Brother Guy Consolmagno: God's Mechanics

Very interesting talk about Religion and Science. Worth watching, from fora.tv. This is someone who actually is both religious and understands science. For example "science is not about knowing, it's about describing".

With wry humor, Brother Guy Consolmagno shows how he not only believes in God but gives religion an honored place alongside science in his life. His book God's Mechanics: How Scientists and Engineers Make Sense of Religion offers an engaging look at how - and why - scientists and those with technological leanings can hold profound, "unprovable" religious beliefs while working in highly empirical fields.

Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno is a Jesuit brother with advanced degrees from MIT and the University of Arizona. A highly respected planetary scientist whose research focuses on meteorites, asteroids, and dwarf planets, Consolmagno is the author or co-author of numerous books and publications, including Brother Astronomer and Turn Left at Orion. He even has an asteroid named in his honor (4597 Consolmagno, known to its friends as "Little Guy").

He has served as chair of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society and is a past president of Commission 16 (Planets and Moons) of the International Astronomical

Science Tackles Life After Death

You’re having a near-death experience (NDE). They happen all the time. They may happen to everybody, however they die. Remarkably similar experiences have been reported throughout history in all cultures. Obviously, most are lost to us, because being near death is usually the immediate prelude to being dead. But precisely because high-tech hospital resuscitations are so effective — around 15% of cardiac-arrest victims are revived — we can now regularly hear news apparently from beyond the grave. And it sounds like very good news indeed. You don’t really die and you feel great. What could be nicer?

NDEs are so common, so vivid and so life-transforming — survivors frequently become more compassionate, religious and serene as a result of what they experience — that scientists, philosophers, priests, psychologists and cultists all want a piece of the action. Their problem is that the human mind is unreachable. We can’t see what’s going on in there. Even if we could rush cardiac-arrest patients into an MRI scanner, we’d only see lights in the brain. We wouldn’t know what they meant. But now NDEs are to be scientifically investigated in a US and UK study involving 25 hospitals. This is co-ordinated by Dr Sam Parnia at Southampton University and is designed to find 1,500 survivors of cardiac arrests — “clinical death” — who tell such stories.

There are thousands of reports of OBEs but the two most famous cases are Pam Reynolds and Maria’s Tennis Shoe. Reynolds, an American singer, watched and later reported on with remarkable accuracy the top of her own skull being removed by surgeons before she moved into a bright glowing realm. But it was Reynolds’s account of the surgical implements used and the words spoken in the theatre that make the case so intriguing.

Maria, meanwhile, underwent cardiac arrest in 1977. She floated out of her body, drifted round the hospital and noticed a tennis shoe on a window sill. It was later found to be exactly where she said it was. The shoe was said to be invisible from the ground and not in any location where Maria could have seen it. Such stories suggest that OBEs should be scientifically verifiable.

Read the rest via the UK Times Online.