During the Faith and Science Luncheon on July 2 in Richmond, Virginia, Douglas F. Ottati of the Presbyterian Association on Science, Technology and the Christian Faith said God, not humans, is at the center of the cosmos.
Ottatti, author and professor of theology at Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education, said: "Keeping
an eye on the relationship between religion and science is the single most important thing you can be about in theology."
Ottatti describes a vast cosmos at the center of which only God is to be found, while humanity and Earth are peripheral in his address, Which Way Is Up?: An Experiment in Christian Theology and Modern Cosmology.
The only way for a human to be at the center, he said, is to stand up and turn in a circle and be satisfied to be the center of a vercircumscribed,
visible world.
"God is sovereign," he said in a variety of ways.
"Our theological pictures or visions of God, the world and ourselves, sometimes change and adjust in order to take into account scientific findings, ideas and beliefs," he said.
Ottati's address harmonized with a purpose statement of the association - to
"challenge and assist the Presbyterian Church (USA) ... to study, understand,
discuss, and act on the implications of science and technology as they affect
the theology, worship, practice, and moral actions of the church."
