>> good evening and welcome to the adler planetarium. i'm dr. grace chase. i'm an astronomer here and also very pleased and honored to be able to present to you tonight's speaker, brother guy consolmagno. brother guy is

he explores connections between meteorites and asteroids and the evolution of small bodied. in 1996 he spent six weeks collecting meteorize with national science foundation sponsored team in antarctica. he gave an excellent talk about this. in 2000 he was honored by the international astronomical union for his contributions to the study of meteorites and asteroids with the naming of as city erode 4597 con con con -- console manow. he is the author of 200 scientific papers, including "would you baptize an extra at --

extra terese central. --" extra terese central. up here we're selling copies of the book in our store. they will be available after brother guy's presentation as well and brother guy will be signing copies of the book at the main entrance afterwards. so last week brother guy was awarded the 2014 carl saggan medal in tucson for his decades long record of communicating plan tear 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 doctor doctor brother, guise consolmagno.

>> thank you. the book is the star of she show. we resident start with short film. i'll do a presentation based on the question that makes up the title of the book. i'll then have a short reading from earlier on in book, and then we can have questions and answers. among other things this is being recorded by c-span, which means if you ask questions please wait for the microphone or else people will not hear your question, just my answer. so let's start with the film. >> both science and religion are considerations about -- are conversations note universe. the ways of learning how we interact with this universe. not a question of is there a gad but, there is a god. now what do we do? not a question of there are bunch of stars but rather, why are there stars? how do they work? how does that tell us how things

work here on earth? the interaction i see in my own life is that religion gives me the reason to do the science. >> back in the papacy before francis was benedict, and one of his lines was go to the frontiers. well there isn't much more frontier that 3.7 billion miles away. >> in 1582 with the reform of the calendar and then 1891 they wanted to have an observer and show the church is not against science but the church work with science. >> they start off by hefeng telescopes, and then on the walls surrounding the vatican, as the city lights grow and as the italian government gives them back the territory, in the '30s they built new telescopes on the roof of the papal palace.

best telescopes of their era in the 1930s. by the 1980s because of the olight they're unusable so we build -- built a new telescope in arizona. >> i have father jean-baptiste. i'm working on three projects. the first one is near earth object. what i'm doing is just observe

them using our modern telescope. the second project is meteors. from very -- what we call the shooting star. and the third project is the set or network of four cameras here and around tucson so that we can monitor any viable getting into the earth atmosphere. >> telescope, the first of the new technology telescopes that has been considered the norm in the developing telescopes. with the advance of computer technology we have the capability of bringing that advanced technology directly into our telescope so it's an expandable -- almost like it's a living machine. so it can grow as technology grows. >> it is still very important to

maintain scientific research at the vatican simply because there's still a lot of confusion about the relationship between science and faith. we're not trying to prove the existence of god by look through a telescope. but we can say that if we want to obtain any reasonable results, looking through that telescope, we need to do it embracing a certain work ethic that is in fact 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? how die fit in? they hear about the moon landing and want to know what was that like?

if we're part of the human race, we're part of the race that went to the moon. we're part of the species that looks at the stars and wonders what the heck are those things? looking at the sky reminds you there's more to the universe than what is for lunch. if you believe in a universe, that god so loved that he sent his son then 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 creator and getting closer to a universe that was said 1500 years ago was cleansed and quickened by the incarnation. then doing science is an act of worship.

>> that gives you an idea who we are and where we come from. this is not the cover of the book. if you look carefully, you'll notice that the subtitle was changed. we went through various incarnations. this is "other strange questions in the in box of the observatory." original live it was "crazy questions we get." dos crazy might discourage people. but 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 you realize the answers we have been giving were not satisfying. otherwise they wouldn't keep asking them. a lot of cases the questions that are being asked are not really the questions that

they're talking about, but the questions that are being assumed before they ask. i want to give an example of what i'm talking about in september of 2012, i was in birmingham england. i was there to give an astronomy talk at the science festival. you can't read the t-shirt. it's god said and then there's an equation and there was light. and as it turned out, the day of my talk in birmingham england happened to coincide exactly with the visit of pope benedict to england in fact to birmingham. so a grew of british journalists were there to cover the pope, and i agreed to be interviewed in order to publicize the science festival but they'll want to do is ask me question busy the pope, except the questions were things like when is the last time a pope interfered with your work? and what's your biggest conflict with the pope? and -- completely out of left

field because for one thing, they're assuming there's a conflict that we had never experienced. in fact the pope supported us quite a bit. they were not happy. they weren't getting the story they wanted. and so finally one of them asked me so, would you baptize an extraterrestrial? and i answered only if she asks. got a good laugh. that's what i wanted. they all laughed. and then the next day they reported it in the paper as if it was some big vatican pronouncement about aliens. there it was. they did at least get that part right. so why that reaction? for that matter, why do they ask that question in the first someplace certainly it's a popular question. why we use used it for the title of the book. but why? why do people ask us that

question so often? i think in the case of the journalist, it was meant to be a trick question. a trap question. consider the context. they're looking for ways to make the pope look bad. as the pope tried to suppress your work? they're aggressive. the reporters were looking for a juicy story, for ways to make me like stupid or make my church look stupid. so for them, would you baptize an extraterrestrial, was a trick question. consider, if i said yes i'll baptize e.t. i would have looked naive and have been saying that dumb little human being on this back water planet has something to tell people who are bright enough that they can send spaceships across space and time. yeah right. on the other hand, if if said no i wouldn't baptize e.t., then i'd be admitting that christianity has no universal significance, i'd be saying it's

just for us stupid yokels on planet earth not really significant in the grand scheme of things. either way they thought they had me. so when i just blurted out, only if she asks, i actually wound up turning the tables on them because i made 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 advance knowledge accepted our human saviour had something of some importance to her that would make those journalist student for having their petty 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. a german theologian writes that

the glory of god demand the universe be filled with intelligent beings not just us. theologically he is sure of that. on the other hand the american radical thomas payne used the inevitability of life elsewhere to make fun of christianity in the age of reseason. he says it either demands the unlikely proposition that god chose to be incarnated only in our because some guy and some girl decided to eat an apple, or else there were so many incarnations that the person that i'm quote -- i'm quoting -- the person who was irreverently called the son of god would have nothing else to do but travel to world to world. actually, that argument though crude, 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 was present -- john says this and in the beginning was the word and the word is the second person who is to say that word can't be expressed in more than one language? so besides, if you're a catholic and you believe that the mass is the sacrifice of christ, it does happen a million times every day. more to the point who is to say that any race salvation story has to parallel ours. think about the fall of angels. completely different salvation story. certainly if you're going to appreciate god as the creator of a university big enough to contain billions and billions of galaxies you can either say the universe is so big, our planet is so tiny and i'm so insignificant even on this

planet how could god ever pay attention to me? or you can say universe is so big, planet so mall 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 is something else. it forces us to ask, what is it to be human? you mean, human in comparison to what? to ask what it means for a human -- for al apple alien to -- for an alien to have a soul makes you ask, what is a soul? speculating on how christ's salvation might work for other beings makes you look a little bit in a new way at well, what does this salvation thing all about anyway? and in some ways it's summed up

by a wonderful pogo cartoon. the porcupine, the philosopher people have been speculating that maybe planets with people with advanced brains more advanced than us. on the other hand, maybe of all the universe we have the most advanced brains. either way it's a sobering thought. we also have to recognize that when the question of e.t.s come up -- 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 physical of injustice, disease they hope that any race advanced 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 look though aliens to be the saviours of

humankind. about two weeks ago i got an e-mail i get all the time, this one demanding demanding i tell pope francis the next time i see him -- yeah right -- that i get pope francis to tell us the truth about e.t.s, and i quote, because this guy already knows the truth about e. t.s -- e.t. life is likely to be 0 more ethically evolved and less sat tannic evolved than humans. both francis must emphasize the themes of extraterrestrial not sharing an original sin, being more ethically involved, being more capable of sharing the christian message, i love how he knows all about what the e.t.s are going to be like. think back to the athiests who are convinced that finding e.t.'s will prove that atheism is correct and the guy that things that finding e.t.s will

prove there is a god. this fact we haven't found e.ts have caused either side to doubt the faith. i'm not sure why fining them should convince anybody. and furthermore, who is 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 can get us to live better lives. maybe they can be our brothers. maybe -- well, consider this movie. consider the fate of the alien "the day the argentina stood still" who came to earth. "to save humankind, and aim not a happy ending. haven't we already had a save your and look what happened to

him. the people who made the movie the guy the saviour goes around calls himself mr. carpenter. nudge, nudge wink, wink. 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 sinned how would you know that they had the freedom to sin, the freedom you need to be truly good. and should anybody think that technical advances actually mean moral advances? is the human race of the 20th 20th century more moral than our technologyically primitive ancestors.

think of world war i and world war ii. the more you have, the more you got. art, beauty, ethics. not so. we have better paint. we have better plaster than michelangelo tide. dedon't have better artists than michelangelo. and the fact that we have better plaster doesn't make what michelangelo did obsolete. we can rely on technological advances made by our ancestors without having to do the trial of error of trying to figure out how to do them again. you don't have to re-invent the wheel but we cannot let earlier generations macour moral decisions for us. we can't even affirm through some kind of experiment that the decisions made by socrates or other greats were the correct decisions. and if you could we would no longer be free.

but worse than that looking for e.t. so that we'll all become better behaved little children is the wrong way to think about the problem. it's a kind of baptizing the universe by imposing our own preconceptions on to the universe itch. i think everybody agrees there's a reason for not imposing our beliefs on to aliens. we must be wary of imposing our religion on to the way we do science that might find the aliens. and wind up instead of ban tieding the aliens you baptize the science. what die sunshine it's like looking at the big back theory and -- the big bang theory saying ah-ha, the universe started with light just like genesis. no. it doesn't work that way. it's like looking at the origin of the universe as a possible quantum fluctuation in the

gravity field and say ah-ha there's no need for god to start the universe, just like i always 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 or gravity started the universe, therefore there is no god. that doesn't prove that. all that proves, if that is what you think god is, god must be gravity, which explains why catholics celebrate mass. [laughter] >> more to the point, did you ever wonder that the game mousetrap, all the little pieces and you have this incredibly complicated thing end to the game somebody gets to roll the ball and the mousetrap comes

down. that idea of god is god starts the ball rolling but it's a player in the game that sports the ball rolling. god is the guy who invented the game. believers who insist that finding extraterrestrial intelligence will confirm their belief in god athiests who are convinced it's going to do the opposite, are already imposing the answer they expect to see on to the universe. the question would you baptize e.t. can be heard in a couple of different ways. it is, would you baptize e.t., as in, is e.t. somebody you want to baptize? or it could be heard as, would you baptize e.t., as in like, who are you to decide who gets in and who stays out? the early christians had to deal with the same ambiguity. paul argues with james about

whether or not gentiles should be let 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 become christians was as strange and scary as the idea today of letting martians become christians. what would you do? he was trying to make the point, and there's a good point. it's a point without an answer. he is not telling you the answer. he is saying, think about the question. because the question makes you think more about what does baptism mean? what does being a human mean? of course when the pope said that they immediately determined he had endorsed extraterrestrial baptism. i don't know if you're familiar with this web site, eye of the tiger. it's the onion for catholics. the headline if you can't read it. crackheads that's where i draw

the line pope francis says i wouldn't convert them. the actual question raises an important point. all relations have some rite of passage. once your in the club, you're a peer and you're an ebill and you have new rights and new privileges. but presumably life within a religion is more about rights and privileges youch shouldn't have to run across the street alone. those dogs should be helping you get across the street. maybe, when we're asking that question would you baptize e.t. that's not really the question we should be asking. are you willing to share a meal with e.t.? are you willing to let e.t. share a meal with you? if you saw e.t. sick or wounded

by the side of the road would you stop and tend to its 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're 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. it presumes that we find something special in god god finds something special in us. usually it's presented as the idea that humanity is at the center of god's love is taken to mean that god finds humanity different from how god loves the rest of the universe. so if humanity is at the center of god's love, then too bad 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're 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, whatever planet or place, 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 in the rest of the universe. carl saggan once made the claim that we are all star stuff. maybe it's equally true to say that the stars are also us. -- 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 some other

self-aware beings in the universe? even as we're aware of the presence of god are we willing to accept 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 only makes sense if there's someone 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 it 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 would be surprised

if there weren't e.t.s, but i have no data. still, to put it in words that relate to christianity, it means at mitting that yes, it was for all of us that christ died. it was for all of us that the universe was 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'd like to close this part to read a poem written nearly 100 years by an english woman and roman catholic convert, alice man -- mantle was published in 1917, which is before the pulp magazines about

travels to other solar systems. with this ambiguous earth these abide, the signals were made elm the human birth, the lessan and the young man crucified but not a star of all the innumerable hosts of stars has heard how be administers this ball. our race have kept their lord's eternal word, of his earth visiting, terrible frightened with sweet, shatter -- heart shatter secret. now in our. day may miss devices with the heavens be guest. his pilgrimage to thread the milky way but in eternities doubtless we shall compare together, here a million alien

gospels in what guise. oh? be prepared my soul, to read the inconceivable, to scan the million forms of god those stars unroll. when in our turn we show to them a man. i'd 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, and it's written as a dialogue. so i'm going to have to play two roles here. this is actually from the first day. we have six days six questions. the questions range from biblical genesis or big bang, to whatever happened to pluto to the whatever happened to

galileo, what about the star of bethlehem. we get that that one all the time. what about the end of the user and how does that work? and of course would you baptize e.t.? and each dialogue is set in a particular place. i chose this one because it's set at the art institute of chicago. we're in the gallery of the early 20th century. paul begins: today, we're going to talk about the beginning of all things creation itself. so, it's appropriate that we're here in chicago, so each of us had a kind of personal beginning here in the windy city. you did philosophy studies at loyola university shortly after you game a jesuit and i earned my doctorate in history and philosophy of science at the university of chicago. to which i add when i read the opening versus of genesis, where a wind from god swept over the face of the waters always

picture myself standing by the shore of the stormy lake huron, where i come from, but lake michigan and the windy city. it's tough for this detroiter to admit it but i love chicago. accomplish this area the museum campus by the headache shore, -- lake shore, it's like heaven to me. so means places of my that are favorites. the adler planetarium, the shed d aquarium. so if we talk about the beginning of the universe, why are we here at the art institute? shouldn't we be at the plan -- planetarium, or the field museum with the collection of fossils and meteorites. paul says think of the people who ask us as vatican scientist about the beginning of the universe, like the ones who want us to choose between the genesis and the big bang, yes says

paul. most of them aren't scientists. i'm not sure that addressing addressing the questions at a scientific place like a planetarium or field museum would be all that useful. so often we divide up our time into separate camps, separate buildings. aquarium versus plan tearum work vs. play. science vs. religion. seems it's hard november from one to the other. i want to start out today in a place where science and religionen overlap, here in the art institute. you can't help seeing here there's more than one way to present reality. more than one style of painting, if you would. so humor me a for a moment. let's look mate favorite paintings. hmm, i say. isn't that american gothic the weatherer-beaten couple, the man holding the pitchfork, staring

out at the canvas the woman giving him a dirty look. paul says the painting may be a cliche but i like it. its as realistic as a photograph, still it seems to tell you something about the two people that a photo wouldn't be able to do. now, head down the hallway here to the european section and compare american goth thick with this painting. pick picasso's old guitarist. the guitar is realist enough but the old man is shown in these weird lines and ankles and funky blue color scheme. a whole different take on the human form. paul: it looks more modern than american goth thick. actually it was painted 30 years earlier. both paintings depict old people with the tools of the trades. both were painted at roughly the

same time next early 20th 20th century. both communicate something deep and true about humanity intellectually other emotionally in ways that book or homily couldn't. but neither painting tries to tell you everything before the it subject. each painting selects and emphasizes only certain things and leaves out other stuff that would be irrelevant or get in the way, and you know what? science does the same thing. science involves selective observations. science involves paying special attention to certain things while ignoring other things. and i go oh yeah. that reminds me of this other painting, a couple of people in a city diaper, a guy with a big nose and a woman in red next to him you. see the through the diner window from across the street. and it's late at night. you actually could never take a photograph like that because there would be cars and

telephone wires in the way. but every time i see that painting i get hungry for fried eggs and coffee. paul: that actually edward hoppers nighthawk, also here at the art institute. in special exhibits. me: i never -- i always thought you were like a physicist turned philosopher. i never knew you an art nerd. paul: in college i spent 90 minutes standing in front of a painting in boston, taking notes on a yellow legal pad. it was an assignment for a court i had to take in art history. and the painting was about princess europa being taken away. is a stood there other museum visitors started asking me questions about the painting as if i was an expert.

at first i laughed it off and then after awheel i started telling people about the painting. we got into interesting discussions what they thought. on the other hand, if i'd been at the science museum, and we were looking at to demonstration of a pendulum i wouldn't be having a discussion about our opinions of whether the pendulum worked. how interesting. okay. i say. where do we do next? we go toilet 19th century impressionism. paul leads me to: a sunday. one of my favorite he says. george serat painted the scene with elegant french families in a parissan park and an island in the same river circa 1884. the uses ate technique instead of strokes of paint he built the image by adding colors tot by --

dot by dot by dot. the way digital imagessed do it 100 years later. i say, know that painting. wasn't that in farris buehler's day off? yep, says paul. a move view with matthew broderick. there's three high school kid playing hookey, various adventures and when they come to the art institute, one of them, an angst ridden teenager stares for along time at the painting. as he gazes more and more deeply into the painting, with a stricken look on his face, the parissan scene disappears from view and falls apart into a chaotic random collection of colored dots. it's at that moment that cameron realizes his own life is falling apart. i have a certain sympathy for

cameronment i had my own share of teenage angst but what i see when i look at the painting isn't chaos. 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 seeing the whole scene, which is lots of people enjoying a beautiful day in the park and seeing the little dots from which the scene is meat up. that doesn't mean to me the world is falling apart. it means there's more than one way to look at the picture. and there's more than one way to look at the world. one way is to see the big picture, the everyday world, and the other to see the world as an liedded by science tiny atom particles andwaves, a world described mathematically. that one way of getting at relating science and faith. think of its flipping back and

forth between two different ways of seeing one in the same world. we can see the world through the eyes of science or through the eyes of faith. when you into the world through the eyes of faith you're very concerned with everyday experiences of what is right and good and beautiful. you are concerned with how your life hangs together and makes sense, or doesn't. when you see the world through the eyes of science, your concerns are different. you want to know how the world works, what it's made out of, right down to the smallest pieces. the world analyzely science can seem disconnected to the everyday experience just as the dots in the to painting may seem to be disconnect from the larger illinois, but the trick is to get comfortable with the idea of flipping back and forth between the two ways of seeing. and the trick also is not to panic if one way of seeing omits something that the other includes or emphasizes something that the other neglects.

you can see the painting as a collection of dots or an image of people in the park. both descriptions are true. if one of them its true doesn't make the other one falls. -- the other one false. thank you for coming. [applause] >> this weekend -- i'll turn then light. we have microphones and people are going to run around and -- grace, you want to be -- if we have 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. fresh here -- here's another microphone. >> there are any questions? raise your hand high. shout them out.

>> since i can't see well you have to make yourself known to the people with the microphones. great. is it turned on? no. it takes a minute or two to warm up, i'm told. >> hello? thank you for the talk. it was great. my question was you see in -- i guest kipped of depend only your interpretation but you see in some interpretations of the bible a kind of command to be a caretaker of the world of the earth we have been given. i'm curious as to you authorities when we look at possible expansions on to other planets, the mars one project things like that. how would you describe the kind of 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're doing and that is not just because we want to be good people but we 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, did mars develop it own life? and human beings leak e.coli all over the place. what i'm really afraid is sometime in the future we'll find something on mars that looks exactly like earth life in we'll never know if it developed independently or 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 good curator, good caretaker, is

to make sure that the benefit we produce in the end outbalances the cost. and that's true in everything we do in life. and how do you guarantee that? you can't. that why we're sinners. but you try. because we're more than just sinners. >> thanks a lot. >> yes. who else? somebody naturally in the middle. >> thank you for the talk. i was curious to know, does the -- i understand what you're -- i kind of have a good idea what your reaction would be if extraterrestrials were ever discovered but does the vatican have a protocol? what would their reaction be if extraterrestrials were found? >> this is a great question because it comes to the heart of what i've learned after 20 years of living in the vatican.

the vatican is a remarkably dinky place. there are -- the old joke, how many people work at the vatican, about half. depending on how you doesn't this, 500 to 1,000 people who work there. this is to try to run the bureaucracy of a church of more than a bill people. so are there no protocols. people have day dreamed about this since people have day dreamed, but wisely sew you don't write the protocols until you see what we're dealing with. there irearth-like planets common 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're able to communicate to it, those are a whole lot of ifs, if any of this is not true the question will never come up. it's always dangerous to

hypothesize too much. we always hypothesize with inadequate dat tamp it's dangerous to believe the hypothesis. so no, there actually aren't protocols like that. ant committees of people making these decisions and thank heavens. >> i teach science as an all-boys jesuit middle school -- >> my condolences. >> they're actually wonderful, believe it or not most people don't believe it. and i'm wondering what writers and thinkers in addition to you're text you would recommend for young people who are turning over these questions it at the intersection of science and 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 go hmm, that doesn't work. but by posing it in the context of a question, -- i'm sorry -- posing it in the context of a story you can relate to the characters in the story, which i don't know much about science, a 12-year-old or 14-year-old might say, but i know people and that's the way people would behave or, no, people don't really behave like that. so i would say science fiction or fantasy. and you can't do better than the narnia books and lord of the rings to start with. and harry potter who i highly recommend. there's a lot of really good serious stuff that people miss in harry potter, including the fact that the hero that is going save everything has feet of clay and yet is still a hero.

that where i'd start. and from there you can launch into the deeper explorations of right and wrong and who is right and who is wrong. >> thank you. >> over there. >> thank you very much for your comments 'at the risk of veering into science i was wondering, with the -- with your expertise in meteors and comets the conception of water coming from cometary find examination the finding there might by organic materials on the comets and meteors, how does that fit into your universal view of life and creation. >> the interesting thing is that

those aren't new ideas. they're ideas that come in and out of fashion, and they're coming fashion right now but wait for five years and they'll go out of patient. god could have made the universe and made our planet in any of dozens of different ways and what i want to find out is what way did he actually do it? the bible tells me god made the universe. science tells me how. scientifically i have a problem with some of those theories because i'm not convinced you can get all the water and all the organics just through comets and, and then you have the question if the argentina got it, how mars didn't how come mercury didn't and the moon didn't? there are ways to wave your hand around that. people were convinced because the isotones didn't work right on the three comets we have seen isotopes for.

now we have seen one works and now we believe it. it's way too early to believe the hypothesis but not too area to explore the hypothesis so heat slow what happens. >> one more question. >> one more? and then he'll go to book signing. >> i thought your talk was very very interesting. i don't know if this is a question or observation but i just wanted to pose it while you were reading this well-written poem, i noticed that the line that says lord and trusted word, came out from you saying, lords eternal word. >> that's because i was standing here and can't read it correctly. i meant no theological meaning it to. >> i was just curious. there's a big difference between

entrusted and eternal. >> good point. not my poem, so you have to bring it up with alice. go ask alice. there is one other question down here. let's let him have the last word. >> hi, how are you? thank you very much for the talk. i'm just actually really amazed when i think about the argentina and the vastness of -- about the earth and the vastness of it. people don't think how big the galaxy is. so i was curious as a map of faith what questions go through your mind or thought goes through your mind when you look up at the stars? >> it's interesting because the universe could have been totally chaotic. i could imagine -- the human race thought the universe was

chaos. stuff happens. we usually use a different word than stump but in -- than stump but in fact science shows us the world acts in a rational way, rational enough you and i can figure it out, and that is amazing. that the fact that the universe does have laws 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 fresh minifies seconds -- freshmen physics and we had got top the maxwell's equations, and they're a bunch of -- those things i had on the t-shirt. they look like gibberish.

and then if you do the mathematical calculation you can combine these two and those two and squish them together and i had done this in front of my class so you had the final equation from taking this second derivative of this and that and subtattooing -- substituting terms, and the kid at thefront hoff the class says oh my god it's a wave, chit is. and it is, and an oh my god moment and must have been to maxwell. not only is electricity and magnetism things that can travel like waves but the wave is at the speed of light. and when you grasp. that, you're overwhelmed with an emotion of amazement and how beautiful it all fits together. there's a little bit of asymmetry that are niece for

pieces to fit together and maxwell's equations are beautiful and so 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

[inaudible conversations] >> welco