media ministry called Word On Fire. Find out more at I had the
great pleasure a few days ago to sit down for lunch with Father George
Coyne, S.J., the man who was, for many years, the director of the
Vatican Observatory, which is headquartered in both Castel Gandolfo and
Tucson, Ariz.
Father Coyne is a Jesuit priest as well as a formally trained
astronomer and astrophysicist, and this combination has made him one of
the great ambassadors for the church to the world of science. In a
sense, his very person refutes the claim heard in so many quarters
today that faith and reason stand in implacable opposition.
I was especially eager to speak with Father Coyne because my work in
apologetics and evangelization has convinced me that the “problem” of
science and religion is so often a stumbling block for those to whom we
are striving to preach the Gospel. Whether the issue is evolution, the
big bang, biblical interpretation or intelligent design, it appears to
many as though “science” is standing in the way of classical religion.
The question of God
Our conversation was wide-ranging, but I would like to concentrate on
just a few points that I consider to be of particular importance.
First, we discussed the question of God and God’s relationship to the
world. One of the most fundamental mistakes that people make, Father
Coyne argued, is to construe God as one being among many within the
cosmos, as though God is an unusually great and impressive thing
alongside of the planets, galaxies and stars.
The problem with this way of thinking is that it undermines God’s
status as the creator of the heavens and the earth, the one who brings
the whole of finite reality into being from nothing. The Creator of the
universe cannot be an object within the universe; the Maker of all
things cannot be situated within the nexus of conditioned causes, just
as the architect is not part of the building he designed or the author
of a book one of the characters in it.
We shouldn’t, therefore, look for God as part of the “mechanics” of
nature, as though he enters in a fussy way alongside of other competing
causes. In accounting for the emergence of a planet, for example, we
wouldn’t appeal to the detritus of a star, hydrogen gas, God, and the
gravitational force! God is, instead, the answer to a different kind of
question, viz., “Why is there something rather than nothing?”
This is precisely why Fr. Coyne is impatient with the advocates of
intelligent design, who hold that, at certain points in the
evolutionary process, God intervened to fine-tune things. He feels that
this is not only scientifically superfluous but finally insulting to
God. It’s also why he disagrees with one of his colleagues, the
Anglican priest-scientist, John Polkinghorne, who argues that the
indeterminacy of quantum mechanics gives God “room to work” as he
pushes, pulls, and influences the cosmos.
Once again, the problem is an interventionist construal of the
God-universe relationship. For the same reason, he disagrees with the
Christopher Hitchenses and Richard Dawkinses of the world who maintain
that “science” disproves the existence of God by showing that he is not
ingredient in the causal processes of nature. Both the “new” atheists
and the advocates of intelligent design need to get a clearer sense of
who God is.
How God acts
This leads to the second issue that I would like to discuss: how
precisely should we understand God’s activity vis-à-vis the universe
that he brings into being?
Father Coyne put a great deal of stress on what he called the
“fertility” of the cosmos. Contemporary astronomy has disclosed to us
not simply how enormously big the universe is, but how fecund, rich
and, if I can put it this way, how effervescent it is. There are more
than 100 billion galaxies in the universe, each one of which contains
on the average 100 billion suns; this means that there are roughly
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the cosmos!
More to it, as stars have passed out of being, they have given rise to
second and third generation descendants (our sun is a third generation
star), which contain heavier and more complex elements, so that there
is a kind of astral evolution that mimics the evolution of life forms
on earth. Nature, Father Coyne concludes, has a sort of
directionality.
Though there are plenty of examples of corruption and decomposition in
the universe, we can discern clearly enough a general movement in the
direction of ever greater complexity and ontological density. The
classical philosophers and scientists bequeathed to us the vision of an
ordered and rather tidy universe; modern researchers are giving us a
cosmos that is not nearly as neat, but far more explosive, fascinating
and rife with possibility.
And, in this, we see perhaps most clearly how God relates to the world
that he makes. Long ago, the Psalmist said, “The heavens proclaim the
glory of God.” Father Coyne might interpret that biblical passage as
follows: God, who is supremely creative and effervescently alive, has
brought into being a universe that imitates him and glorifies him in
its own fertility, complexity, and creativity. God doesn’t fussily
fine-tune his world; he allows it to be an icon of the divine life.
I’m so grateful to Father George Coyne and his colleagues, who, amidst
the “Sturm und Drang” of the religion/science debate, have shown a way
forward.
Father Robert Barron, a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago, is the
Francis Cardinal George Chair of Faith and Culture at the University of
St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary in Mundelein, Ill. He runs a
global media ministry called Word On Fire. Find out more at www.wordonfire.org.
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