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When Galileo Galilei pointed his newly built telescope skyward in 1609, he transformed our view of the cosmos. Among his discoveries were mountains on the moon, spots on the sun, vast numbers of new stars and four satellites orbiting Jupiter.
It was this last discovery in particular that convinced him that the Earth moves round the sun rather than vice-versa, since the orbit of the moons demonstrated the reality of rotation around something other than our home planet. But his discoveries brought him in direct conflict with the Catholic Church. The church taught that the Earth stood still at the center of the universe – and as a result condemned Galileo in 1633 for defending the heliocentric hypothesis and denying the scientific authority of the Bible.This conflict might now seem of purely historical interest. After all, we all know the Earth goes around the sun, and modern astronomical discoveries only seem to confer upon the Earth a less central position in the scheme of things – as a planet orbiting a medium-sized star in the outer reaches of a galaxy that is itself not in the center of a galaxy cluster. Indeed, the church itself has recognized the veracity of Galileo's arguments; Pope John Paul II admitted in 1992 that the church was in error when it insisted on the centrality of the Earth and in 2000 issued a formal apology for the trial of Galileo.
The relationship between science and religion, however, clearly continues to create dispute. Recent years have seen the publication of many books by prominent atheist scientists pronouncing that God has no place in our modern world. And the debate over the teaching of intelligent design continues unabated. What, then, is the proper relationship between our understanding of nature and a religious faith? Does the former render the latter redundant? Can the two instead co-exist happily but separately? Or do they stand in some more complex relationship with one another?
Discussing this question in the context of the Galileo affair, on the 400th anniversary of the Tuscan astronomer's groundbreaking observations, scientists, theologians and philosophers met two weeks ago at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome. Part of the meeting was devoted to exploring the latest developments in cosmology and understanding how these relate to the Christian creation story.
On the face of it, that relationship seems pretty straightforward and trouble free. Most physicists now believe that the universe started at a "Big Bang" around 14 billion years ago, when not only matter but also space and time themselves came into being. From this "singularity" – a single point of pure radiation and infinite density – the universe rapidly expanded and cooled, allowing atomic nuclei, then atoms, then stars, then planets and finally life to form.
As one of the speakers, theologian William Carroll of the University of Oxford, pointed out, many Christians were keen to embrace the Big Bang model when it came to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s because they saw it as confirming the creation story. If the universe has a beginning, then that beginning must have a cause, and therefore there must be a creator. However, such enthusiastic adoption of science for a theological cause can leave you high and dry if the science turns out to be wrong, a warning made by St. Augustine as long ago as the fifth century.
In recent decades, scientists have acquired increasingly strong evidence in support of the Big Bang, in particular through ever more refined measurements of the incredibly faint but ubiquitous radiation produced early on in the history of the universe. But some physicists question the idea of a single explosive beginning, speculating, for example, that there may in fact be an endless series of universes, each one born in a Big Bang, then expanding to a certain point, contracting under the force of gravity to a new singularity, and then giving birth to a new universe. This would leave us in effectively the same position as with the previously discredited "Steady-State" model – an infinite existence with no initial starting point.
Carroll believes that using cosmology to either justify creation or deny it is misguided. The source of the error, he says, is to confuse the how and why of existence. Within the current Big Bang model, we cannot know what happened at time zero itself, since the laws of physics break down at a singularity.
Some physicists have argued that perhaps the universe resulted from a fluctuation in the "quantum vacuum" – in other words, that we can describe the process by which something came from nothing. But as Carroll points out, that nothing would not be nothing in the fullest sense, since the laws of physics – quantum mechanics, in this case – would need to exist for the quantum fluctuation to take place.
The question then is, what brings these laws into existence? Or, as cosmologist Stephen Hawking once put it, "Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?"
To substantiate this point, Carroll harked back to 13th-century theologian Thomas Aquinas, who made the distinction between the way something comes into being and the very fact of its existence. "Aquinas teaches us that wherever there is change, there must be something that causes that change," he said. "Whether there is an infinite universe or a finite universe, we still require a creative act of God. This is not an isolated act but a continuing creation."
This distinction between how something comes into being and what ultimately causes it to exist means, Carroll says, that there is no necessary conflict between the doctrine of creation and any physical theory of the universe.
This was essentially the position adopted by Galileo himself when defending his support of the Copernican model of the cosmos, stating memorably that "the Bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go." In other words, the Bible is not intended to be a work of science and therefore promote one physical theory of the cosmos over another, but is instead designed to be a spiritual guide. The fact that the Bible's cosmology features an Earth just a few thousand years old, a geocentric solar system and heaven and hell located, respectively, above and below our world – ideas completely at odds with modern science – does not affect the central messages of the Genesis story. Those messages concern the nature of God and the goodness of his creation.
Galileo encapsulated this position by using the metaphor of the two books – the book of nature and the book of Scripture. These books are distinct, he said, and because God is the author of both, there can be no contradiction between the two. Any apparent contradiction should be resolved by theologians reinterpreting the Bible, which is an allegorical work and cannot be at odds with what we know to be true from our senses and reason.
This doctrine of the two books has since been adopted by the Catholic Church, which now maintains that the spheres of science and revelation are distinct and therefore cannot be in conflict.
It is possible, however, that such a distinction is too clean cut. Marcello Pera, a philosopher of science at the University of Pisa and the Pontifical Lateran University and an Italian senator, told the Rome meeting that the doctrine of the two books is "optimistic but, unfortunately, not completely satisfactory."
Galileo maintained that statements about nature do not overlap with statements about "saving our souls." Whether, for example, blood travels one way around the body or the other or whether the Earth does or does not spin on its axis are irrelevant to salvation.
But Pera believes that there is overlap. He pointed out that Pope Pius XII, in his 1950 encyclical Humani Generis, stated that the scientific hypothesis of polygenism – the idea that mankind descended from a group of original humans, rather than from one individual, Adam – cannot be reconciled with the Christian notion of original sin, an act committed by Adam the individual and passed on to all of humanity.
In the same encyclical, Pius XII also stated that the uniqueness of each human being derives from a person's soul being created "immediately by God," that the soul is a spiritual substance that does not come about through the transformation of matter. This point was reinforced by John Paul II, who, in 1996, stated that theories of evolution that regard the spirit as emerging from matter are "incompatible with the truth about man."
In other words, says Pera, there are some scriptural beliefs that are incompatible with certain scientific hypotheses; therefore, the doctrine of the two books does not always hold true. "Galileo said the reinterpretation of the Bible is possible because the Bible is allegorical," he added. "But I cannot accept that the Bible can always be reinterpreted."
What, then, are the alternatives to the doctrine of the two books?
One would be to state that science does not tell us truths about the way the world actually is but that it instead simply provides a tool for calculation. This was the position taken by Galileo's chief critic within the church, Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, who claimed that the Copernican system should not be taken literally.
However, this position would presumably not be acceptable to most scientists (even if the strange features of quantum mechanics raise problems for a completely objective account of the world). The converse, to claim that the statements contained within the Bible do not relate to truth but are simply commandments or exhortations, would likewise be unacceptable to most Christians.
Pera proposes that instead of thinking in terms of two books, or two spheres, we should instead see science and religion as contained within one sphere – reason. Reason, he argues, is not just the province of science and logic but also of ethics and religion.
Exactly how such a synthesis could be carried through, however, is far from clear. Pera admitted that within this scheme "conflict wouldn't disappear" but that it would instead take the form of "internal negotiations." But this idea seems to overlook the fundamentally different character of scientific reason and belief, with the former subject to experimental test while the latter relies on revelation and ecclesiastical authority.
Pera hopes that one day, "another Thomas Aquinas or Immanuel Kant" will provide us with the unified theory of science and religion. Such a theory is certainly some way off. Indeed, perhaps it is impossible to obtain.
In the meantime, scientists and theologians must discuss their differences with openness and honesty, lest we witness the trial of some future Galileo.
Edwin Cartlidge is a freelance science writer based in Rome. His e-mail address is [email protected].
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