Note
Lemaître and the Christian origin of the Big Bang
The single most important cosmological theory of the twentieth century was proposed by a Catholic priest.
Georges Lemaître (1894 to 1966), Belgian astronomer and ordained Catholic priest, published in 1927 the equations describing an expanding universe and in 1931 the proposal that the universe had originated from a "primeval atom" in a finite past. His work pre dated and predicted Hubble's observational confirmation of cosmic expansion. Fred Hoyle, an opponent of the theory, coined the dismissive term "Big Bang." It stuck.
Lemaître carefully kept his physics and his theology separate. When Pope Pius XII attempted in 1951 to use the Big Bang as proof of biblical creation, Lemaître personally asked the Pope not to make such claims. His reasoning: a scientific theory should be evaluated on scientific grounds, and theological claims should not be pinned to any particular cosmological model.
The broader pattern: Boyle, Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, Mendel, Lemaître, Eddington, Polkinghorne, Collins. Modern science was, demographically and conceptually, the work of Christians. The popular "Christianity stalled science" narrative is anti historical. Tim O'Neill, an atheist medievalist, has documented this at length.
This does not prove Christianity true. It refutes the rhetorical move that Christianity and science are inherently opposed.
Reading
- John Farrell, The Day Without Yesterday, 2005.
- James Hannam, God's Philosophers, 2009.
- John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives, 1991.
Builds on