You probably think you’ve heard them all. Lifeguard at the sewage plant. Public school teacher. Dick Cheney’s hunting buddy. Bill collector for Dr. Kevorkian. Oakland Raiders assistant coach.
Well, now there’s a new one to add to the list: Vatican astronomer.
Sure, the hours are OK, and Rome is full of easily-charmed young women, and you can spend most of the workday goofing off and theorizing whether space aliens are allowed to take communion or not.
However, there’s also the real possibility that if you start doing, you know, science, then you might be arrested as a heretic and locked away in the basement where they keep confiscated copies of The Da Vinci Code.
But this doesn’t seem to worry star astronomer Brother Guy Consolmagno:
Q: Is there something spiritual in it for you?
A: Anybody who’s looked at the stars, it’s got to be spiritual. Now, I don’t want to say I find God in the stars. It’s the other way around. … You know, the reason that they fund us … is to show the world that the church embraces science.
For whatever reason, the world seems not to be convinced about the whole “embraces science” thing yet. Perhaps when the church abandons its evidenceless claims of human parthenogenesis and resurrection and transsubstantiation and miracle cures “they” don’t want you to know about, then we might start taking Brother Guy’s claim seriously.
(Plus, “it’s got to be spiritual” is not exactly scientific reasoning at its finest.)
Now, that’s not to say that the job doesn’t have its perks. For instance, while non-Vatican scientists have to spend lots of time becoming familiar with what counts as “evidence” for things, Brother Guy gets to remain blissfully unaware:
Q: Any evidence of Heaven in the heavens?
A: In a funny way, yes. It’s not enough that the universe makes sense, and that we can study it — that there are laws to be found. … But the fact is, the skies are beautiful. And even the laws of physics that describe the skies are beautiful. And to me that is the beauty of the creator coming through.
Q: Any evidence that after you die you go to heaven or hell depending on whether you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal lord and savior, ate his cracker-flesh, and let a priest fondle you in a dark booth?
A: In a funny way, yes. The skies are beautiful!
Q: Any evidence that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim?
A: In a funny way, yes. The skies are beautiful!
Q: Any evidence that there’s a lost city of Atlantis somewhere under the ocean and that it’s populated by bloodthirsty merpeople who are waiting for the Mayan Prophecy Year of 2012 to come aboveground and conquer us all as revenge for the plastic we’ve been dumping into the Pacific?
A: In a funny way, yes. The skies are beautiful!
Or come up with your own. Thanks, Catholic Church!
However, there’s also the real possibility that if you start doing, you know, science, then you might be arrested as a heretic and locked away in the basement where they keep confiscated copies of The Da Vinci Code.
Y’know, usually you at least pick apt targets, and I hate to ruin a joke, but Galileo was locked up in the equivalent of a five-star hotel. It would have been hard to treat such a close friend of the Pope (the Roger Clinton of his day, Galileo never knew when to shut up and quit publicly making things awkward for his buddy) any other way. Even after he called Fr. Orazio Grassi, one of the Vatican astronomers of the day (they’ve been pretending to be interested in science for five hundred years) and later one of his prosecutors, an idiot for suggesting that comets were made from water ice instead of being optical illusions. That Galileo! What a card.
Then there was Fr. Georges Lemaitre, originator of the Big Bang theory, though admittedly not a Vatican astronomer per se. Lemaitre is said to have groaned when he heard the Pope had endorsed the idea of the Big Bang, knowing it meant he would have to spend years more than previously fighting irritated and wilfully ignorant atheists who would cling to the rival Steady State hypothesis as a means of sticking it to religion. And of course, he was correct.
Yours is funnier though.
Brother Guy Consolmagno came to my undergrad many years ago while I was taking an Ancient and Modern Cosmologies course.. He seemed like he was on the level at the time. I did think that he was hopelessly misguided and didn’t do much real science. I think he was talking about how he looks at asteroids. He didn’t talk too much about the religious side since I was at a Lutheran school already. He wasn’t very enlightening in general.
Vatican astronomers make distinctions: when they deal with this world, they obey the laws of this world. But those guys also believe there is a world superior to the material world, and they have real trouble experimenting with it.
How great it is to find your blog of people who are honestly looking for answers. You people see only what is material; lots of Christian ideas are out of this world (and help us to live better in this world). Plato in his ‘Allegory of the Cave’ started it. Abbott, writer of ‘Flatland’, described contiguous dimensional worlds. ‘Techie Worlds’, available at Amazon.com, analyzes in a mechanistic sort of way. It looks at Christian concepts like Trinity, resurrection, judgment, soul, Satan and hell. Viewed dimensionally, those ideas make logical sense. That follows the pattern of science: examine phenomena in the light of a theory. When phenomena become more understandable, accept that theory.
Throughout history mankind has experienced strange ideas and events: Wicca, Greek gods, Hindu pantheism, upturned corners on oriental temples, the sun dancing at Fatima. Materialists just deny them all. ‘Techie Worlds’, with its geometric understanding of worlds contiguous with ours, explains the structure of our real worlds. It is not accepted by bible thumpers and professional religious. They have faith. Instead it serves thinkers who are able to integrate sensible ideas.
GeorgeRic
The writer above is a bit dogmatic. H/She only knows of the material world. A lot of religion is based on the existince of a world superior but contiguous with ours. Both views require an act of faith, but open minded people do consider both.
Techie Worlds (available at Amazon.com) lays out a clear view of contiguous worlds and why Vatican astronomers are justified in their work and their belief.
GeorgeRic
Just can’t take an objective tack, huh, liberal pigshit motherfucker?
I’m Catholic and, while I recognize that the Church is slow to recognize the truths of science, pigfuckers like you need not feed their own biases against the church in such flagrantly idiotic arguments. What failures in your personal life do you need to blame on the Church? I’m sure the stupidity had much more to do with your inferior genetics than a bad experience in Catholic gradeschool.
Go fuck yourself, you moron motherfucker.