Behind Every Door: God

Is there, as many scientists insist, an unbridgeable gulf between modern science and revealed religion? From Pope Pius XII last week came an earnest, carefully documented answer: no. In the latest physics and astronomy, said the Pope, "true science discovers God in an everincreasing degree--as though God were waiting behind every door." In particular, he told the Pontifical Academy of Sciences,* the proofs of God's existence which St. Thomas Aquinas advanced in the 13th Century are constantly being buttressed anew by the discoveries of science.

Pope Pius asked his listeners to consider the new discoveries of the mutability of matter "in the deepest recesses of nature"--the nuclei of atoms. St. Thomas' first proof of God's existence depends on the omnipresence of change in all matter, which leads to the postulation of one unchanging agency at the source, i.e., God, "the unmoved mover," without whom it would be necessary to postulate an endless series of "movers," changing and being changed.

Science & Genesis. The Pope noted that Astronomer Edwin P. Hubble of California's Mt. Wilson Observatory has observed that "galaxies tend to double the distance between themselves every 1,300 years," which suggests that "some 10 billion years back in time these galaxies were all compressed in a relatively close space. This and the calculable age of the earth's solid crust and the age of meteorites and the oscillations of star systems add nothing to what the Christian learns in the first verse of Genesis . . .

"Science has provided proof of the beginning of time, and the reasoning mind asks instinctively what preceded time?" The answer is a "creative omnipotence whose power . . . called to existence, through an act of love, matter and exuberant energy. Modern science bears witness to that primordial order of 'Let there be light' when nuclear particles broke forth from inert matter and . . . radiated forth, reuniting into galaxies.

"What, then, is the importance of modern science for the argument for the existence of God based on the mutability of the cosmos? By means of exact and detailed research . . . it has considerably broadened and deepened the empirical foundation on which this argument rests . . . It has, besides, followed the course and the direction of cosmic developments and . . . pointed to their beginning in time some five billion years ago. Thus, with that concreteness which is characteristic of physical proofs, it has confirmed the contingency of the universe and also the well-founded deduction as to the epoch when the cosmos came forth from the hands of the Creator."

Man on His Knees. "Hence, creation took place in time. Therefore, there is a creator, therefore, God exists.

"Although it is neither explicit nor complete, this is the reply we were awaiting from science, and which the present human generation is awaiting from it. It is a reply which bursts forth from mature and calm consideration of only one aspect of the universe, namely, its mutability. But this is already enough to make the entire human race, which is the peak and the rational expression of both the macrocosm and the microcosm, become conscious of its Exalted Maker, realize that it belongs to Him . . . and then, falling on its knees before His Sovereign Majesty, begin to invoke His name."

* Among the academy's members: Atomic Physicist Niels Bohr, Sir Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin, CalTech's Robert A. Millikan.

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