Science

Models of Reality

"Now, because we have communicated for so long, it is easy for us to forget that we are using models, and, when modeling the world we share, it is easy to forget that the cosmos is there and we are in it; changing our model can change our perception of the universe, but will not change the universe itself. We can argue about how to model the universe, but cannot argue the universe into being something that it is not. We own the models, but not the universe." -- Fr. Paul A. Koroluk, "As If" or "I Believe": Models for the Seen, and for the Unseeable, [1]

Evidence of Divine Creation

"Specifically, Penzias' research into cosmology has caused him to see "evidence of a plan of divine creation." He says that "the best data we have are exactly what I would have predicted, had I had nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a whole" (Browne, 1978). Penzias asks:

'How could the everyday person take sides in this dispute? ... trying to fit dogma and fact into the same mind seems too difficult....wanting to hold on to the teaching of faith, but as a rational person wanting to keep a grasp on everyday facts - [one is] being pulled by two opposing "truths." One held that the universe was created out of nothing, while the other proclaimed the evident eternity of matter. The "dogma" of creation was thwarted by the "fact" of the eternal nature of matter .... This dogma comes from the intuitive belief of people (including the majority of physicists) who don't want to accept the observational evidence that the universe was created - despite the fact that the creation of the universe is supported by all the observable data astronomy has produced so far. As a result, the people who reject the data can arguably be described as having a "religious" belief .... These people regard themselves as objective scientists. The term "Big Bang" was coined in a pejorative spirit by one of these scientific opponents who hoped to replace the evolutionary universe idea with a steady state theory - one which said that the universe has always looked exactly as it looks now. More recently, this now-discredited attempt has been replaced by an oscillating universe theory, one in which the cosmos explodes and collapses throughout eternity.'" (Penzias, 1983, p. 3), [2]

Arno A. Penzias on Science and Religion

"Penzias also argues that theology can tell us much about what we would expect the universe to be like. For example, he concludes that if it is open, expanding forever, the universe would be "precisely the universe that organized religion predicts." Specifically, he notes that

'a theologian friend of mine ... told me once he could not conceive of Calvary happening twice. He said his faith as a Christian would be shaken if it could be proven to him that the universe, with its finite number of particles, could be reconstructed an infinite number of times. It would mean that every event - the creation of man ... everything - would be repeated again and again an infinite number of times, simply by random chance. That is the meaning of infinity. In other words, a closed universe would be [as] pointless as the throw of dice. But it seems to me that the data we have in hand right now clearly show that there is not nearly enough matter in the universe, not enough by a factor of three, for the universe to be able to fall back on itself ever again.'" (Browne, 1978), [3]