
Faith and the Expanding Universe of Georges Lemaître - pan_cogito
http://churchlife.nd.edu/2019/04/04/faith-and-the-expanding-universe-of-georges-lemaitre/
======
ziotom78
Being a Catholic cosmologist, I have always been intrigued by Lemaitre's
figure. I read «The Atom of the Universe: The Life and Work of Georges
Lemaitre» [1] and discovered that Lemaitre was a pionieer of numerical
analysis as well: he studied various computer languages (he seemed to be in
love with Algol) and bought one of the first computing machines in the 50s.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Atom-Universe-Life-Georges-
Lemaitre/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Atom-Universe-Life-Georges-
Lemaitre/dp/8378862259)

------
svieira
> his struggles to defend his “Big Bang” model of the origin of the universe
> against those who accused him of being religiously motivated

His opponents literally proposed that matter simply came-to-be out of nothing
in order to avoid the possibility that the universe might have a beginning.

If you are interested in the history of this disagreement about the nature of
the universe you should also read Stanley Jaki's _God and the Cosmologists_
[1]

[1]: [https://www.amazon.com/God-Cosmologists-Stanley-L-
Jaki/dp/08...](https://www.amazon.com/God-Cosmologists-Stanley-L-
Jaki/dp/0895267497)

------
throw0101a
See also Johannes Kepler:

> Geometry is one and eternal shining in the mind of God. That share in it
> accorded to humans is one of the reasons that humanity is the image of God.

* [https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler)

------
kgwxd
Are the mods off today?

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beders
" For the former, it strengthens our case that science and faith are
compatible."

No it's not. Humans are just able to hold contradictory or conflicting
thoughts in their heads simultaneously

And it cheapens science when you try to superimpose your religious
superstitions on it. Note that I'm talking about Faith here, not the faith
that a hypothesis might work out which is useful to have.

~~~
jfengel
LeMaitre wasn't imposing his superstitions on science. He's not insisting that
Genesis is somehow a simplified account of the Big Bang. That kind of
"scientific creationism" is mostly for American Evangelicals trying to justify
their biblical absolutism.

LeMaitre is a Catholic priest, and despite their anti-science reputation from
the late Medieval era, the Catholic Church is quote pro-science. They've
accepted both evolution and the Big Bang for a very long time. They treat
Genesis as a myth, a spiritually informative story that is not literally true.

They do believe in genuine miracles, but they downplay them substantially
(though they're still quite popular with many individual Catholics). But the
official teaching is that human beings evolved in a universe that began 14
billion years ago. There were many miracles in it, including the ensoulment of
human beings which makes them categorically different from nonhuman animals,
but that soul is metaphysical and immune to experiment -- and therefore
doesn't conflict with science.

Catholic faith isn't faith in the world, but faith in the soul of humanity and
the promise of an afterlife. That faith is unscientific while being compatible
with science.

There are many reasons to criticize the Catholic church, but it's not guilty
of imposing superstition on science. (Even the Medieval crimes against science
are more complicated than the common story is told.) Christianity as a whole
seems very anti-science from an American perspective, and that taints our
perception of religion as a whole since it's our dominant religious force, but
it's not absolutely impossible for somebody to be religiously faithful and a
genuinely skeptical scientist.

Like you, I apply Occam's Razor, and tend to dismiss "faith" in that sense as
an unneeded hypothesis. Catholicism is all about a "salvation" you and I feel
no need of. Especially since, as I said, the Catholic Church has been guilty
of so many recent crimes, and does not seem like a force for moral good. But I
do think it's important to understand that there are people whose faith
doesn't have to conflict with either science or ethics, and LeMaitre is one
example.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
> LeMaitre wasn't imposing his superstitions on science.

... because the two are not compatible, exactly.

> but that soul is metaphysical and immune to experiment -- and therefore
> doesn't conflict with science.

Yes, it does. Being untestable is about as incompatible with science as you
can get. And arbitrarily labeling an untestable claim with a fancy word also
doesn't make it compatible with science.

~~~
sonusario
>> but that soul is metaphysical and immune to experiment -- and therefore
doesn't conflict with science.

> Yes, it does. Being untestable is about as incompatible with science as you
> can get.

Math is not testable with the scientific method, but it is obviously
compatible with science.

> And arbitrarily labeling an untestable claim with a fancy word also doesn't
> make it compatible with science.

Like "multiverse" perhaps?

~~~
Pharmakon
I think you’ll find that multiverse interpretations of quantum mechanics, like
all interpretations, are far more popular and important in the press and
places like this this in science. Very _very_ few astronomers, cosmologists
and physicists are dedicating their working life to something that is broadly
considered unfalsifiable.

Don’t confuse popular culture and science with the real thing. The most
popular interpretation is “shut up and calculate” and will probably remain
that for a very long time.

~~~
sonusario
> Very very few astronomers, cosmologists and physicists are dedicating their
> working life to something that is broadly considered unfalsifiable.

Correct me if I am wrong, but from what I understand, the multiverse is not
observable directly or indirectly. Thus it is not scientifically falsifiable
by virtue of not being observable.

~~~
Pharmakon
There are a few circumstances that lend themselves to observation, such as
looking for characteristic concentric circles in the CMB, but they’ve never
been observed. Beyond the few limited cases, you’re right it’s not observable
even in principle.

------
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
> Appropriately recognizing Lemaître’s name in the history of astronomy, by
> accepting the recommendation of the IAU to use the term “Hubble-Lemaître
> law”, will benefit scientist-believers and scientist-atheists alike. For the
> former, it strengthens our case that science and faith are compatible.

WTF?

Newton spent a lot of time on alchemy. Does the fact that we have Newton's
laws of motion strengthen the case that science and alchemy are compatible?

If Lemaître deserves recognition on this, then that is for something he did
while avoiding faith. The fact that someone made a contribution to human
knowledge while avoiding faith does exactly nothing to validate other
irrational behaviour the same person exhibited at other times, nor does it
demonstrate any kind of compatibility, other than the obvious and trivial fact
that people can be rational in some regard while being irrational in some
other regard.

~~~
scottlocklin
You realize the scientific method was invented by medieval monks, right?

~~~
heavenlyblue
Because during medieval times monks were the only ones educated enough to be
able to do so. Not because religion helped them.

Let's not forget that during the same times we were struggling with proving
the Earth was circling around the Sun because of what the scriptures said.

~~~
scottlocklin
There's a decent argument to be made that it is an inherently Roman Catholic
ideology. For example, no other civilization came up with the idea; the
medieval scholastics did, and heralded it through the modern day. Obviously
there's more to the argument than that, but there's no use talking about it
unless you've studied the theology of the day.

And you are incorrect, during medieval times, monks were not the "only ones
educated enough to be able to do so." Jews, merchants, royals were all quite
educated. To say nothing of scholars in other civilizations, some of which
operated at a higher technological and cultural level than the West did.

~~~
heavenlyblue
Please clear this up in terms of the names of the medieval monks as Wikipedia
would easily disagree with you on this one.

~~~
scottlocklin
Please define "this" -I made several statements. I don't really care what
wikipedia says about much of anything.

~~~
heavenlyblue
You stated scientific method was invented by medieval monks. But even ancient
Greeks were thinking of this through a concept called dialectic. So you have
no basis for your arguments as you're orders of magnitude away from the truth.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_scientific_method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_scientific_method)

~~~
scottlocklin
The scientific method was first stated by Robert Grosseteste and later refined
by Roger Bacon. They were both, FWIIW medieval monks -in the 1200s. Science
and the scientific method and the business of scientific inquiry itself
remained an unbroken tradition from the moment Grosseteste first stated it up
until the present day. From Robbie BigBalls to James Clerk Maxwell; you could
trace the direct scientific lineage.

The Greeks didn't do anything remotely resembling science; I've read, for
example the remaining fragments of Eudoxus and Hipparchus (and Claudius
Ptolemy); they had no concept of hypothesis experiment and verification. It
was just model building -like modern Economics or something like noodle
theory; it's only right by accident, because they have no way of testing when
they're wrong or right. Cool idea using math to model reality: it's not the
same thing.

This isn't something I just trot out for dick waving contests on the internet:
I actually know something about it and thought about it well beyond the
reading of wikipedia quackery. Avicenna, for example, was a very interesting
character and arguably he and other islamic thinkers may have influenced
Grosseteste. Heck, you could argue that Kautilya had developed something like
the scientific method. However, none of them birthed the scientific tradition:
the monks did. I'm sorry if this triggers you or whatever; it's a historical
fact -as self evidently true as the existence of Julius Caesar or Philip II of
Spain.

~~~
heavenlyblue
>> This isn't something I just trot out for dick waving contests on the
internet: I actually know something about it and thought about it well beyond
the reading of wikipedia quackery.

I don't think you know about it. Grosseteste directly quotes Aristotle while
developing his idea for "scientific reasoning". And you're somehow denying the
progress made by the Greeks/Romans whose works were translated by Grosseteste
himself.

You sound like a typical religious fanatic who tends to deny the fact that
religion per se did nothing for science. Church as an organisation - could,
but again - in spite of religion.

>> I'm sorry if this triggers you or whatever; it's a historical fact -as self
evidently true as the existence of Julius Caesar or Philip II of Spain.

I am not the one who is triggered. You're bringing many names and points,
writing paragraphs here, but you are yet to quote a single source which you
didn't do.

Not even going to start on the definite lack of attention to punctuation you
tend to exhibit which is usually a sign of a person whose ego got a burn.

~~~
lliamander
Greek dialectic, while cool and useful, is not the same thing as the
scientific method. It was an essential ingredient to science, but not science
itself.

The Islamic world had access to the same (and perhaps even more) Greek
heritage, but did not have "science".

Regarding this so-called fact "that religion per se did nothing for science"
here is at least a series of arguments for the case that the particularities
of Christian theology (in contrast with other belief systems of the time and
prior) made a fertile intellectual ground for science as a concept and
practice to develop:

[https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/11/summa-origines-
scientia...](https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/11/summa-origines-scientiarum-
articulus-3.html)

~~~
heavenlyblue
None of the points presented in that blog have been invented by Christians as
most of the Christian philosphy was copied from Greek philosophy and then
adapted to scriptures.

And let’s be honest - a blog is not a source. Give me a book that is you have
read and it gave you the historical knowledge about where Christian
philosophical basis came from.

~~~
lliamander
> None of the points presented in that blog have been invented by Christians
> as most of the Christian philosphy was copied from Greek philosophy and then
> adapted to scriptures.

The point of the essay is explaining how those ideas were a result of specific
Christian theological commitments in contrast to pre-Christian pagan notions:
things like linear time, non-animism, the rational mind coming from the _Imago
Dei_ , belief that the world is not an illusion, etc.

The article cites Alfred North Whitehead, who said:

"I do not think that I have even yet brought out the greatest contribution of
medievalism to the formation of the scientific movement. I mean the
inexpungable belief that every detailed occurrence can be correlated with its
antecedents in a perfectly definite manner, exemplifying general principles.
Without this belief the incredible labours of scientists would be without
hope. It is this instinctive conviction, vividly poised before the
imagination, which is the motive power of research: -- that there is a secret,
a secret which can be unveiled."

> And let’s be honest - a blog is not a source. Give me a book that is you
> have read and it gave you the historical knowledge about where Christian
> philosophical basis came from.

That's some rather bizarre special pleading. The post is well-argued and well-
sourced. There's nothing inherently more authoritative about printing
something in a book, and here I can actually provide you with my source, for
free, _over the internet_.

