"If the Big Bang was the start of everything, what came before it?"
That is one of the questions being posed by a new website being set up by the Vatican and Italy's scientific community. After centuries of mistrust between religion and science, the intention is to give the public a greater understanding of both sides. The website, which will be available in Italian and English, has information on everything from astronomy to theology, from space missions to philosophy and art. ...
It was my good fortune to hear his drivel about philosophical questions and cosmology. Kennedy is unaware that there is a field of philosophy of physics and philosophy of science and philosophy of religion. But, ah, yes, the web site is for the "public", which Kennedy also serves.
Only he serves cold porridge.
Kennedy appears ignorant that in my own lifetime Hoyle and Gamow's beginning of astro-biology was such an offence to the harmless Lutherans of Sweden that a Nobel was out of the question. And nothing as changed for atheists in Catholic countries.
Suppose Kennedy had asked what parallel existed between String Theory and the doctrine of the Trinity or between dark matter and the Physical Ascension of Mary? We have a clear idea of what might cause String Theory to topple - but will the Vatican revisit the triumph of the mystery of the Triune-God over the heresies of the "philosophical" early Christians? We know what may alter the calculation of the amount of dark matter surrounding the Milky Way, but did the feces and urine of Mary also physically ascend to heaven? The parasites in her intestines? The dogma of Pope Pius in 1960 came at a time when even the relation between nuclear membrane and cellular membrane in the somatic cell was not yet well understood. But what could cause that pious dogma to be revised? Is there an equivalent discussion to that in 1960 of the endoplasmic reticulum? How does bad theology cease to be dogma in the one true Church?
What counts as "philosophical" for the paid BBC reporter is what counts as "sophomoric" elsewhere.
Kennedy's priest mentions Einstein, but not Weyl. Hermann Weyl had philosophic concerns that did not lead him to the Christian soul or the Christian God of his native northern Germany. What could have brought Weyl, Gamow or Hoyle home to the One True Church? Not that BBC broadcast or this BBC web posting.
Science does not have all the answers - but it can defend a few assertions, such as the importance of condoms. Social and medical science can make a strong case against the celibacy of priests. Ethics can make a strong case for female priests.
The core issue for me is whether a non-reductionist, non-materialist atheist such as myself could ever by evidence and argument alone convince a believer in the soul that evolved embodied mind is a biological-social-linguistic fact and that individual minds end with their respective biological lives. End of story. A Weyl, perhaps. A Pope Pius, no. And among the philosophers courting the Vatican: Charles Taylor, no; Alasdair MacIntyre, well, time is running out there.
Note: The Vatican has been active in observational astronomy for many years - which is why facts are important (but only if your theory is not a dogma.) In mathematical physics, Georges Lemaître was both a priest and the author of the Big Bang. But he was also an artillery officer in WWI - something which Bertrand Russell was not. I take more issue with the use of heavy field artillery as morally unjustifiable in any infantry conflict between France and Germany ( as much so as aerial bombardment, machine guns and poison gas ) than with his being ordained as a priest and continuing in that confession. Note that after that war, conscientious objectors in pious Canada lost their right to vote - they might as easily have lost the right to study at universities. With argument, vote was restored, mustard gas banned. But the dogma of the Trinity stands untouched in Italy (see the fate of Bernard Bolzano, centuries after Bruno.) COBE may have backed Georges Lemaître over Fred Hoyle, but the facts and theory did nothing to legitimate the views of either - not the Jesuits' God and not Hoyle's "a bit of God ... operating in all of us".
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