“The Vatican’s In-House Astronomer”

Last updated on: December 29, 2016 at 4:06 pm by Dan Peterson

“The Vatican’s In-House Astronomer” 2016-12-29T16:06:32-07:00 Dan Peterson

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The Planet Neptune in a 1989 Voyager II image (Wikimedia CC)

This little article should be of interest to anybody who’s under the impression that science and religious faith are polar opposites or who has run into anybody who holds that demonstrably false view:

http://www.ozy.com/rising-stars/the-vaticans-in-house-astronomer/66779?utm_source=dd&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=12292016&variable=5ed1a72d26805e35a503e3167599df7c

Incidentally, Brother Guy Consolmagno was the very engaging keynote speaker at The Interpreter Foundation’s conference on science and Mormonism back in March 2016:

http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/brother-guy-consolmagno-sj-keynote-address-astronomy-god-and-the-search-for-elegance/

Have I, by the way, mentioned the fact that we’re rapidly nearing the end of 2016, and that the Interpreter Foundation functions entirely on the basis of donations?

I myself am a donor to the Interpreter Foundation, so it’s not as if I’m encouraging anybody out there to do anything that I wouldn’t do.

Amusingly, I recently read about the houses and cars and other perks that I apparently once received from the old Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) and, for a brief while, from its successor organization, the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. It’s already been established, by means — no less! — of repeated assertions by one or two anonymous posters on apostate message boards, and confirmed by their credulous audience, that I also received a yearly salary in the high six figures, or possibly even in the low seven figures, for my apologetic efforts. It was to put an end to such corruption that the leaders of BYU and of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had to intervene and show me the door.

Of course, my wife and I moved into our house in the spring of 1985, and I became affiliated with FARMS in 1988, and FARMS never did anything whatever to help me with my house or car payments. But this nonsense all sounds deliciously underhanded, doesn’t it? It’s just the kind of thing that a villain such as I would do, right? So it must be true!

Anyhow, the top level of the Interpreter Foundation’s leadership is entitled to take up to $500 annually from the Foundation for our general services. Thus far — the Foundation is about 4.5 years old — none of us taken so much as $0.05. If this is a get-rich-quick scheme, maybe we should have thought things through a bit better.

To find out how you can donate to the Interpreter Foundation — to enable us to continue publishing the journal and producing books and hosting conferences and bringing in guest speakers such as the Vatican astronomer — please see the information here. There’s still time! But not much. Not for this year, anyway.

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