Lesson 26 –
Can Scientists Believe in God?

The example of Fr. Lemaitre by itself flatly refutes the idea that great scientists do not or cannot believe in God. In fact, Lemaitre’s dual role as a scientist and priest was not uncommon in centuries past. Even in the modern era, we can find plenty of examples of men who served God as either priests or religious and who also were pioneers of their scientific disciplines.

These figures include Fr. James Macelwane, a brilliant geophysicist, as well as Br. Guy Consolmagno and the late Fr. George Coyne—both prominent, recent astronomers who studied the heavens using the most sophisticated tools and theories.

Course Reading

Summa Contra Gentiles bk. II, c. 17-18 | St. Thomas Aquinas

Five Proofs of the Existence of God: Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Aquinas, Leibniz, p. 273-275 | Edward Feser

Excerpt from Five Proofs for the Existence of God by Edward Feser:

The claim that “the methods of science are the only reliable ways to secure knowledge of anything” [Alexander Rosenberg, The Atheist’s Guide to Reality (New York: W. W. Norton), 6] is not itself a scientific claim, not something that can be established using scientific methods. Indeed, that science is even a rational form of inquiry (let alone the only rational form of inquiry) is not a claim that can be established scientifically. For scientific inquiry rests on a number of philosophical assumptions: the assumption that there is an objective world external to the minds of scientists; the assumption that this world is governed by regularities of the sort that might be captured in scientific laws; the assumption that the human intellect and perceptual apparatus can uncover and accurately describe these regularities; and so forth. Since scientific method presupposes these things, it cannot attempt to justify them without arguing in a circle.

Course Listening

Is Belief In God Rational | Prof. Michael Gorman

Science and Religion: the Myth of Conflict | Stephen Barr

This episode was made possible through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this project are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.