From: jgacker@news.gsfc.nasa.gov (James G. Acker)
Subject: Re: On God and Science
Organization: Goddard Space Flight Center
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 15:46:22 GMT

	More thoughts on this particular noteworthy effort from
Kalki.


kalki33!system@lakes.trenton.sc.us wrote:
: ON GOD AND SCIENCE
: 
: by Sadaputa Dasa
: 
: (c) 1992 The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust
: Used by permission.
: 
[intro and O'Keefe quotes deleted]	

: To support this idea, O'Keefe quotes Pope Pius XII, who said in his
: address to the Pontifical Academy of Science in 1951:
: 
:         In fact, it would seem that present-day science, with one
:         sweeping step back across millions of centuries, has succeeded
:         in bearing witness to the primordial Fiat lux ["Let there be
:         light"] uttered at the moment when, along with matter, there
:         burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation, while the
:         particles of chemical elements split and formed into millions of
:         galaxies.[3]
: 
: Now this might seem a reasonable union of religion and science. God
: creates the universe in a brief moment; then everything runs according
: to accepted scientific principles. Of the universe's
: fifteen-billion-year history, the first tiny fraction of a second is to
: be kept aside as sacred ground, roped off from scientific scrutiny. Will
: scientists agree not to trespass on this sacred territory?

	Interesting tone Sadaputa takes here.  I can't figure out if he
thinks science should not attempt to explain this, or if he is
ridiculing attempts to do so.  CERTAINLY science should address the issue.
But any scientific theory of this event shouldn't bring God in as an
operative agent.

: Certainly not. Stephen Hawking, holder of Issac Newton's chair at
: Cambridge University, once attended a conference on cosmology organized
: by Jesuits in the Vatican. The conference ended with an audience with
: the Pope. Hawking recalls:
: 
:         He told us that it was all right to study the evolution of the
:         universe after the big bang, but we should not inquire into the
:         big bang itself because that was the moment of creation and
:         therefore the work of God. I was glad then that he did not know
:         the subject of the talk I had just given at the conference --
:         the possibility that space-time was finite but had no boundary,
:         which means that it had no beginning, no moment of creation.[4]
: 
: Whether or not Hawking's theory wins acceptance, this episode shows that
: science cannot allow any aspect of objective reality to lie outside its
: domain.

	Is Sadaputa Dasa saying that science should allow an aspect
of objective reality to lie outside its domain?  If it is "objective
reality" (which requires a definition), I believe it falls into the
categories of what science can consider.
	BTW, is there anyone that can explain (in ludicrously simple
terms) what Hawking's theory means?  If there was a Big Bang, doesn't
that indicate at least that at one time there was no matter in the
cosmos, and that at a definable moment matter came into existence?
I make no claims of being a cosmologist.


	More on my hero (Gingerich) next.

	Jim Acker
	jgacker@neptune.gsfc.nasa.gov
Xref: sparky talk.origins:15673 sci.skeptic:21451