Andrea Rossi’s Faith

Andrea Rossi has made no secret over the years about his belief in God, and how his faith has been an important aspect in his work. There are a couple of items today that provide a little more detail about the role that his spirituality has played in his life.

On the Journal of Nuclear Physics a read asked some questions on the topic:

Based on your communications, you seem to be a man of science as well as a man of God.

1) Do you reconcile the two philosophically and if so, how?

2) What kind of God do you believe in?

3) Could your spiritual beliefs be partly the reason why you have been attacked so much in your work?

Rossi responded:

1- “Science without Religion is lame. Religion without Science is blind.” ( Albert Einstein, from “Collected Quotes From Albert Einstein” )
2- I am catholic christian and every day I read by heart the New Testament, but I respect any kind of Faith and deem freedom of Faith a pillar of the peaceful convivence of humanity.
3- some imbecile has written that my scientific work cannot be taken seriously due to my religious point of applicaton, but, you know, the mother of imbeciles is always pregnant: they count as a joker in a poker contest. By the way: atheism is still a religion, as well as negative numbers are still numbers.

In a separate article, Vessela Nikolova, author of Andrea Rossi’s biography “E-Cat The New Fire”, has a post on her blog which discusses Rossi’s religious convictions. One of her readers noticed that in the recently released photograph of Rossi with his patent, there was an image of a Madonna in his day-planner. Vessela contacted Andrea Rossi and asked him about the Madonna.

He replied to her explaining that this was an image of the “Madonna delle Grazie”. He explained that after he was released from prison he immediately went to pray in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie which was close to the prison. He wrote:

“I prayed in that church for my future life and prayed to make useful for something all the studies made in prison on the LENR. I have taken that day, in the same church, an image of St. Mary of the Graces, which is exactly the one that you can see inside my agenda.”

Rossi is not reluctant to share his convictions on many topics, and his religious life is clearly something that is an integral part of his personality, and seems to be a key element in his motivation to continue work on the E-Cat.

Obviously religion can be a controversial topic, and it is not normally not a subject of discussion on this site, but it seems to be relevant when we discuss the life and work of Andrea Rossi. In your comments, remember one of the commenting guidelines here is that “comments arguing for or against religious beliefs or practices” may be subject to moderation. So let’s not get too carried away with religious debates.

UPDATE: Another comment by Andrea Rossi here on the role of faith. A reader from South Africa commented on how he saw similarities between Rossi’s life and that of Nelson Mandela:

Brandon Hurd:
I remember when I was in prison and was listening the television news inside my cell ( 4 meters x 2 with 6 persons inside), listening that I was accused of tremendous crimes I never made ( eventually I have been cleared ” because the facts did not exist”, as the prosecutor himself wrote); imagine: you are closed in a prison and you listen at the television that you are accused of things you never committed and that you don’t even know exactly what they mean ; you listen that all your industries have been seized, closed , all your banks asked back all the money immediately, all your money seized and you can do nothing to react and fight because you are closed and insulated indide a prison for years, while in the meantime your industries go bankrupcy and you lose all what has been built through 3 generations from your family; imagine your wife asks diverce and your sons want not to see you again after what they learnt from mass media about you; imagine all your industries go bankrupt as a consequence of banks loans retrieve and of the fact that all your suppliers take advantage of your situation not paying what they owe you ( and later you will be convicted for these bankrupcies, so that the term you served in prison will have been justified); you know how I could survive all this and came out of this stronger? Asking God: ” OK, you are testing me: now, what can I do for you?”. As a matter of fact, whatever we do, we are born in this word starting from nothing, there is nothing special if we return to be nothing: that’s just an “epochè” that allows us to be reborn.
Thank you for your kind words, but Nelson Mandela is infinitely bigger than I am.
Warm Regards,
A.R.