The story is frequently told about how with the publication of De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) in 1543 Nicolaus Copernicus (d. 1543) looked beyond the vanity of human self-centeredness and perceived that Earth was just one of several planets revolving around the sun. In doing so, he triggered the modern scientific revolution as people began to look at themselves and their place in the universe in a more objective light.

Since the beginning of the scientific revolution, believers have had to reconcile their beliefs with science. This has always proved difficult. If an all-perfect God created the universe and its physical laws, why would he have to step in to perform miracles and answer prayers? If, as all the evidence indicates, the universe, including humans and their brains, is matter and nothing more, how can we possibly live forever? Theologians try hard, but never come up with satisfactory answers.

is conscious of a beginning and end calls change time. But in reality there is no time, there is only change. The universe had no beginning and has no ending, it just is. Time to man is an illusion. Just as man once thought that the world was flat, that Earth was the center of the universe, that the sun rose and set and that he had free will, so he thinks that there is a beginning..

If a God exists who plays an important role in the world and in human lives, then that God should be detectable by his actions. We should see evidence for his existence in physics and cosmology. We do not. We should see evidence in biology. We do not. We should see evidence in people’s lives. We do not. In no case is it necessary to introduce an immaterial, spiritual element to explain the universe. All our observations of the world look (...) just as they should look if there is no God. (shrink)

In 1687, Isaac Newton published The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, now referred to simply as Principia, which many scholars say is the greatest work of science ever produced. Until the twentieth century, Newtonian mechanics appeared to provide the means, at least in principle, for predicting the motion of every body in the universe with, in principle, unlimited precision. All you need to know is the mass of the body, its initial position and velocity, and the net force acting on (...) it. Then the laws of motion allow you to calculate the position and velocity of the body at any later (or earlier) time. (shrink)

On March 21 a suit was filed in Federal District Court in Hawaii asking for a temporary restraining order prohibiting the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva from turning on the world’s largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), this summer. The suit contends that the collider could produce a tiny black hole or an exotic object called a “strangelet,” either of which might swallow up Earth and perhaps more.