Science and Religion

“A scientific discovery is also a religious discovery. There is no conflict between science and religion. Our knowledge of God is made larger with every discovery we make about the world.” -Joseph Taylor

Did you know that the man who first formulated the Big Bang theory was a Jesuit priest? Georges Lemaitre was a Jesuit-trained mathematician, astronomer and physicist who surmised that the recession of nearby galaxies could be explained by an expanding universe, and went on to develop what he called the theory of the primeval atom (later referred to asthe “Big Bang” theory). Lemaitre postulated that if we extrapolate backwards from the observable fact of an expanding universe we come to a point in the distant past when the entire mass of the universe was concentrated in a single point, the “primeval atom,” as it were, from which time and space as we know them came into existence. Lemaitre believed that this event was essentially the creation of the physical universe, and although Lemaitre wasn’t prone to mixing scientific and religious explanations, he didn’t see any conflict here. Gregor Mendel, the man who is usually considered the father of modern Genetics, was an Augustinian friar. His work withpea plants established many of the rules of heredity, giving us the terms “recessive” and “dominant” with respect to inherited traits. Mendel’s work is important because it explains an important mechanism by which species change over time. Religion is sometimes seen as the benighted cousin of ignorance and superstition, but in reality, truth is one. There is only conflict if we insist on reading ancient religious texts as scientific treatises, which they were never intended to be. -Christopher Simon