God and Science are Best Friends

The past couple of months have been a real renaissance for me as I have considered the integration of modern science and Genesis 1.  This is honestly something that I never thought that I would do because I was given my faith in God apart from science and the debate between whether science and God mixed was not something that bothered me.  I knew it was out there and that it was a cultural discussion, but I never felt the need to engage because I believed and subsequently still believe that the best method for evangelism is the combination of sharing the Gospel along with the demonstration of signs and wonders.  I myself have witnessed many miracles and due to this I don’t have a stumbling block that would be opposed to an understanding of the creation of the universe that would defy the laws of physics as we know them today.  As such I never really gave the time to think deeply about the first chapter of Holy Scripture because it was never a difficult thing for me to believe.  The same God who I have seen cause tumors to dissolve, bring hearing to deaf ears, movement back to frozen hands and so on is the same God who created the Universe out of nothing.

And I would have been content to do this for the rest of my natural life had I not been exposed to Eric Metaxas and his compelling new book called “Is Atheism Dead?”  I have written previously about the unique set of the circumstances that arose to cause me to read this book and I consider it to be a definite God thing that I ended up doing so.  I have read through the section about how the new discoveries in the field of science are pointing to belief in God multiple times and am fascinated by the implications of what these new discoveries show.  It is becoming clear that the notion that science and God don’t mix is an antiquated statement that would be better fit for the 19^th or 20^th centuries than for our current day.

A brief summary of this section in his book can be reduced to three points:

1) The Big Bang

2) The Impossibility of Random Abiogenesis

3) The Finely-Tuned Universe

The Big Bang

I find it fascinating that in my recent past I looked at the Big Bang as some kind of anti-Christian origin story for the Universe.  I recall that whenever my friends would bring it up that we would always say that we believed in the Big Bang – which is that “God said it and BANG it happened” – but that was about the extent of my knowledge of this now famous physical explanation of the early history of the Universe.  What the reader learns in the first 2 chapters of “Is Atheism Dead?” is that the concept of the Universe having a beginning was radically resisted by atheistic materialists¹ because it meant that the material world was not eternal.

The philosophical ramifications of science stating that the material world is not eternal are very profound.  Firstly one must realize that eternity is a necessary condition of existence, I wrote on this in my post called “The Remarkable Implications of Descartes Famous Phrase Cogito Ergo Sum” but to summarize this concept the reality that we exist and that there is a thing called “Existence” means that something or Someone had to have existed forever.  Because if there ever was a time when there was truly nothing then nothing could ever have come to be.

This simple exercise in logic has caused philosophers for thousands of years to theorize either one of two things.  Either 1) There is an Eternal Self-Existent God who created the material world or 2) Matter itself is eternal and has always existed.  Philosophers have believed one or the other or in some cases both².  The possibility of matter being eternal even took on a religious expression in Pantheism, which is the belief that there is no separation between God and matter.  Pantheism seemed particularly appealing in the late 1800s and on into the early 20^th century as the dialectical idealism of G.F.W. Hegel³ was combined with Darwin’s theory of evolution to create the popular picture of the mystic universe.  A mysterious cosmos that was ever morphing and through that change discovering itself – and therefore truth⁴ – in a progressive way.  One could perhaps touch this mystic universe by looking within or by being immersed in nature.  It allowed for spiritual experience apart from objective morality and made it so the craving to know something greater than one’s self along with the craving to gratify the desires of the flesh could be met under one umbrella.  One could be spiritual but not religious and encounter the divine but in a way that held no bearing on how they lived their lives.

Ramifications of Discoveries Are Slow

One of the profound points that Metaxas makes in this book is that while through the internet the world has become incredibly small and people have become marvelously connected that Truth itself still travels slowly.  We could theorize as to why that is the case but whatever the reason for this may be I find it remarkable that the world is still living under the shadow cast by the 1800s.  I say this because the equations of Einstein confirmed by the telescope of Hubble that were then confirmed even later by the discovery of background radiation all point to a wild fact – the universe had a beginning.  It is not a mystic, divine force that has a will or brings about events.  If you seek the cosmos for counsel, it will have nothing to tell you.  If you reach for the stars, they won’t reach back.  If you call to rivers and oceans, they won’t answer.  

Rather there is a distinction between the Creator and the creation (Romans 1:25) that has been held by the Church for thousands of years as an article of faith that is now being testified to by science.  And yet what is more popular today than the spirituality I just described?  What is seemingly more fitting to the assumptions of modern life?  Is it not openly proclaimed on every public platform and sphere of society?

So, while Einstein is celebrated by our world as the proto-typical genius and the Big Bang Theory is common lingo in all circles, the ramifications of this remarkable discovery are ignored.  But how long can they be ignored for particularly when we consider the next portion of Metaxas’ book.

 

 

 

¹I use materialist in its philosophical sense – which is that of someone who believes that matter is the only thing that there is in the world.  This is contrasted with a spiritualist who believes that there is something more than the material world.  In common vernacular a materialist would be an atheist and a spiritualist would be someone who believes in God.

²Aristotle was an example of this

³Hegel is the great popularizer of the concept of the dialectic – which is that conflict brings about progress over time – this concept had tremendous implications on the thought of the 1800s.  Karl Marx was one of Hegel’s students.  While Hegel believed in dialectical idealism (which is the idea that truth is something that is discovered because of conflict), Marx believed in dialectical materialism (which is the idea that conflict and struggle between social classes will result in the end of classes all together and a shared ownership of material goods).  This idea of conflict bringing about progress over time also impacted Darwin and his idea of natural selection.

⁴I want to state that I don’t completely disagree with Hegel’s idea that the conflict between 2 opposing points of view helps to bring about a greater understanding of Truth.  The distinction between my views and that of Hegel is that Hegel would say that Truth is discovered by the dialectic whereas I would say is that Truth has already been revealed by God but that the dialectic helps to give us a greater understanding of what God has already shown us.  I don’t think you can really be a student of Church History and not see that the theological controversies of the past helped to bring a greater clarity to what Scripture actually says.