“The goal of a conference for seminary personnel is to increase the comfort level of priests and candidates for the priesthood about the dialogue between faith and science. The dialogue uncovers many questions produced by science which are beyond the scope of the methods of science to answer. For example, the question of the ultimate foundation of existence – life, values, and issues of a metaphysical and ethical nature – these are in fact produced by scientific activity but cannot be solved within the borders of scientific method. The Christian faith, however, can shed some light on scientific findings. Starting from the point of view of a believer, one discovers that many foundational questions of values gain some intelligibility from this source of intelligibility. This point of view respects science completely, because one does not modify science or attempt to extract from science that which is not science. One respects its autonomy, but sheds some light on it, providing some coherent answer and an increase in intelligibility.”
Professor Dominique Lambert
University of Namur
Biography
Dominique Lambert is Professor and Director of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Namur in Belgium. Recognized as a specialist in theoretical physics and the philosophy of science, his interests extend to the relations between science and theology, biology, and the history of modern physical cosmology. Professor Lambert is also acknowledged as the seminal researcher on Msgr Georges Lemaître, a cosmologist, a friend of Albert Einstein, and an ordained Roman Catholic priest deeply rooted in his faith. Lemaître was one of two fathers of the of Big Bang Theory who will be honored in 2014 when the European Space Agency launches the 5th Automated Transfer Vehicle “ATV-5 Georges Lemaître” that will be connected to the International Space Station.
With access to previously unexplored source documents, Professor Lambert investigated the relations between science and religion through the life story and scientific work of Lemaître that resulted in the publication in 1999 of La Vie et l’Oeuvre de Georges Lemaître, a rigorous and detailed reconstruction of Lemaître’s spiritual journey.
Professor Lambert has also been a major researcher in the reception of Darwinism. Together with his colleague, Professor Grossens (U.C.L., Department of Geology), he has been involved in the discovery, analysis, and critical edition of the manuscript (lost since 1921) of the unpublished book of Canon Henry de Dorlodot (geologist and theologian), Le Darwinisme au point de vue de l’orthodoxie catholique. Volume 2. L’origine de l’Homme. This document is an interesting and important witness to the way Darwinism was interpreted in the University of Louvain and of the state of natural sciences at the university at the beginning of the twentieth century.
A Member of the “Académie Royale de Belgique” (Classe des Sciences), a Corresponding Member of the “Académie internationale de Philosophie des Sciences”, he has been awarded the Prize of the International Georges Lemaître Foundation in 1999, and that of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology (ESSSAT Prize) in 2000, among many others.
With François Euvé, Professor Lambert has been a partner in submitting the planning grant on the re-integration of science in seminary education and formation to the John Templeton Foundation.
For full c.v.: http://directory.unamur.be/staff/dlambert