I am a scientist and a practicing Roman Catholic. I write science, I also write about science, digging into the ways scientists do their work and trying to imagine how we might do it better — what ever better means. And I write about God, God in the laundry, God in molecules, God in all things.
I'm privileged to be an Adjunct Scholar of the Vatican Observatory, where science and faith intersect on a daily basis. The Vatican Observatory Foundation, which supports the work of the Observatory, has put together a superb and growing collection of materials on science and faith here.
What have I been saying at the intersection between science and faith?
A long loving look at the real, an interview about faith, God and science
Why a scientist finds Ignatian spirituality compelling DotMagis, Loyola Press.
Stammering about God, Bearings Online, Collegeville Institute. Observing through the telescopes at the Vatican Observatory outside Rome.
Touching the stars, DotMagis, Loyola Press. "To hold in my hand for a moment a piece of the universe was an intimate experience of the infinite, the sublime collapsed into an unremarkable package. And what do I desire, if not the infinite, invincible, ineffable God, come to dwell within my very ordinary life?"
Imagine: A lesson from science class, DotMagis, Loyola Press. "...what I desire for my students, I suspect God desires for me as well: the courage to stand before the ineffable, to look and see the world as it is, and to wring the real from what in this moment I can only imagine."
The spiritual case for dust, DotMagis, Loyola Press. "the unpolished and ordinary is cloaked in the extraordinary. Even as I settle back into my everyday life, in that dust, tiny tokens of the universe have settled into my office. Should I be able to sort through the motes, I expect I would find fragments brushed from the cliffs in Ireland, blown into the air by storms in the Pacific, and burnt off comets that blundered into Earth’s atmosphere. Crumbs of the infinite lie scattered across my desk."
Some rough notes from a talk at the Franklin Institute. "Religion should not fear science. The universe is sometimes called God’s other book of revelation. St. Anthony the Great, a 4th century monk living isolated in the desert, did not bemoan his lack of books, even the Bible, saying “My book is the nature of created things, and as often as I have mind to read the words of God, they are at my hand.” Sixteen centuries later, the universe is still God’s other book, there for us to read. It’s just that nowadays it can be helpful to know some calculus if you want to get all the details of the plot straight."
