What Science Can Teach Us about God
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An obvious source, for me, is religion because it
directly addresses the question of the existence of God and his/her
relationship with humans. And, taking its cue from the nature of humanity,
religion pursues God intellectually as well as emotionally.
Science is another valuable source. Adam Frank, an astrophysics professor at the University of
Rochester, author and a self-described "evangelist of science,” writes on
a recent National Public Radio web site about his insights on awakening one
morning during a rain storm. It occurred to him that rain falls in other parts
of the universe, as liquid methane on Saturn, sulfuric acid on Venus, for
instance.
“We tend to think of ourselves as special, as unique,” he
writes. “Our personal stories are so vivid and important to us. Our collective
cultural history, expressed in our conflicts this moment, seem so pressing and
so urgent. But we really don't understand what is happening to us at all. We
really don't understand who we are or what we are. That's why all these rains
matter. They help show us.
Part of a Long Experiment?
“In truth, we're just an expression of one planet at one
moment in its many billion-year history. And looking beyond this world, it's
clear we're part of a long, long experiment in possibilities the universe is
running over and over again. All our enormous efforts at war and hatred and
separation are simply a failure to understand this simple fact.
Substitute “God” for “the universe” - a concept, not a conscious,
thinking being – and you have a beneficial insight.
“We are part of something much larger than ourselves, and
our ideas about ourselves,” continues Frank. “And how can we know this is true?
We can know because, without doubt, it is raining all over the universe.”
Adam Frank Google Image |
It blows the mind to consider the age and size of the
universe, and to recall that we’re tiny specks on an immense background and
only a part of something seemingly infinitesimal. It’s also interesting that
Frank, who has written extensively about the juncture of science and faith,
addresses many of the same questions that religion has asked for thousands of years.
The idea persists, however, that questioning and science
are incompatible with faith.
Geneticist Francis Collins, former head of the Human
Genome Project and current head of the National Institutes of Health – about
whom I’ve written several times in these blogs – went in his 20s from
agnosticism to atheism to Christianity. His thought process, reported in an interview cited on an Iowa
Public Television web site, is shared by many.
“I read a little bit about what Einstein had
said about God, and I concluded that, well, if there was a God, it was probably
somebody who was off somewhere else in the universe; certainly not a God that
would care about me. And I frankly couldn't see why I needed to have any God at
all.”
In his book, The Language of God, A Scientist Presents
Evidence for Belief, Collins refers to a book by biologist and theologian Alister McGrath,
who makes three important points after citing the “aggressive” atheism of
people like Richard Dawkins, an English evolutionary biologist and author.
No Need for God?
First, that because
evolution accounts for the origin of life, there is no need for God. That, writes Collins, arbitrarily discounts the idea that God worked out his creative plan
by means of evolution.
Second, Dawkins claims
that religion is anti-rational. “While rational argument can never conclusively
prove the existence of God,” Collins writes, “serious thinkers from Augustine
to Aquinas to C.S. Lewis have demonstrated that a belief in God is intensely
plausible,” adding that “it is no less plausible today.”
Third, Dawkins, and
others, argue that great harm has been done in the name of religion. That’s
hard to deny, but those harms “in no way impugn the truth of the faith; they
instead impugn the nature of human beings, those rusty containers into which
the pure water of that truth has been placed.”
Many people consider themselves
agnostic. From the Greek, un or non, and gnostos, or knowledge, agnostics say they don’t know whether
there’s a God. Many more are “practical agnostics,” who simply dismiss the
question of God because they consider it irrelevant.
But says Collins, “To be
well defended, agnosticism should be arrived at only after a full consideration
of all of the evidence for and against the existence of God. It is a rare
agnostic who has made the effort to do so.”
People searching for God
owe it to themselves to make this effort, and to be open to insights from many
sources – including science.
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