"Pope Pius XII addressing the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1951:

"Ten billion years ago, the matter of all the spiral nebulae was compressed into a relatively narrow space ..."

Our own little free - wheeling adaptation of Brother Guy Consolmagno, S.J.'s article for the November 2008 issue of "U.S. Catholic" magazine, The Godless Delusion.

Rather than undermining religion, the New Atheists are reinforcing antiscience prejudices in the general public. They're undermining science...

As Brother Guy, "the curator of meteorites at the Vatican observatory and author of God's Mechanics: How Scientist and Engineers Make Sense of Religion" puts it:

"I was an active scientist for 15 years before I took vows as a Jesuit brother.

"When I returned to science as a Jesuit, I was apprehensive of the reaction I would get from my fellow scientists.

"What actually happened was what I least expected: Time after time colleagues whom I had known for years would come up to me and say: You're a Jesuit? Wonderful! Let me tell you about the church I belong to...

"Even the atheists who I met during my interviews were sympathetic to my religious calling.

"They were surprised, of course, that I could be employed by the Vatican to do research into the origins of the solar system.

"Given how the media distorts science and religion, they had assumed that all Christians must be creationists.

"But does the following statement sound like it comes from someone who insists on a creationist's interpretation of Genesis?

Ten billion years ago, the matter of all the spiral nebulae was compressed into a relatively narrow pace, at the time of the beginning of the cosmic process ... the average age of the most ancient minerals [on Earth] is indicated at a maximum of 5 billion years ... Although these figures are astonishing, nevertheless, even the simplest believer would not take them as unheard of and differing from those derived from the words of Genesis, In the beginning...

"Modern as it sounds, this quotation is, in fact, more than 50 years old.

"The speaker was Pope Pius XII, addressing the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1951.

"Unfortunately, the more the New Atheists rail against religion for being literalist, the more they convince devout believers that one must be a literalist and reject science in order to be faithful to their church.

"But this kind of literalism has never been Catholic doctrine..."