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00:30It's an interesting thing that I learned when I was about 30, and I had my doctorate.
00:41I was working at MIT as a researcher, but I was wondering, you know, why am I actually
00:45worried about the moons of Jupiter when people are starving in the world?
00:49And so I quit astronomy and joined the Peace Corps, and I went to Africa, but what I found
00:53when I got to Kenya was that the people there wanted to know about astronomy.
00:57They wanted to look through my little telescope and see the rings of Saturn, but of course
01:01they do, because this is what human beings do.
01:05Wondering about the universe is feeding our souls because we don't live by bread alone.
01:18Back in 1986, one of our astronomers, Martin McCarthy, just had this insight that the place
01:24is too quiet.
01:26It's not like a university where there are students to challenge you.
01:29Why don't we bring the students here?
01:31He had the idea of a summer school where we would have four weeks of intensive study with
01:37students who would be the best in the world, 25 of them, on some particular topic.
01:42And what we have found is that it brings this whole place to life, and it communicates to
01:48the astronomical world how much joy there is to do science for the love of the truth,
01:54to remind ourselves why we're doing this.
01:57We do it for love of truth, which to a Christian like me, to a Catholic, means love of the
02:03one who is truth.
02:07It's a month-long school, so we have a lot of time to interact and make connections.
02:13I'm Armenian, and I grew up Armenian in Lebanon, which is like a small Christian community.
02:19So growing up, the church was an important part of my upbringing.
02:23So I thought this was just a very interesting opportunity to kind of explore the relationship
02:28between the church, religion, and science.
02:44I think that's great advice, because the main drive for science is curiosity and wondering
02:51for something.
02:52It's like energy for sciences, to find something new.
02:56So I think it's really great advice for young sciences.
03:05In science, you are seeking truth, and I have my own spirituality.
03:12And we have different religions here, people from different places and different cultures.
03:19And they all are looking for the same thing.
03:24We want to understand the world.
03:26And I think that's what unites us.
03:33You read the opening book of Genesis and the description of creation there, and people
03:37go, oh, that's so non-scientific.
03:38Well, it was good science 2,500 years ago.
03:43What hasn't changed is not the science of the creation, but the God of creation.
03:51And who is the God who creates in Genesis?
03:54One who is there before creation occurs, outside of space, outside of time, creating space
04:02and time itself.
04:04One who creates as logically as day follows night.
04:09One who creates and at every stage of creation looks and says, this is good.
04:15And one who says the ultimate moment of creation, the ultimate goal of creation, is the Sabbath,
04:26the day when we stop worrying about what are we going to eat, and we allow ourselves to
04:31look at the universe and see in it the Creator, and be amazed by how it works and how incredibly
04:39subtle and elegant the Creator has been.
04:44That's astronomy.
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