The Daily Beast reports that astronomers met at the Vatican for a conference in honour of Georges Lemaître. Lemaître, a Catholic priest and astronomer, proposed in 1927 the notion of a "primordial atom" from which the Universe originated. His idea is now commonly called the Big Bang theory. The article notes that the words "God" and "religion" are absent from the titles of the presentations.
Slides (PDF) associated with the presentations are available from the Web site of the Vatican Observatory.
further reading:
official announcement
biography of Lemaître
The Cornell Daily Sun article about Lemaître
additional coverage:
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday May 19 2017, @01:47PM (2 children)
Unlike church(es) Galileo didn't force anyone to believe anything.
As for the sex abuse. The exploitation potential and danger comes from that the church is so ingrained and able to shield offenders.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday May 19 2017, @01:59PM (1 child)
As I said in my initial comment: "I'm not a Catholic, nor do I think religion is a helpful influence in modern science." And I completely agree with you that, as a matter of free speech/expression, the treatment of Galileo was deplorable and should absolutely be condemned. (Though that could basically be applied to EVERY social/governmental/religious regime at that point in history, who all tended to suppress speech they disagreed with.) But the fairy-tale version of the Galileo story does more harm than good.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Friday May 19 2017, @05:15PM
> nor do I think religion is a helpful influence in modern science
I'll propose one lonely exception: Religion-driven cultural norms preventing scientists from slicing and stitching all kinds of living things together, just because now they can.