Religion and science in general, and Catholicism and astronomy in particular, are often presumed to be in natural conflict with one another. This conflict model often uses the Galileo affair as evidence, ignoring the complex human conflict at the heart of it, Galileo’s dubious evidence for the geocentric model, and Galileo’s continued allegiance to the Church [1]. This conflict model is also deeply ahistorical, erasing the religious origins of universities, as well as the many scientists who were not just religious, but whose scientific investigations were motivated by religious beliefs. This does not mean, however, that fruitful dialog between astronomical and religious communities, and between astronomical and religious ideas is always easy, but it does suggest it is worth having.
Religious commitments remain important to many, and in the Global South a majority of people hold that their religious belief is very important [2]. Engaging with religious beliefs is therefore often needed to remove barriers to entry into the scientific project. A dialog implies that teaching and learning flows in both directions, however, and one of the things I have learnt from engaging with the Catholic intellectual tradition, is that religiously-inspired or motivated thought often provides powerful interpretative frameworks to connect scientific discoveries to human purpose and meaning. In the remaining text I briefly outline what such exchanges of ideas can look like using astronomical images and astronomical discoveries by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) as the starting point.
During the past two years the JWST has given us stunning images of the Universe, from nearby star forming regions to distant galaxies [3]. Beauty alone is not what is ultimately so attractive about these images, however, but rather it is that they are also true. This, I think, helps explain why laypeople so often worry about ‘false colors’ in astronomical images; they want to be sure that what they are seeing is ‘real’. When deployed effectively these images can break down barriers between different communities and attract new people into the scientific conversation. For people of faith, contemplating these beautiful truths can be profoundly spiritual, drawing them closer to their Creator, as well as to science.
But why are we, religious and secular alike, so attracted to JWST’s images? Why is it so important that they are true? The Catholic intellectual tradition has pondered the apparent directedness of the human mind towards truth and beauty for millennia. In the process, the tradition has developed understandings of the human person that can be appreciated also by those who do not share Catholic beliefs. Among these is the idea that human flourishing can only be achieved if we first understand that to be human is to be a seeker of truth, and therefore to abhor being lied to. This idea is grounded in a deeper idea that the human person has a rational soul, which has as its end truth itself [4].
Two specific truths addressed by the JWST are the origin of the Universe’s structure, and the origins and presence of other worlds. The JWST was especially designed to explore our Universe’s early moments and how its strange and exotic first stars and galaxies evolved into the present-day cosmos. It is natural to want to bring these discoveries into conversation with religious claims about creation of the Universe. The origin of the Universe as described by Big Bang cosmology is, however, qualitatively distinct from the Catholic idea of the Universe being created by God out of nothing; when the Big Bang begins, the Universe is already there. As the father of the Big Bang, Catholic physicist-priest Lemaître, emphasized, the Big Bang does not prove the religious idea of creation, nor does it refute it. Still, the Big Bang cosmology presents an image of the beginning of time and space, and as such can help the faithful imagine what the theological concept of creation out of nothing entails, and what it does not.
Even for the non-religious, Big Bang cosmology and the intense historicity of the Universe, which is made manifest by the JWST, can inspire questions about the contingency and origins of the Universe. The apparent beginning of the Universe seems to beg the question of where did it come from, and what gave it existence. Already in the Middle Ages Thomas Aquinas taught that we cannot know with philosophical or scientific certainty whether the Universe had a beginning. He also taught that God had the power to create a Universe without a beginning [5]. Yet, one of the teachings coming out of the Bible is that cosmos has a beginning, and Thomas Aquinas argues that, in part, this is to make the existence of a creator more apparent to us: ‘For the world leads more evidently to the knowledge of the divine creating power, if it was not always, than if it had always been; since everything which was not always manifestly has a cause; whereas this is not so manifest of what always was.’ [6]. In other words, contemplating the beginning of the Universe can be a path to contemplating the divine.
The other way around, contemplating the divine, may also have helped in conceiving of the beginning of the Universe. It is tempting to speculate that the Catholic teaching of the contingency of the Universe, that it did not need to exist, helped to give birth to the idea of the Big Bang cosmology. Lemaître’s seminal paper on the Universe’s beginning [7], seems to carry echoes of St Augustine: ‘For if eternity and time are rightly distinguished by this, that time does not exist without some movement and transition, while in eternity there is no change, who does not see that there could have been no time had not some creature been made, by which some motion could give birth to change?’ [8,9]. It is tempting to speculate that Lemaître’s theological understanding that time and space did not need to exist helped him imagine a beginning of space and time for our Universe, especially in the context of a societal and academic environment that otherwise took the eternity of the Universe for granted.
A second question addressed by JWST with deep spiritual reverberations is the characterization of exoplanets with an eye towards finding habitable, and perhaps even inhabited planets outside of the Solar System. Superficially such discoveries may seem to pose a threat to traditional religious belief. First, the discovery of alien life would suggest that the origins of life both here and elsewhere happen naturally, removing God as an explanatory cause. Second, the possible presence of life elsewhere appears to make us less special, completing the Copernican revolution, and hence making the Biblical account of God’s intense interest in Earth and humanity less plausible. If not addressed, these objections will be obstacles towards fruitful dialog. So let me briefly address them here, using tools from the Catholic intellectual tradition. Catholic theology emphasizes that God typically acts through instrumental causes, however, and that a process being ‘natural’ does not mean that God is absent, any more than an author is absent from the book he has written. Furthermore, if God is truly infinite in power and goodness, as taught in the Catholic tradition, the expanse of the Universe and the amount of life in it has no impact on the intensity of his care for humanity – only if God was limited could there be competition between God’s care for others and his care for us. Exciting future exoplanet discoveries should hence not provide obstacles to religious faith. That does not mean that such discoveries would be without theological significance, however. In a Christian context, studying the cosmos provides understanding of its creator, and it matters whether the Universe is a garden, or an empty sea where we constitute the lonely ark that carries all life through time and space.
In conclusion, the beauty and truths about the Universe being gifted to us through the JWST offer multiple opportunities for dialogue between scientific and religious communities. Such dialogues will include the clearing away of both scientific and theological misconceptions, and they critically depend on the mutual respect and willingness to learn from one another. When successful, these dialogues can then help purify religious beliefs, provide fertile soil for theological contemplation, and assist all truth seekers in better exploring the big questions about the Universe and about the human beings trying to understand it.
[1] Owen Gingerich, ‘The Galileo Affair’, Scientific American, Vol. 247, No. 2, pp. 132-143.
[2] Pew Research Center (https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2018/06/13/how-religious-commitment-varies-by-country-among-people-of-all-ages/).
[3] https://webbtelescope.org/images
[4] See e.g. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, Book III, Chapter 25.
[5] Thomas Aquinas, De Aeternitate Mundi.
[6] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Prima Pars, Question 46, Article 1.
[7] Georges Lemaître, Nature, Volume 127, Issue 3210, pp. 706 (1931).
[8] St Augustine, City of God, Ch 6; cf. St Augustine, Confessions, Book 10, and The Literal Meaning of Genesis, Book 1.
[9] Jonathan Lunine, ‘Faith and the Expanding Universe of Georges Lemaître’ in Church Life Journal, McGrath Institute for Church Life, U. Notre Dame.