Page 1: AbstractMore than 60 years ago my spiritual advisors (rightly or wrongly) diagnosed in me a divine call to the Roman Catholic priesthood. As soon as I turned 18 I entered the Dominican Order I quickly fell on love with their leading theologian, Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 1275) and read him voraciously. His Latin is so easy and his ideas quite cosmic. Three years later I discovered Bernard Lonergan, a Jesuit. Lonergan was a faithful Catholic who had set out to bring the the work of Aquinas into the twentieth century. Lonergan presented me with a new proof for the existence of God. I was not convinced. I read him a few more times and slowly became a heretic. I could no longer believe in the Catholic God. I said so, and after five years the Order let me go. Aquinas revolutionized theology by harmonizing it with the work of Aristotle, the best science available in the Middle Ages. Since the time of Galileo (1562 - 1642) modern science has travelled far beyond Aristotle. We now have comprehensive knowledge of the Universe. We can now see that it is big enough and beautiful enough to be considered divine. It seems obvious to me that it is time to introduce science to theology once again. Just three steps are required: First, we must assume that the Universe is divine. This makes God observable, amenable to modern science which is based on observation. Second, it follows, if this is the case, that physics and theology have the same subject and must therefore be consistent. The third step is to open up a new field of research, repeating Aristotle’s ancient journey from physics to theology. In this book I have tried to trace a quantum theoretical path from the unstoppable omnipotent emptiness of the initial singularity to the exquisite complexity of our world. My only guide is the logical constraint placed on omnipotence by consistency. |
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