Modern Physics and Ancient Faith

Jon just finished reading this book, "Modern Physics and Ancient Faith". While he was reading it he described a lot of it to me and it sounded soooooo interesting I had to start it as soon as he finished. It's by Dr. Stephen M. Barr a physics professor at the University of Delaware. He received a Papal medal for it. Yeah, it's that good!

I'm only on page 15 and so far the book is so great that I need to share some things.

Did you know that St. Augustine, St. Clement, Origen and other early Church people held this view about creation

"St. Augustine held that the six days of creation were not to be taken literally as a period of time or a temporal sucession. He held, rather, that all things were produced simultaneously by God in a single instant and subsequently underwent some natural process of development."

Sounds a little like Big Bang and evolution :)


I knew St. Augustine was an awesome doctor of the faith, but I didn't know he wrote stuff like this:

"Usually even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics, and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.... If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe our books in matters concerning the ressurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falshoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren, ... to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture, ... although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make the assertion."


SO AWESOME!!

This is why believers have a responsibility to educate themselves about the natural world and science. Basically you don't want to be caught spouting nonsense. Faith and Reason people, faith and reason. JPII said something at one point about Science and Faith both being out to find the truth. Since faith and reason go hand in hand we can't deny that which is found to be true! Something like that anyways....

In short, this book is rad. I highly recommend it, even though I'm only on the 15th page. Jon said the whole thing is awesome so I'd trust his opinion. I'll update more as I go on!!