Big Prize for Priest-Cosmologist

…“I always wanted to do the most important things,

and what can be more important than science and religion? Science gives us knowledge, and religion gives us meaning.

Both are prerequisites of the decent existence.”

These words belong to a 72-year old man with a lot of prize money: Michael Heller. On Wednesday, at Buckingham Palace in London, he received the biggest award a philanthropy can give – the $1.6 million Templeton Prize.

A priest-cosmologist, Heller has spent his life reconciling the digestible facets of science with religion’s mysteries. Between the two, he says, there are no gaps. People should not use God to explain what is unknown in the scientific world; science does not demystify religious themes.

Heller plans to use his prize money to create a center for the study of science and theology in Krakow, Poland.

.MGW.

~ by meagangwhite on March 14, 2008.