Since the dawn of time, humankind has looked up at the sky in awe and wonder. Also for long has there been public dispute between scientists and the Church over the role of astronomy in our society and the larger world.
For the second time in seven years the Vatican has hosted a five-day astronomy conference on “the formation and evolution of disc galaxies” featuring 200 scientists from 26 countries including the United States, Italy, Britain, Russia, Germany and Japan.
The meeting, which has taken place from October 1-5 at the Papal University in Rome, is a way for the Vatican to show that not only is the Church not afraid of science, but that it is also possible to observe the whole of God’s creation through ever more sophisticated telescopes and the most modern astronomical techniques and instrumentation.
The papal summer residence, located in Castel Gandolfo (Italy), is home to the headquarters of the Vatican Observatory, one of the world’s oldest astronomical research institutions. In the Castel’s library are more than 22,000 volumes and a unique collection of ancient works by Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Kepler, Brahe, Clavius, and Secchi. Also there is a rare meteorite collection that has provided insightful knowledge of the early years of our Solar System.
An ocean across from Europe, the Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona (Tucson, USA) hosts the Vatican Observatory Research Group (VORG), which serves as the Vatican’s arm for research and has one of the largest and most modern facilities for observational astronomy in the world. Its creation in 1981 was sparked by Rome’s significant development and population growth, which inevitably led to a lack of proper observational conditions.
The origin of the Catholic Church’s interest in astronomy can be traced to about four centuries ago. Back then, Pope Gregory XIII established a committee to study and assess the implications inherent in the Pope’s reform of the calendar in 1582. This is the year that the Gregorian calendar replaced the Julian calendar, which had been used ever since the days of Julius Caesar.
A period of the Catholic Church’s history that has drawn much criticism from the scientific community is its attack in the 17th century of Galileo’s ideas that the Earth revolves around the Sun, and not the other way around. At that time, Catholic theologians argued that Galileo’s theories went against scripture, for what he was eventually tried for heresy and sentenced to house arrest. Mankind had to wait until the reign of Pope John Paul II for the Church to lift the ban on Galileo’s ideas.
Nevertheless, such a revolutionary heliocentric theory had already been put forward by Copernicus a century before. Also, history has it that Greek astronomer and mathematician Aristarchus - who laid significant foundations for the scientific study of the heavens - was the first to propose a heliocentric model of the Solar System.
Source (s):
Vatican’s Conference Site
BBC Article
Picture Credits:
Vatican’s Conference Site
It’s a shame that many great and correct theories are not accepted by the people of their time, and the creators are not recognized until after their death.
“It’s a shame that many great and correct” Scripture verses are not taken into account by some astronomers:
Isaiah 45
11 “This is what the LORD says—
12 It is I who made the earth
and created mankind upon it.
My own hands stretched out the heavens;
I marshaled their starry hosts.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah45:11-12;&version=31;
Jeremiah 10
12 But God made the earth by his power;
he founded the world by his wisdom
and
stretched out the heavens
by his understanding
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=30&chapter=10&verse=12&version=31&context=verse
It’s also a shame that in the face of so much evidence, some Christians insist on a literalist interpretation of the word “day” (yom) in the Genesis creation account, when the same word is often used for long periods of time throughout the rest of the bible.
Given a reasonable interpretation of the day issue, and an understanding of Hebrew verb tenses (or rather, the paucity of them), Genesis 1 coincides very nicely with what scientists have discovered of the history of earth.
Ray
Ray Cobb wrote:
“Given a reasonable interpretation of the day issue, and an understanding of Hebrew verb tenses (or rather, the paucity of them), Genesis 1 coincides very nicely with what scientists have discovered of the history of earth.”
“Genesis 1 coincides very nicely ”
with what God tells us in other parts of the Bible,
with what Christianity has proclaimed for nearly 2,000 years,
and
with what Creation scientists and educators “have discovered of the history of earth.”
Appended are 4 examples:
1.)
Let’s see what God tells us, “In the beginning”:
Genesis 1:5
God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.”
And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.
Genesis 1:8
… And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.
Genesis 1:13
And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.
Genesis 1:19
And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.
Genesis 1:23
And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.
Genesis 1:31
God saw all that he had made,
and it was very good.
And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
From: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis1&version=31
2.)
Let’s see what
Steven W. Boyd, Ph.D. in Hebraic and Cognate Studies,
Associate Professor of Bible at The Master’s College in Santa Clarita, California.
has to say on the matter:
Conclusion
The distribution of preterites to finite verbs in Hebrew narrative differs distinctly from that in Hebrew poetry. Moreover, a logistic regression model fitted to the ratio of preterites to finite verbs categorizes texts as narrative or poetry to an extraordinary level of accuracy. With its probability of virtually 1, Genesis 1:1-2:3, therefore, is a narrative, not poetry.
Three major implications from this study are
(1) it is not statistically defensible to read Genesis 1:1-2:3 as poetry;
(2) since Genesis 1:1-2:3 is a narrative, it should be read as other Hebrew narratives are intended to be read as a concise report of actual events, couched to convey an unmistakable theological message;13 and
(3) when this text is read as a narrative,
there is only one tenable view of its plain sense:
God created everything in six literal days.
From:
The Biblical Hebrew Creation Account: New Numbers Tell The Story
by Steven W. Boyd, Ph.D. http://www.icr.org/article/24/
3.)
Let’s see what
the Church “Fathers” have written:
“All the Fathers who wrote on the subject believed that the Creation days were
no longer than 24-hour-days. (Consensus of the Fathers of the Church)”
From: What Does The Catholic Church Teach about Origins? http://www.kolbecenter.org/church_teaches.htm
4.)
Let’s see what
God says
and inscribes in stone
in the Ten Commandments:
Exodus 20 The Ten Commandments
1 And God spoke all these words:
…
8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.
9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work,
10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. …
11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
From: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus20;&version=31;
In closing,
I’ll believe God and His word as written,
I won’t add meanings to His words.
Proverbs 30:5–6
5 “Every word of God is flawless;
he is a shield to those who take refuge in him.
6 Do not add to his words,
or he will rebuke you and prove you a liar.
From: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Proverbs30:5–6;&version=31;
In my 15 years of writing professionally only about astronomy (until about 1991), I got very interested in asking astronomers why they chose that field as a profession. Many of them had wonderful stories, like this one: “I remember being about three years old, running around on beach at night while my parents were having a party, and I remember looking up at the stars and feeling awe-struck …”
The line between astronomy and religion is very thin and fine …
Deborah
The purpose of mythology is to explain the heavens and help us to remember the constellations, planets and stars. I’m glad to see that some involved with Christian mythology are finally opening their eyes a bit to look at the wonders. This is not to say that there will not be a small few who will still seek to limit science, philosophy thought and spirit to a single mythology. The wonders of the sky belong to everyone and every time. I hope to see new myths remembered about the cosmos as science and the mind of humans expand to consider what happens in reality rather than in dogma.