Wonderful talk by George Coyne

The capstone of my time here was a talk by George Coyne, SJ. Coyne talk was titled “Dance of the Fertile Universe: Cosmic and Human Evolution.”Coyne is the former Director of the Vatican Observatory (1978-2006), and has written extensively debunking the “Intelligent Design” theory. He gave a quick history of the universe (“if the universe is one year old, scientists have only been around in the last second”), and discussed the role of science, politics, and religion.

I was impressed by his presentation on the inaccuracy of framing the debate as “Chance or necessity” (of how humans came to be on earth). Rather, he suggests that chance is the method that God used to create us. “He” knew how the universe would end up when He created the Big Bang. Although I’m not quite sure whether Coyne believes that God knew how the world would end up, or just that something good would come of it. In his writings, I have gleamed that his perspective is that we humans cannot understand the workings of God and creation, and that what we perceive of as chance may be intentional on God’s part.

This is, of course, sort of a cop out. ‘Well, I can’t prove the existence of God, but I’m going to believe it anyway.’ But I think that’s what it’s all about in the end. Beliefs are just that. We have some circumstances that lead us to a belief. They may be:

• Religious upbringing
• A life-altering experience
• Extensive study
• A ‘feeling’ or sensation that something is right.

I was able to ask a question at the end that I think I wasn’t quite eloquent enough to make clear, but I asked him how can anyone believe in any one God/book in our multicultural world. His response was that if one cannot believe in God any more, one should not believe. I think he thought I was asking more for myself than as a general question for other “believers,” but I do agree with his answer.

I’ll probably write more on this later, but that’s it for now. If anyone has any questions or thoughts to add, feel free to leave a comment 🙂

Lee