Science seems to tell us all we need about the natural world and we don't seem to really need God. What is a man to do when he finds himself caught between two worlds?
Image by felixioncool from Pixabay
In the beginning God...
I am a scientist and a believer in God. That sounds like a contradiction. For many years it felt like I could not reconcile these two parts of who I am. It seemed like I had to be one or the other and not both. This tension I think stems from two things. One is not understanding what faith really is and the other is the very nature of God. Faith in God has often been described as blind because it seems one has to grope around like a blind man or shut one’s eyes and ignore the facts in order to believe in God. Science on the other hand deals with things we can readily test and prove or disprove. No fumbling or groping in the dark needed. The obvious question is this: If science reliably tells us how the universe works and if by it we can manipulate nature to our advantage then why do we need to invoke or believe in an invisible God?
The Nature Of God
The God I have come to believe in, the one true and only God, is introduced as the Creator. The self existing being who is not material and who is the ultimate cause of everything in the universe. Though humans are like him in certain ways, with attributes such as intelligence, autonomy, emotion, morality, and creativity, he is not like us. It is not difficult for me to imagine that this universe is caused. The universe behaves like it has a cause. The real problem is believing that the cause of the universe is a mind, a being, an intelligence, a person. Everything we know of is made up of matter and or energy. We are aware of the existence of things because we have the means to detect the matter or energy they posses. Nature presents a hierarchy of complexity with non-living matter at the bottom and humans at the apex. The possibility that the cause of the universe is a being consisting neither of energy nor matter, who is at the same time the source of all matter and energy and is vastly more complex, more personal, than humans and immensely more powerful than anything that exists in the universe is mind bending to say the least. How are we to interact with one who is so fundamentally unlike us.
“The universe behaves like it has a cause. The real problem is believing that that cause is a mind, a being, an intelligence, a person.”
Impossible
Image by WikiImages from Pixabay
The word impossible is an interesting one for me. I don’t necessarily say it out loud, but I hear it whispered in my thoughts often when I think about the God I just described. Impossible is what lies outside the confines of the box called possible. To a man like me, made up of matter and sustained by energy, that box called possible contains everything that is like me in some way. I cannot imagine anything outside this box. History, however, has shown that we don’t know what is possible until we find it. What a twenty first century person takes for granted is the 17th century man’s impossible. Clearly there is so much that is still unknown. That presents a problem. On one hand I understand that a thing does not cease to exist simply because I am unable or refuse to believe it exists. On the other hand a thing does not exist simply because I believe or wish it would. Things are or they are not. Therefore I cannot know or say where the boundaries of possible fall. And yet those boundaries exist; this box really does have boundaries. There are things and beings that do not exist because they cannot exist. So why should anyone accept that this God or any other exists? How does a God fit in the box and why does he get to say what is in the box called possible?
"We really don't know what is possible until we find it or He finds us"
Immanuel
Imagine that as an artist you created a cartoon with stick figures. And suppose you were able to animate these figures and give them limited autonomy so that they lived out the story you had created for them. To these figures, their two dimensional world would consist of lines, paper and pigment. Now consider the sheer impossibility of these figures ever coming up with the concept of creation or a creator who not only made the paper their world consisted of, but the lines that brought them into being. Having never known three dimensions let alone flesh and blood, the distance between yourself and your creatures is infinite. The only way your creatures could contemplate a creator would be if you also gave them this awareness as part of their nature. And the only reason you would do so is so that you could make yourself known to them. Now whether or not these stick figures will actually know their creator depends entirely on the creator. If the creator drew himself into the picture and then using their language introduced himself to them, and if by manipulating the picture in a way only the creator could do, he could show them that he really was the creator, they might believe in him. The story of Jesus Christ of Nazareth is the story of the Creator coming to his creatures in a form they could comprehend, speaking their language and doing things that only the Creator could do with the sole purpose of introducing himself to them. This is how I came to believe in God. The Creator introduced himself to me. I know, it sounds crazy. How do I know it is him, how can I be sure it’s not just my emotions or biochemical or physiological phenomena? There must be a natural explanation for whatever I experienced. How do you explain suddenly seeing when you didn’t see before, or knowing when you didn’t know before or loving what you did not love before? How do you explain being made new by something or someone outside yourself? It’s been decades and I still have no explanation except this: Someone told me that God loves me so much that he sent his son into the world to draw me back to my creator. I was made able to believe what otherwise sounded incredible to my ears and the Creator introduced himself to me. My mind, trained by long hears living within the boundaries of the box I called possible, continues to be challenged because I have been brought to what I thought was the edge and shown that there is someone beyond my imagined boundary. We really don’t know what is possible until we find it or He finds us.
So science or God?
I'll take both thank you very much. Science because God. That sounds like a great idea? A universe which makes sense and a God who has a mind and intelligence and volition and choice and will are perfectly suited together. A universe that is reliable is possible because of a God who does not change. A universe which is vast beyond comprehension and yet can be known in part is consistent with a God who, while being infinitely removed in nature from his creatures took the form of man in order to make himself known. So yes the more I look at this amazing thing we call nature the more compelled I am to believe in its Creator. I am a scientist and a believer in God and that is as it should be.
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