and he saw this vast difference between those who were the haves and the have-nots and became their spokesman through his music creates. >> would the recorded very few songs of his own. we have a listening space to that station that features 46 of the songs. that's what makes the recordings that he did make so significant and so important to us. ♪

>> good evening and welcome to the abdur planetary in. i am dr. gray swoope chase. i'm an astronomer here and i'm also very pleased and honored to be able to present to you tonight speaker brother guy consolmagno. rather guy is a longtime friend and he is one of a remarkable group of people that i first met her tears ago as a young graduate student at the university of arizona which is the part-time home of the jesuit astronomers at the observatory. brothers upwards had a long history here and abdur as well as other chicago institutions. in the past he has taught classes here. he has given public lectures and he's also on video up stairs in the walk-through space and time gallery of peace that not even brother sub for his seen yet.

so for those of you who aren't quite sure what to expect tonight i can tell you this won't be an apologetic talk for science and religion. in other words don't expect to hear science used to refute or promote a particular religious view. rather expect to hear how scientific and religious views of the cosmos cannot only coexist without diminishing the integrity of either but how ways of thinking about the world as one can also enrich the other. brothers guy is curator of the largest in the world. he ended undergraduate and masters degree from m.i.t. and a ph.d. in planetary sciences from the university of arizona. he has worked at harvard and m.i.t. the u.s. peace corps in kenya, and lafayette college before entering the jesuit order in 1989.

his research explores connections between meteorites and asteroids in the evolution of small solar system bodies. in 1996 he spent six weeks collecting meteorites with the national science foundation sponsored team in antarctica. several years ago he gave an excellent talk about this here at the adler by the way. in 2000 he was honored by the international astronomical union for his contributions to the study of meteorites and asteroids with the naming of asteroids 4597. he is the author of more than 200 scientific papers as well as a number of books including the one you'll hear about tonight which he baptized and -- "would you baptize an extraterrestrial?" and other questions from the astronomers in-box at the vatican observatory. co-authored with father paul bullard traded and we are selling copies of the book in our story. they will be available after

rather guy's presentation and rather guy will be signing copies of the book at the main and entrance. last week he was awarded the 2014 carl sagan medal at the division for planetary sciences in tucson for his decades long record of communicating planetary science to the public while maintaining an active science career. his unique position within our profession as a credible spokesperson for scientific honesty within the context of religious belief and for being a rational spokesperson who can convey exceptionally well how religion and science can coexist for believers. please join me in welcoming brother,.her doctor brother guy consolmagno. [applause] >> thank you everybody. the book is the real star of the show and what we are going to do is start with a short film that

tells you a little bit about the vatican observatory where he worked. i'm going to do a presentation based on the question that makes up the title of the book. i will then have a short reading from earlier on in the book and then we can have a few questions and answers. among other things this is being recorded by c-span which means if you are going to ask questions, please wait for the microphone or else people will not hear your question just by answering it. so let's start with the film. the. >> to science and religion are conversations about the universe. they are ways of learning how we interact with this universe. it's not simply a question of is there a god that there is a god now what do we do? it's not just a question of their art bunch of stars but rather why are there stars rex how do they work with how does that tell us how things things work under the? the interaction that i see in my own life is that religion gives me a reason to do with the

science. >> back in the papacy before frances who was benedict and in the final allocution to the fathers of the congregation was go to the frontiers. while there isn't much more frontier than 3.7 billion years away. >> the interest of the church for astronomy started in 1852 and then in 1891 pope leo the 13th wanted to have an observatory to show the church ties with science. >> on the wall surrounding the vatican as the city lights grow and as the italian government gives them back their territory in the 30s they built new telescopes on the roof of the papelbon how is. in kassig and off for the best telescopes -- telescopes in the 1930s.

he built a new telescope in the dark skies of arizona. ♪ ♪ ♪ >> i am working on three projects. the first one is near earth objects so what i'm doing is to observe them using the modern telescope. the second project is work done

on meteors what we call shooting stars and the third project is a network that will have four cameras here and in tucson so i can monitor anything viable in the earth's atmosphere and region. >> this advanced technology telescope was the first of the new technology telescope that has been considered pretty much the norm now in developing telescopes. with the advance of computer technology, we have the cake capability of bringing that advanced technology directly into our telescope. so it's expandable almost like it's a living machine so it can grow as technology grows. >> is still very important to maintain scientific research at the vatican simply because there still a lot of confusion about

this relationship between science and faith. we are not out here trying to prove the existence of god by looking for through a telescope. that is not what we are doing but we can say that if we want to obtain any reasonable results looking for that telescope we need to do it embracing a certain work ethic such as the same work ethic that the bible itself tells us through the gospels to embrace. ♪ >> human beings look at the stars and wonder. they want to know what is that? what is about? how do i fit it? they hear about the moon landing and they want to know what was that like? if we are part of the human race we are part of the race that went to the men. we are part of the species that looked at the stars and wondered

what the heck are those things? looking at the sky reminds you that there is more to the universe than what is for lunch. what's more, if you believe in a universe that god so loved that he sent his son to not only are you going to want to study the universe because it's kind of cool, it's an act of worship. it's an act of getting closer to the creator and getting closer to a universe as was said 1500 years ago was cleansed and quickened by the incarnation. then doing science is an act of worship. ♪ >> that give you a little idea of who we are and where we come from. this is not the cover of the

book. if you look carefully, you will notice that the subtitle is change. we went through various incarnations. this one was other strange question in the inbox at the observatory. originally it was crazy questions that we get. we decided that crazy might discourage people so it's just other questions that the idea of the book came out of the experience that paul and i and many other people at the observatory have of people coming to us with the same questions over and over and over again and not only are we kind of tired of answering them but we realize the answers we have been giving really warrant satisfying otherwise they wouldn't keep asking them. in a lot of cases the questions that are being asked are not really the questions that we are talking about but the questions that are being assumed before they are asked. i want to give an example of what i am talking about.

in september of 2012 i was in birmingham england. i was there to give an astronomy talk at the birmingham science festival. you can read the teacher. it's god said and then there's maxwell's equations, and there was light. as it turned out the day of my talk in birmingham england happened to coincide exactly with the visit of pope benedict in england. they were all there to cover the pope and i have agreed to be interviewed in order to publicize the science festival but obviously all they wanted to do was ask me questions about the pope. except the questions were things like so, when was the last time the pope interfered with your work and what is your biggest conflict with the pope? completely out of left field because for one thing they are assuming there's a conflict that we had never experienced. in fact the pope had supported us quite a bit.

they were not happy. they were not getting the story that they wanted and so finally one of them asked me, so would you baptize an extraterrestrial collects i answered only if she asks. it got a good laugh. that was what i wanted. they all laughed and then the next day they reported in the paper as if it was some big vatican pronouncement about aliens. [laughter] there at was. they did at least get that part right. so why that reaction? for that matter why did they ask that question the first-place? certainly is a popular question and it's why we use the bit for the title of the book because we figured it would sell books but why? why do people ask us that question so often? i think in the case of the journalists, it was meant to be a trick question, a trap

question. consider the context. they were looking for ways to make the pope look bad. they are pretty aggressive. the reporters were looking for a juicy story for ways to make me look stupid or at least to make my church look stupid so for them would you baptize an extraterrestrial was a gotcha question because consider if i had said yes i will baptize e.t. than i would have looked cosmically naïve. i would have been saying that little me human being has something to tell people who are bright enough that they can set on a spaceship across space and time. on the other hand if i had said no i wouldn't baptize e.t. then i would be admitting that christianity has no universal significance. i would be saying that is just for a stupid yokels back on planet earth. not really in the grand scheme of things. either way they thought they had me.

so when i just blurted out the first thing i could think of like only if she asked, i actually wound up turning the tables on them because i'm a baptism not my decision but e.t.'s. if e.t. with all of her superior technology decided freely to ask for baptism, if e.t. with all of her dance knowledge accepted that are humans sick or had something of importance to her to make those journalists look pretty stupid for having their bitty skepticism, the question of whether or not extraterrestrials would be involved in our religion is not a new question. people on both sides of the issue have addressed it. theologian joseph paul writes that the glory of god demand that the universe be filled with intelligent beings, not just us.

theologically he is sure of that that. on the other hand the american radical thomas paine used the inevitability of life elsewhere to make fun of christianity. he says christianity either demand the unlikely proposition that of all the world universe god chose to be in both affairs because some guy in some girl decided to eat an apple or else there were so many incarnations that the person who is irreverently called the son of god would have nothing else to do than travel from world to world in an endless succession of death with scarcely a moment for life. yeah. actually that argument deserves an answer. it's not outside the possibility that we are unique in the universe. it's not outside the possibility that the second person of the trinity who is indeed present as

in the beginning was the word as the second person who is to say that word can be expressed in more than one language? besides if you are catholic and you believe that the masses the sacrifice of christ it does happen a million times a day. more to the point who's to say that any salvation story has two parallel hours? just think of our legends of angels completely different salvation story. certainly if you are going to appreciate god is the creator of the universe big enough to contain billions of galaxies, begin either say the universe is so big or planet is so tiny and i'm so insignificant on this planet how could they not pay attention to me? or, you could say the universe is so big and i'm so

insignificant the fact that god does pay attention to me tells me just how incredibly big that god must be. contemplating what it would mean for humans to encounter aliens does something else. it forces us to ask, what is it to be human human in comparison to what? to ask what it means for an alien to have a soul makes the event say what do we mean by a sole? what is a sole? speculating on how christ's salvation might work for other beings makes you look a little bit and a new play at what is this so that -- the salvation supposed to be about anyway? in some ways this wonderful pogo cartoon. if you can't read it the philosopher of the cartoon people have been speculating

that people with advanced brains more dance of us. on the other hand maybe a faulty universe we have the most advanced brains. either way it's a sobering thought. we also have to recognize when the question of e.t. comes up all the time there's another reason why a lot of people are not just curious but actually hungry to be visited by aliens. seeing this world full of pain full of injustice, disease, they hope that any race advance enough to cross the stars and visit us really ought to be advanced enough to have figured out how to overcome those human ills. these people are looking to the aliens to be the saviors of humankind. two weeks ago i got one of those e-mails i get all the time. this undemanding that i tell

pope francis the next time i see him yeah right. [laughter] that i get pope francis to tell us the truth about e.t. and that quote because this guy knows what the truth of e.t. is, e.t. life is likely to be more ethically involved -- evolved and less satanic than humans. pope francis must empathize -- emphasized the themes of extraterrestrials not sharing original sven being more ethically evolved, being capable of sharing the christian method, being brothers. i love how he knows all about what the e.t. is going to be like. you no think back to the atheist who are convinced of finding e.t. until proven that atheism is correct and the guy who says finding e.t. will prove that there is a god that he made all of these universes. the fact that we haven't found e.t. hasn't caused either of those sites to doubt their faith.

i don't see why finding them should convince anybody. and furthermore whose to say that e.t.'s are going to be better or worse? maybe they are better. maybe they are worse. either way it's a sobering thought. okay, so maybe the extraterrestrials exist. maybe they are less satanic hate maybe they can get us to live better lives. maybe they can be our brothers. maybe, well consider the fate of that alien in the day the earth stood still to come back and save human kind. i hope we don't spoil things by telling you it's not a happy ending. after all don't wear to have a savior on earth and look what happened to him. instantly the people who made the movie in case you didn't get the message the savior goes around and calls himself mr. carpenter nudge nudge, wink

wink. [laughter] one thing you learn from science fiction is this. any creature of this universe should be subject not only to the same laws of physics and chemistry but the same rules of right and wrong. if you ever did come across a race that never send how would you know that they have the freedom to sin? the freedom that you need to be truly good. and should anybody think that technical advances actually mean moral advances? you know, is the human race of the 20 century more moral than our technologically primitive ancestors? 20th century with all of its technology also gave us world war i and world war ii. technology is cumulative. the more you have the more you can build on what you have got. hard, beauty ethics are it not so.

we have better paint. we have better plaster them michelangelo did. we don't have better artist than michelangelo. and the fact that we have got better plaster doesn't make what michelangelo did obsolete. we can rely on technological advances made by our ancestors without getting into the trial and error of figuring out how make them again. we don't have to reinvent the wheel but we cannot let earlier generations make our moral decisions for us. we can't even affirm to some kind of experiment that the decisions made by socrates or any of these other grades actually where the correct decisions. and if we could we would no longer be free. but worse than not, looking for e.t. so we will all become better behaved little children

is the wrong way to think about it. it's a baptizing universe by imposing our own preconceptions onto the universe. i think everyone here agrees there is a reason to be wary of imposing our view of religion for or against onto any aliens we might meet. they must also be wary of imposing our view of religion onto the way we do the science that might find those aliens. you know and one episode of baptizing the aliens and that baptizing the science. it's like looking at the big egg bearing and saying are how the universe started by light just like genesis said they had no it doesn't work that way. it's like looking at the origin of the universe as a possible quantum fluctuation of the gravity field and saying a hot you see there's no need. to start the universe just like i said. in both cases you wind up with a circular argument proving the

assumption you made. that idea that god is what started the universe. quantum fluctuations of gravity started the universe therefore there is no god, that doesn't prove that. all that proves is if that is what god is, god must be gravity which explains why catholics celebrate mass. [laughter] more to the point, do you remember that game mouse trap rehab all the little pieces and you wind up with this incredibly complicated thing at the end of the game somebody gets to roll the ball and the mouse trap comes down? that idea of god is saying that god is the guy who starts the ball rolling. it's one of the players in the game who starts the ball rolling. god is the guy back at the ideal

toy company who invented the game. believers who insist binding extraterrestrial intelligence will confirm their belief in god and atheist who are convinced it's going to be the opposite opposite are armored imposing the answers they expect to see onto the universe. the question with a baptizing e.t. can be heard in a couple of different ways. you know it is would you baptize e.t.? as in the a.c.t. somebody that you want to baptize or it could be heard as, would you baptize e.t. as if who're you to decide who gets him in his data? the early questions had to deal the same ambiguity. paul argues with james about whether or not gentiles should be led into the church. that is what the pope was talking about earlier this year when he was saying the idea for

them of letting gentiles make up questions was a strange and scary as the idea today of letting martians become christians. what would you do? he was trying to make the point and it was a good point. it's a point without an answer. he is not telling you the answer. he said think about the question because the question makes you think more about what is baptism mean. what does being a human main? when the pope said that they immediately determined he had endorsed extraterrestrial baptism. i don't know if you are familiar with this web site via the tiger tiger. it's the onion for catholics. [laughter] the headline minotaurs in crack and no i would not convert them. the actual question raises an

important point. all religions do have some sort of rite of passage whether you call it opticem or something else. once you are in the club then you appear and then you are an equal and then you have the right and then you have new privileges but presumably life within a religion is more about rights and privileges. you shouldn't have to run across the street alone. those dogs dog should be helping you get across the street. maybe when we are asking that question about baptizing e.t. that's not really the question we should be asking. are you willing to share a meal with the e.t.? are you willing to let e.t. share a meal with you? if you thought e.t. -- saw e.t. sick or wounded by the side of the road would you stop and attend to his needs? would e.t. do the same for you?

are you willing to suffer and die for e.t.? is e.t. willing to suffer and die for you? and if you can answer yes to those questions then maybe you are already both in the kingdom of god. religion exists to try to foster a relationship between us and god. such a relationship you hope is based on love presumes that we find something special in god and god find something special in us. usually it's presented the idea that humanity is the center of god's love that god finds humanity different from how god loves the rest of the universe. so if humanity is that the senator -- center of god's love into bed for the rest of the universe but think about your own experience of love. that's not how love works. love doesn't exclude it

includes. when someone falls in love they treat everybody better. they love everybody more. when god falls in love with us god treats the whole universe better. god treats everything in the universe as if he has fallen in love with it. if we are at the center of god's love and concern you and me and e.t. maybe there's something about us that god loves. what if whatever that thing that god loves about us is not something that separates us from the rest of the universe but something that is characteristic of the universe? something that is typical of the universe. we human beings are material feeling thinking willing free loving. in us the universe has become

self-aware. all of us and whatever space or time we happen to inhabit, all of us are the bearers of the purpose for which this universe exists. that means we are all at the center of this universe. what god loves in us god loves and the rest of the universe. carl sagan once made the claim that we are all stars. maybe it's equally true to say that the stars are also us stuff. the existence of all these other self-aware entities raises an interesting challenge to each of us. are we willing to accept the presence of another being in the universe? even as we are aware of the presence of god are we willing to accept that maybe there's somebody else that god cares about too who is also aware of

god? put it another way. we are people with intelligence. but intelligence intelligence only makes sense if there's someone else else to share that intelligence with. we only grow and stretch ourselves when we are challenged to relate to others. the ability to be self-aware and the free will to act on that awareness, the basic definition of the soul implies maybe even demand the existence of another entity in this universe also self-aware whom we can choose to love or choose to ignore. that is why i wouldn't be surprised if there weren't e.t.'s but i have no data. still to put it in words that relate to my own christianity it

means admitting that yes it was for all of us that christ died. it was for all of us that the universe is born. the search for life outside the earth is an exercise of the imagination. it's a speculation actually better served by science-fiction or by poetry than by the definitions of science and theology. with that in mind i would like to close this part to read a poem written nearly 100 years ago by the englishwoman -- published in the collective works in 1917 which incidentally was 10 years before the first science-fiction magazines with stories about travel to other solar systems. i will read it. with this ambiguous earth these abide.

the human birth, the lesson and the young man crucified. but not a star of the host of stars has heard how we administer this terrestrial ball. our race has kept our lord's eternal word. none knows the secret cherished peerless frightened whispers part shadowing secret of his life with us. no me his devices and the heavens be gift come his pilgrimage to thread the milky way but in the eternity's doubtlessly shell compared together here and million alien gospels in what guys he trod the liar the bear.

to reap the inconceivable to scan the million forms of god those stars unroll. when in our turn we show to them a man. now i would like to finish with a little reading from the book itself. a reading from the book according to. it's by myself and paul miller in its rudeness of dialogue so i'm going to have to play two roles here. this is from the first day. we have six days and six questions for the questions range from biblical genesis were big bang to whatever happened to pluto to whatever happened to galileo, what about the start of ho-hum? >> get that one all the time this time of year. what about the end of the universe and how does that work and of course would you baptize

e.t.? each dialog dialog is said in a particular place. i chose this one because it's set at the art institute of chicago. we are in the gallery of the early 20th century. today we are going to talk about the beginning of all things creation itself so it's appropriate we are here in chicago since each of us have a personal beginning here in the windy city. you did for loss of the studies that loyal you university after being a jesuit and i earned my doctorate in history and philosophy and science at the university of chicago. to which i add when i read the opening verse of genesis where wind swept over the waters i picture myself standing by the shore of the stormy lake huron from lake michigan and the windy city.

it's tough for this detroiter to admit it but i love chicago. in this area that museum campus by the lakeshore is like heaven to me. so many places that mind that her favorite. the adler planetarium to shed aquarium. so clear going to talk about the beginning of the universe why are we here at the art institute? shouldn't we be at the planetarium where we can watch a show to illustrate the big bang or the field museum of natural history with its collection of fossils and meteorites? paul says, think of all those people who are always asking us vatican astronomers about science and religion in the beginning of the universe. like the ones upon us to choose between genesis and the big bang bang. guests says paul. most of them aren't scientists. i'm not sure addressing the question at a scientific place

like a planetarium are field museum would be all that useful. so often we divide her her time into separate camps, separate buildings. aquarium versus planetarium, work versus play, science versus religion and so forth grade sometimes it's hard to move from one to the other. i want to start out today in a place where science and religion can overlap here in the art institute. you can't help seeing there's more than one way to present reality, more than one style of painting if you will. let's look at some of my favorite paintings. isn't that american gothic weatherbeaten couple standing in front of the white clapboard house a man holding a pitchfork staring out at the campus the woman giving him a dirty looks? paul says that painting may be a bit of a cliché but i like it.

realistic is the photographed still it seems to tell you something about the two people that have photo wouldn't be able to do. head down the hallway to the european section and compare american gothic with this painting. picasso i guess that's an old man seated with a guitar but it's pretty abstract. the qatar car is realistic enough that the old man is shown in this funky blue color scheme. it's a whole different take on the human form. paul, it looks more modern than american gothic. actually was painted 30 years earlier. the paintings depict old people with the tools of their traits. both were painted at the same time in the early 20th century. both communicate something deep and sure about humanity intellectually emotionally and

ways that a homily couldn't. but neither painting tries to tell you everything about a subject. each painting selects and emphasizes only certain things and leaves out other stuff that gets in the way. and do you know what? science does the same thing. science involves selective observation. science involves paying special attention to certain things while ignoring other things. and i go oh yeah that reminds me of this other painting of a couple people sitting at the city diner. you see them through the diner window from across the street and it's late at night. you could never take a photograph like this because there would be parked cars and telephone wires in the way but every time i see that painting i get hungry for fried eggs and coffee. paul, that's actually edward

hopper's nighthawk in the special exhibits. me i always thought you were like a physicist or a philosopher. i never knew you were such an art nerd. paul i'm no art expert actually but get this back when i was in college i spent 90 minutes one standing in front of a painting at the issa bull stewart garden taking notes on a yellow legal pad. it was an assignment for of course i had to take an art history. the painting was jupiter in the form of a white ball carrying princes the robot away where he will have his way with her. as i stood there taking notes other museum visitor started asking me questions about the painting as if i were some kind of expert. of course i laughed it off but after while i started talking to people about the painting telling them what i noticed and having interesting discussions about what they thought.

on the other hand if i had been at the science museum museum and overlooking the demonstration of the pendulum i wouldn't be having a discussion about our opinions of whether the pendulum worked. how interesting. okay mr. art expert were to be done next? we go to the late 19th century century. paul leads me to 18841 of my favorites he says. he painted the scene with elegant french families and a parisian park and then island in the same ripper circa 1884. he used a technique. instead of strokes of paint he built up the image by adding the colors.i.the way that visuals do it 100 years later. and i say i know that painting.

wasn't that in ferris bueller's day off? yeah the movie with matthew broderick paid the painting is the centerpiece of the pivotal point of the movie. when they come to the art institute and angst ridden teenager named cameron stares through a long time at 1884. as he gazes more and more deeply into the painting he has a stricken look on his face. the persians scene disappears from view. it falls apart into a chaotic random collection of dots. it's at that moment when cameron realizes his own life seems to be falling apart into meaningless bits and pieces. i have a certain sympathy for cameron. i have my own bit of teenage angst but when i see the painting i don't see the world owing apart. what i see is the world being

analyzed down to its smallest most basic parts. when i look at it i keep flipping back and forth between single holstein which is lots of people enjoying a beautiful day in the park and seeing the little dots from which the scene is made of. that doesn't mean to me that the world is falling apart. it means there's more than one way to look at the picture. and there is more than one way to look at the world. one way is to see the big picture the everyday world of experience and another is to see the world as analyzed by science particles and waves world warbeck can be described mathematically. that is one way of getting at relating science. incorporated of it is flipping back and forth between two different ways of seeing one in the same world. we conceive the world through the eyes of science or the eyes of faith. when you see the world through

the eyes of faith you are concerned with everyday experiences of what is right and good and beautiful. you are concerned with how your life hangs together and make sense or it doesn't. when you see the world through the eyes of science your concerns are different. you want to know how the world works for what it's made out of down to its smallest pieces. the world as analyzed by science can seem disconnected to the world of everyday experience just justice that dots in the painting can seem to be disconnected from the larger image. but the trick is to get comfortable with the idea of flipping back and forth between the two. the trick also is not to panic. one way of seeing the mid-something that the other includes and emphasizes something that the other neglects. you can see the painting as a collection of dots or you can see it as an image of people in the park. both descriptions are true. if one of them is true doesn't

make the other one falls? thanks. thanks for coming. [applause] if we can turn up the lights so i can see the audience we have some microphones and i guess people are going to run around. if we have got questions or comments or wonders about anything else feel free to ask any questions and if i don't want to answer it, i won't. here is another microphone. are there any questions? raise your hand high. shout them out. since i can't see very well if

you will have to make yourself known to the people with the microphones. is it turned on? it takes a minute or two for two warm-up i am told. >> thank you for the top talk. i really enjoyed it. my question was you see and depending on your interpretation but some interpretations of the bible a command to be a caretaker of the world of the earth we have been given so i'm curious as to your thoughts when you look at possible expansions onto other planets like the mars one project and things like that that. how would you describe the duties and responsibilities we have to care for the universe that we are in when we look to expand into other places? >> it's really central to everything we do in science. you cannot do science without

worrying about the ethics of what you are doing. that's not just because we want to be good people but we also want to be good scientists. for instance i really really hate the idea of sending human beings to mars in an uncontrolled way because i want to know ditmars developed its own life? human beings weak e. coli all over the place. what i am really afraid is that sometime in the future we will find something on mars that looks exactly like earth life and we will never know if it developed are not. but in addition we also have to recognize that nothing we do comes without a cost including doing nothing. and so part of being i think a good curator, a good caretaker is to make sure that the benefits we produce in the end out balances the cost. and that's true in everything we

do in life. how do you guarantee that? you can't. that is why we are sinners but we tried because we are more than just sinners. thanks much. who else? somebody naturally in the middle. >> thank you for the talk once again. i was curious to know i understand i have a good idea of what your reaction would be if extraterrestrials were ever discovered but does the vatican have a set of protocols or what would their reaction be if there were extraterrestrials? >> this is a great question because it comes to the hard of what i learned after 20 years in the vatican. the vatican is a remarkably dinky place. the old joke how many people work at the vatican, about half.

depending on how you count this about 500 to 1000 people worked there. this is to try to run the bureaucracy of the church of more than a billion people. so there are no protocols. people have daydreams about this since people have daydreamed but i think wisely so. you don't read the protocols until you see what we are dealing with. if there are earthlike planets and in the solar system if those planets managed to develop life if that life is intelligent, if that life is able to communicate to us and we are able to communicate to it those are a whole lot of it is. if we only one of those it turns out not to be true the question will never come up. it's always dangerous to hypothesize too much. we always hypothesize with inadequate data. it's dangerous to believe the hypothesis.

so there aren't protocols like that. there are committees of people making these decisions and thank heavens. >> thank you for being here. i teach science at an all boys jesuit middle school in the city's westside. >> my condolences. [laughter] >> there are actually wonderful believe it or not. most people don't believe it. and i'm wondering what writers and thinkers in addition to your own text that you would recommend for young people who are turning over these questions at the intersection of science a religion for the first-time? >> i think the best thing would be to recommend good science fiction. science fiction stories that force you to confront the questions. and they don't have to be science fiction stories you necessarily agree with. it could be at the end of the day you read the story and you go that doesn't work.

but by posting it in the context of the question, i'm sorry in the context of the story you can relate to the characters in the story which i don't know much about science at 12-year-old or 14-year-old might say but i know people and that is the way people would behave. no people don't really behave like that. i would say science fiction or fantasy and you can't do better than the narnia books and harry potter who i highly recommend. i think there's a lot of really good serious stuff that people miss in harry potter including the fact that the hero who is going to save everything dumbledore has feet of clay and yet he is still a hero. that is where i would start. from there you can launch into the deeper explorations of right and wrong and he was right and

who is wrong. >> thank you. >> grace, over there. >> thank you very much for your comments. at the risk of steering into science i was wondering with your expertise in meteors and comets the conception of water and commentary bodies in the recent finding that there may be organic material on the comets and meteors how does that fit in to your universal view of creation and? >> interesting thing is those are ideas that come in and out of fashion and they are coming back in fashion right now but wait five years and they will go

out of fashion again. i have no problem with it from a philosophical point of view. god could have made the universe and made our planet in any of dozens of different ways. what i want to find out is what way did he actually do at? the bible tells me god made the universe and science tells me how he did it. scientifically i have a problem with some of those theories because i'm not convinced you can get all the water and the organics through comments and then you have the question of okay if the earth got it how come mars didn't come out the mercury didn't how come the mood didn't and there are ways you can wave your hand around that. for a long time people were convinced it would work because the isotopes didn't work right and that comets we have seen isotopes for and now we have seen a fourth one that it does work and we say we believe it. it's way too early to believe the hypothesis but it's not too early to explore the hypothesis. so let's see what happens.

one more question. >> won one more and then we will go to book signing. >> i thought your talk was very interesting. i don't know if this is a question or an observation but i just wanted to post it. while you were reading this well-written poem i noticed a line that said lords and trusted word came out from you saying lord's eternal word. >> that's because i was standing here and can't read it correctly. i met no theological meaning to it. >> while i was just curious. there's a big difference between and trusted and eternal. >> good point. not my poem so you'll have to bring it up with alice.

go ask alice. there was one other question down here so let's let him have the last word. >> hi how are you? thank you very much for the talk. i'm amazed when i think about the earth and the vastness of it because i think in day-to-day life that people just don't think about that how big the galaxy is but as you walk through the halls there are a lot of photos like the milky way and all that. i was curious as a man of faith what questions go through your mind and what thoughts go through your mind when you think about and look up at the stars? >> it's interesting because the universe could have been totally chaotic. i could imagine the human race has thought he human race is chaos. and stuff happened but they usually use another word band stuff. in fact science seems to show

shows that the world acts in a rational way rational enough that you and i can figure it out and that's amazing. the fact that the universe does have flaws and that we can begin to figure those laws out. that's astonishing. but even more than that is that the universe is not only rational it's also beautiful. and the laws are also beautiful. many years ago i was teaching a class in freshman physics at fordham university. i had some really bright students and i was doing the electromagnetism section and we have gotten to maxwell's equations. maxwell's equations are those things that i had in the beginning. they look like gibberish and so you know what each of the pieces doesn't than a few do the appropriate mathematical calculation you combine these two in those two and squish them

together into one long equation and i had done this in front of my class so they get the final equation from taking the second derivative of this and substituting terms and the kid at the front of the class said oh my god it's a waste. [laughter] which it is and it isn't oh my god moment. and it must have been to maxwell because not only is electricity and magnetism things that can travel like waves but the wave is that the speed of light. .. o is the light that the equations described. whoever said the universe had to be so beautiful? that is the part that i'll never get enough of. thank you, everybody.

[applause] >> thank you for joining us. the next lecture is december december 9th about earth orbit and the such it's our conference we're holding here at the adler, so we invite you. i'm sure you have questioned and want to say hello but please hold the questions until we get to the lobby where brother guy will be signing books and sa

>> [inaudible conversations] wrote:everybody to the opposite. it is great to have an opportunity to host