Schrödinger's cat - wanted dead and alive!
I saw a story in the news today - NASA's Dawn Spacecraft Begins Trek to Asteroid Belt ... seems so exciting. Did I mention before that I think meteorites and asteroids are interesting ..... wrote a post about Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno, a Vatican astronomer and keeper of the Vatican meteorite collection, about a year ago, and there was my past post - I've got rocks in my head ... too much fun.
This reminded me of a post I saw on another blog about the antagonism between science and religion. But it need not be so. Here's a bit from another news story I saw, this one about Br. Guy mentioned above, and his take on science and religion - Creationism dismissed as 'a kind of paganism' by Vatican's astronomer ....
BELIEVING that God created the universe in six days is a form of superstitious paganism, the Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno claimed yesterday. Brother Consolmagno, who works in a Vatican observatory in Arizona and as curator of the Vatican meteorite collection in Italy, said a "destructive myth" had developed in modern society that religion and science were competing ideologies ......
"Knowledge is dangerous, but so is ignorance. That's why science and religion need to talk to each other," he said. "Religion needs science to keep it away from superstition and keep it close to reality, to protect it from creationism, which at the end of the day is a kind of paganism - it's turning God into a nature god. And science needs religion in order to have a conscience, to know that, just because something is possible, it may not be a good thing to do." ....
Oh, and this post actually has nothing to do with Schrödinger's cat, just liked that joke :-)
- Br. Guy with the Vatican Meteorite collection at Castel Gandalfo
posted by crystal | 12:49 PM
8 Comments:
You know how I feel about the whole debate. It seems just silly to me that there remain both scientists and Christians who feel the two sides are mutually exclusive.
The most frustrating bible study I was involved in had one guy and his wife, both of whom were convinced that the Bible was literal fact and that God managed to fit two of every single animal on the planet onto a boat and cover the entire surface of the planet with water for 40 days and 40 nights. In spite of my best efforts to show how those views were quite contrary to the 'official teachings' of our Church (they were also a 'Familia' couple and extremely orthodox-conservative), they managed to convince another woman to see things their way. Eventually the group disbanded. It was for the best I suppose.
Are they the ones who wanted to know exactly how big the ark was? :-)
There will probably always be a popular conception of religion and science as opposed ....it didn't help any when that creationist museum opened a while ago - heh.
It's guys like him who keep me Catholic...I took a lot of science classes in the day, and I think they convinced me of how big and mysterious the universe really is. I don't get biblical literalists. There's no mystery in their worldview.
Hi Garpu,
I notice I take a lot of the OT metaphorically, and more of the NT literally .... I really need to learn more about biblical scholarship.
Mystery is good :-)
I liked the title also. :-). I had to learn some quantum physics for my research projects and I was very much amused by the Schrödinger´s cat who, according with the theory, was dead and alive in the same time.:-)
Hi Paula,
You know about it because you're a scientist .... I only learned about it from watching Stargate on tv :-)
Cool stuff, Crystal. i still can't believe I missed Consolmagno when he was here! Bummer.
From what I've read, Br. Guy gets around - he'll maybe be back your way again. He's really approachable too - has a personal website and a "freinds of Guy" page. I emailed him once with a question and he was very friendly.
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