My latest article is now at Catholic Lane: “Atoms Are Imaginary“
NeoStem Director on Vatican Collaboration
Some of you may have heard me on the SonRise Morning Show earlier today talking about the new science and faith foundation just established at the Vatican, and its mission to lead up ventures like the Vatican’s partnership with the adult stem cell research company NeoStem. Coincidentally, I’ve just found this informative post at Forbes from NeoStem director Steven Myers:
When you begin to understand the promise of stem cell treatments when it comes to treating these diseases, along with maladies such as cancer in all its terrible varieties and autoimmune illnesses such as multiple sclerosis and lupus, and further recognize the trillions of dollars that can be saved in our health care system by pursuing stem cell research and development, this public misunderstanding becomes all the more tragic.
But this may all be about to change.
That change is coming, in no small measure, as a direct result of a remarkable event that occurred at the Vatican in early November of this year where a conference, co- hosted by the Catholic Church and NeoStem (a publically held company on whose board of directors I am proud to serve) was convened and included prominent scientists, ethicists, business and religious leaders from around the world who gathered for the first ever international conference on “adult” stem cell research.
It was clear from the outset that this event would mark a turning point in the ethical considerations of stem cell development when Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, President of the Pontifical Council for Culture opened the conference with a declaration that the Catholic Church enthusiastically supports scientific research on adult stem cells along with the exploration of the cultural, ethical, and human implications of their use.
Filed under Medicine, Stem Cells, Vatican
Science, Philosophy, and God’s Existence
One skeptical line of argument with respect to the existence of God goes like this: if God has effects on nature, then he can be known through those effects, and thus known through science. This is an older and wider use of the term “science” – the knowledge of things from their effects. Used in this way, God is indeed an object of science, and God can be known from His effects on nature.
However, it must be remembered that God is not a material object within the physical universe. This limits the ways that he can be known. Things are known in different ways in accordance with their nature. In other words, our way of finding something has to be in keeping with the nature of what it is we want to find. The population of animals in a field is determined by seeing the animals, not by measuring light from a distant supernova. The reactivity of compound is measured by testing it in the lab, not by reading a seismometer sitting on a fault line. When experimenting with a scientific entity, we have to look for kinds of evidence that match the question we’re asking.
Modern science studies natural, physical things and detects them in the specific physical ways suited to such objects. God’s existence, however, is not testable in the same way that we test for particular physical things in nature. God is not a physical object. God does not emit a particular kind of electromagnetic wave that we can detect. God does not have certain dimensions or a density we can measure with a scale or a ruler. He does not have a tendency to catalyze a particular kind of chemical reaction, or to cause a particular kind of cell to grow. Observing for specific kinds of physical, scientific objects requires the use of appropriate physical, scientific tests. Testing for God requires an equally appropriate test — one that is sensitive to God’s transcendent nature. In other words, we test things by predicting their effects and then using an appropriate method to see whether those effects exist. If they do, our hypothesis is confirmed. If not, our hypothesis is unsupported.
Now the effect that is produced by God is … everything. And since everything clearly exists, so too does God.
In this form the argument of course seems silly, but it illustrates the point: the problem isn’t a lack of evidence for God. The effect that God produces is everything. The evidence of this effect is quite literally everywhere, all around us, all the time. The problem isn’t in finding the evidence, it’s in showing that the evidence we already have in hand is in fact evidence for God. The problem is in thinking clearly about what this evidence means.
Thinking about “the existence of everything” is philosophy — in particular, it is metaphysics or ontology. Understanding how the totality of reality and existence provide the arguments for God means looking at philosophy, not performing new scientific experiments. The evidence of the experiments is already in, and has been in for as long as the human mind has been around to think about it. We already have the results. The important task now is interpreting what the results mean.
Filed under Atheism, Philosophy
Esolen on Science and Scientists
From Anthony Esolen at Crisis Magazine, “The Humility of Science and the Arrogance of Scientists“:
“Mathematics, and the sciences that employ mathematical tools, bring us to a fine field of truth, and we should be grateful for that truth. Without it we could not live in the comfort that we have wrung from our domination of the natural world. We would be bound in our travels to the legs of horses, or the winds at sea. We could not fly. And yet – to quote that young philosopher Francis Marion Tarwater in Flannery O’Connor’s story, “Buzzards can fly.” A physicist can tell me how a winged object can stay in the air. But he cannot, insofar as he is a physicist alone or even a biologist alone and not also a man like all other men, tell me about the beauty or the nobility of the buzzard, much less about the beauty or nobility of Francis Marion Tarwater.”
Filed under General
Newly Released Tree Density Map
Woods Hole Research Center has released an interesting new zoomable, pannable map of above-ground woody biomass – in essence, a map of the density of trees and shrubs — for the continental US. You can see the map here, enlarge it to full-screen, and explore how the landscape around your home compares to the rest of the country.
Filed under Environment
Is Dark Flow Real?
In 2008, a group of scientists led by NASA astrophysicist Alexander Kashlinksy detected a surprisingly rapid one-way flow of all the matter in the visible universe, a phenomenon which came to be known as “dark flow”. Kashlinsky’s team measured the flow of galaxy clusters through the universe’s background radiation, using temperature differences to infer the speed and directions of the movement of distant conglomerations of galaxies, and discovered that everything they measured was moving in a uniform direction at high velocity. A later study in 2010 confirmed the 2008 measurements. The movement caught the attention of cosmologists because it wasn’t readily explainable in terms of known astronomy — hence the term “dark” — and because it was possible evidence of effects from beyond the known universe, lending credence to certain multiverse theories. Perhaps, the speculation went, attraction from collections of matter outside the visible universe were the cause of the flow.
A new study of supernovas in distant galaxies, however, has detected a much slower flow than that found in the previous studies. The new study does also show a one-way flow, but it is in a slightly different direction and is much slower than the earlier measurements of flow. The new flow is more easily explained by in-universe causes, such as large galaxy clusters, and so does not necessarily suport the extra-universal explanations of the earlier dark flow measurements.
The result, as so often happens in science, is that it’s become clear that more data is needed. The earlier measurements call for an explanation, and seemingly point outside the known universe. The new results are interesting, but more mundane. It remains to be seen how the two can be reconciled. In the meantime, multiverse theories still await empirical evidence…
Filed under Cosmology
Fr. Rutler on Scientist Priests
Fr. George Rutler’s recent essay on scientist priests is available from the Catholic Education Resource Center:
While priests are dedicated to theology as the “queen of sciences,” some of them have contributed to the material sciences as well. Some days ago Google rightly honored Nicholas Steno whose research in stratigraphy earned him the sobriquet “Father of Geology.” Google did not mention that he was a convert to Catholicism in 1667 and only ceased his research due to pastoral obligations when he became a bishop in 1677. His scientific achievements were not as important as his heroic virtue, for which Pope John Paul II beatified him in 1988.
Filed under History
Roe v. Wade and Biotechnology
“Thirty-nine years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Roe v. Wade, that the laws outlawing abortion in Texas were unconstitutional because a woman had a right to privacy, guaranteed by the Constitution. Suddenly, the unborn had no legal protection in the United States. But Roe v. Wade did not just deny legal protection to the unborn, it catapulted the United States toward all manner of unethical biotechnology.”
Filed under Abortion, Biotechnology, Ethics, Politics
Pope Benedict Creates Vatican Foundation for Science and Theology
Catholic News Agency has the story:
“I don’t think most people necessarily see science and faith as being opposed but I do think there is confusion as to where to put faith and where to put science in their life,” said executive director Father Tomasz Trafny.
“So the question for us is how to offer a coherent vision of society, culture and the human being to people who would like to understand where to put these dimensions – the spiritual and religious and the scientific,” he told CNA on Jan. 19.
The Science and Faith Foundation will be headquartered at the Holy See under the leadership of Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, President of the Pontifical Council for Culture.
The new foundation builds on the work of the STOQ project – Science, Theology and the Ontological Quest – which was created by Pope John Paul II in 2003. For the past 9 years it has promoted a dialogue between theology, philosophy and the sciences working in collaboration with the Pontifical Council for Culture and Rome’s pontifical universities.
Their stated aim is to explore “the possibility of being believers at the dawn of the Third Millennium without renouncing scientific progress.”
Filed under Vatican
Bishops Respond to HHS Mandate Decision
Pope Benedict said that over the past few days many of the bishops have expressed concern over attempts in the U.S. to “deny the right of conscientious objection on the part of Catholic individuals and institutions with regard to cooperation in intrinsically evil practices.”
Meanwhile, other bishops raised the “worrying tendency to reduce religious freedom to mere freedom of worship” without guarantees of respect for freedom of conscience.
At present, the Obama administration is considering imposing a contraception and sterilization mandate that would require all insurance companies to provide those services free of charge. The regulation has a religious-exemption clause, but it provides very few exceptions for Church organizations.
The next day, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius (a Catholic herself) proved him right. The HHS has announced today that, despite considering vociferous objections from religious groups, new rules which will require religious organizations to provide funding for contraceptive services, in violation of their consciences, will remain in place. The bishops respond:
The Catholic bishops of the United States called “literally unconscionable” a decision by the Obama Administration to continue to demand that sterilization, abortifacients and contraception be included in virtually all health plans. Today’s announcement means that this mandate and its very narrow exemption will not change at all; instead there will only be a delay in enforcement against some employers.
“In effect, the president is saying we have a year to figure out how to violate our consciences,” said Cardinal-designate Timothy M. Dolan, archbishop of New York and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The cardinal-designate continued, “To force American citizens to choose between violating their consciences and forgoing their healthcare is literally unconscionable.It is as much an attack on access to health care as on religious freedom. Historically this represents a challenge and a compromise of our religious liberty.”
The HHS rule requires that sterilization and contraception – including controversial abortifacients – be included among “preventive services” coverage in almost every healthcare plan available to Americans. “The government should not force Americans to act as if pregnancy is a disease to be prevented at all costs,” added Cardinal-designate Dolan.
At issue, the U.S. bishops and other religious leaders insist, is the survival of a cornerstone constitutionally protected freedom that ensures respect for the conscience of Catholics and all other Americans.
Filed under Politics
Phobos-Grunt Reentry Expected This Weekend
Spacecraft watchers are expecting Russia’s foiled Phobos-Grunt spacecraft to reenter Earth’s atmosphere this weekend, potentially creating a visible meteor-like fireball and dropping debris to the ground. Phobos-Grunt was launched in an effort to reach Mars’ moon Phobos, but was stranded in Earth orbit when its rockets failed to fire after launch. Since that time, the spacecraft has fallen progressively closer to Earth, and is predicted to reenter the atmosphere and burn up on Sunday, but such predictions are imprecise as many factors affect exactly when and where the spacecraft will come down. As the expected reentry time grows closer and the probe’s orbit shows clearer signs of decaying, the reentry point will be easier to pinpoint. Until then, watchers are keeping a close eye on Phobos-Grunt’s downward path. Spaceflight101 hosts a webpage with the most up-to-date information here.
Filed under Space Exploration
Ring Laser Measurement of Earth’s Rotation
German scientists have made use of a phenomenon of light called the Sagnac effect to directly measure the rotation of the Earth. In so doing, they have observed not only the simple fact that the Earth rotates, but they have also been able to measure the slight wobbles that occur in the Earth’s rotation due to precession and the gravitational effects of the Sun and the Moon.
The Sagnac effect occurs when two beams of light are sent in opposite directions around a rotating path. (This set-up is usually created with a laser arranged with mirrors which split the laser beam such that the split beams travel in opposite directions around a square-shaped circuit with a detector. This apparatus is called a ring laser.) The light beams travel around the circuit and intersect, at which point they cause interference with each other which can be measured. Because the light beams themselves are traveling at a fixed velocity, if you continuously rotate the whole circuit, the point at which the beams intersect is continually accelerating towards one beam of light and away from the other, which means that each beam of light has traveled a different distance when they finally intersect. Since each beam has traveled a different distance, the beams are no longer in phase when they intersect, which changes the interference pattern. Measuring these changes gives information about the rotation of the whole apparatus.
The Earth itself is rotating, of course, so a sensitive enough detector will detect this effect even in a ring laser that appears to be sitting still relative to the Earth. The scientists in the German experiment have constructed such a ring laser anchored to a concrete pillar, buried underground, and isolated from every factor they could think of that would affect the precise measurement of interference. Their measurements have shown that the Earth not only rotates (which wasn’t really in question) but, more importantly, have also allowed more accurate observations about the slight wobbles in the Earth’s rotation that are normally so small as to be unnoticeable. Refining these measurements of the Earth’s motion will not only provide a greater understanding of the Earth’s motion through space, allow more precise astronomical calculations, and reveal information about the Earth’s structure, they will also allow timing and navigational systems to be more accurately calibrated in the future.
Filed under Earth Science, Physics
Science and Faith Conference Videos Online
Videos of the talks from Franciscan University’s recent conference on science and faith — including such speakers as Stephen Barr, Alvin Plantinga, Ed Feser, and Benjamin Wiker — are now available online. I may post a few with more commentary in the future once I’ve had a chance to see them, but in the meantime you can get started watching them now.
Filed under General
