“The Vatican’s Astronomer on God and the Stars: The Pope’s chief stargazer, Br. Guy Consolmagno, discusses what the Wise Men saw, how to deflect an asteroid, and why science and faith are more than compatible.”

“The idea that you read the Bible like it was the Chilton’s manual for how to repair your Volkswagen —that’s literalism. It’s a very modern idea,” says Dr Consolmagno. “You don’t find that in the church fathers. You don’t find that in the rabbis of the time of Jesus. That’s not the way they interpreted it. All literature in ancient times started out as poetry.”

Facing such questions, Dr Consolmagno offers a hypo-thesis: “Let’s assume that there’s a God that’s outside nature, who is responsible for the existence of the universe,” he says. “When I start with that axiom, does the universe make sense? Does the universe make more sense than if I assume it’s all done by random chance? Am I able to see things I couldn’t see before? Am I able to understand things I couldn’t understand before? Is it an axiom that works?