Dr. Daniel Vanden Berk is professor at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe PA. Dan is an astrophysicist. He works on extragalactic astronomy and quasars, specifically in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and other satellite based data. We discuss his work and where he's going with it. We'll discuss his background in Catholicism and his faith journey. And we'll talk about suffering and how he views faith and reason, how they come together. And then at the end, we talk about the Catholic Church response to COVID and his perspective on that.

00:02:24 Intro

00:12:22 Overviews of quasars and black holes

00:26:10 Deep dive into research

00:35:55 Future of research

00:38:27 The place of quasars in cosmological models, dark matter, and dark energy

00:44:06 Faith journey

00:56:20 Suffering and Evil

01:03:02 Faith and Reason

01:09:06 Stephen Barr book on "Modern Physics and Ancient Faith"

01:10:50 Future podcast on Word on Fire Institute "The New Apologetics" book review and AI

01:11:48 How to get a degree in evangelization

01:16:12 Response of the Church and scientists to COVID

EPISODE LINKS:

Joshua Sijuwade Transubstantiation paper: https://philpapers.org/rec/SIJTAM

Joshua Sijuwade Transubstantiation podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51JUMy75CSs&t=172s

Dr. Cory Hayes on Galileo and the Church: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6T-W8kN1nk

"Modern Physics and Ancient Faith", by Stephen M. Barr

"The New Apologetics", ed. by Matthew Nelson