Congratulations are due to Br Guy Consolmagno SJ, Director of the Vatican Observatory and a Tablet columnist, for helping to set up this week’s ground-breaking conference on science and religion. And for making clear what it was not about. There could be no scientific proof or disproof of the existence of God, he explained, as a deity whose existence could be proved or disproved would not be God. But that is not the end of the matter. Astronomy in general and cosmology in particular, when they take a rest from being bafflingly mathematical, are asking questions that can attract the inquiring minds of non-believers and believers alike. Perhaps, especially, the latter.

The subject of the conference – “Black holes, gravitational waves and space-time singularities” – has been situated precisely at the interface of pure science with philosophy, theology and metaphysics. This is Stephen Hawking territory, and though the world’s most remarkable scientist said later he regretted ending his best-selling book A Brief History of Time with a reference to “knowing the mind of God”, he did put the issue on the scientific agenda.