In our course on the relationship of Christianity with the Natural Sciences we are going to be exposed to a wide spectrum of theist-agnostic-atheist thought. Even within the theist camp we will see a significant variation in thought.
There is a blog by Chet Raymo that I keep an eye on and he posted a thoughtful response that he titled Capax Dei on recent changes of thinking in the Catholic Church. LINK TO POST. He makes reference to the current Pope's position on Science and Faith which is interesting in it's own right.
While Raymo's blog makes for interesting reading, and is definitely a position that we will need to deal with in our course, it does beg the question of where we draw the line between conservative evangelical theism and liberal theism. I think that his revised Creed at the end makes the line clear for us. I will reproduce it here:
"We believe in God, the source and animator of heaven and earth, and all that is seen and unseen.
We honor the personhood of Jesus Christ, light of the world, who gave his name and inspiration to the Christian fellowship, and who taught us to love all women and men as we love ourselves. For us he made the ultimate sacrifice, that we might live more freely and graciously.
His spirit lives on, in the mystical body of the Church. Together, in his name, we celebrate the mystery of life, and await the time when his dream of universal peace is fulfilled.
With the water of Baptism we affirm our desire to wash away our sins and live the love he exampled in his life. In remembrance of him, we share together the bread and wine of the Eucharist, and invite all persons of good will, regardless of faith, to join our table.
We commit ourselves for as long as we shall live to the continuance of his message of charity and hope, to provident stewardship of the planet, and to the fulness of life in the terrestrial world to come.
Amen"
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
A Time to Pick Up Stones: The Heavens Pour Forth
It is time to re-activate this blog for the Christianity and Natural Sciences course for the coming semester. I will be posting mostly comments and internet links on this blog related to Faith and Science issues. These links and posts may be part of classroom discussions.
A writer for Discover Magazine has selected the 10 most amazing astronomy photographs of 2008. The one above spoke to me but they are all pretty astonishing. I especially like the image of a exploding star from the other side of the Universe (the light would have had to start more than 4 billion years before our star the Sun formed). But the one I have to post is the one above of a spiral galaxy among other spiral galaxy. If you got far enough away from our Milky Way Galaxy this is what home would look like. It is so beautiful and complete one would assume it is a cheap starfield background painting but not only is it real it was taken with a ground based telescope. Beautiful, simply beautiful.
It is a bit gimmicky but this little video of the Moon passing across the face of the Earth as seen from a satellite sent to look at comets is kinda neat also.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
