God In Science

Before I dive head first into the foggy waters of science and faith, I would like to begin by discussing the most basic of theological questions: "Is there a god?"

This is a question we all are faced with at one point or another. Even though I was taught from birth that God existed and loved me, I eventually had to consider this question and decide for myself.

For me, there are many reasons why I believe in God. Some of these reasons are based on personal experience and faith, and although they are valid reasons to me, they may not be considered reliable in the scientific sense. Therefore, in this post, I will focus on the most convincing ways in which science has confirmed my belief in an infinite, transcendent and unchangeable God.

Cause and Effect
In Physics 101 I learned about Newton's laws of motion and the laws of conservation of mass and energy. When I think about it, these laws are basically describing cause and effect relationships that we can observe throughout nature. With this in mind, I can consider all of the mass and energy in my world and begin to trace them backwards. The energy I am using to type these words came from my body, which produces energy from food. The energy to produce the food is traced back to plants, to the sun, to atoms.... BANG!

Eventually, all matter and energy can be traced back to the Big Bang (Fear not. I will discuss scientific evidence for the Big Bang in a later post). Scientists agree that an infinitely small bundle of infinite density, temperature and pressure began to expand approximately 13.7 billion years ago. According to the laws of physics, all of the mass and energy in today's universe must have been contained within that pre-bang bundle.

But is the Big Bang the true beginning of the universe? Stephen Hawking and George Ellis close their book entitled The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time [1973] by stating that "the actual point of creation, the singularity, is outside the scope of presently known laws of physics". In other words, science cannot explain the origin of the Big Bang's source material because the generation of something from nothing is a direct violation of the laws of conservation of mass/energy. If we use science to follow matter and energy back to the very beginning of the known universe, we will inevitably become stuck with an effect that has no cause.

To me, it is this single and most undeniable proof for the existence of a creator. You cannot trace conservation of mass and energy to a point and then stop. All matter and energy must eventually have a source or "cause". In the case of the Big Bang, the source of our universe is required to have existed beyond the limitations of time, space, and the laws of physics... logically, beyond our universe. This source is best described by an infinite, transcendent, and unchanging creator. A creator that shaped not only the universe, but also the physical laws that govern it.

It's All In Order
This leads me to another way in which science points towards the authorship of a creator. When I first learned calculus, I was in awe of the beauty and elegance of math. When I learned that the equations of points, circles and spheres or the equations for location, velocity and acceleration were all related by calculus, it confirmed a sense of order in the universe.

I recently watched a PBS special on fractals. Since I will fail to explain it properly, Wikipedia defines a fractal as "a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole". These fractals are seen throughout nature in everything from clouds, to snowflakes, to tree branches, to blood vessels, to mountain ranges. Once again, a sense of order and design was confirmed.

As a geologist, I can pick up any rock from anywhere on the earth and it will have a history. A small piece of lava hardens, breaks from parent rock, rolls down a river, is deposited and buried on a beach, hardens as part of a new rock, is uplifted as part of a new mountain, and erodes away again. All according to the laws of nature, and all before the first human spoke a word... but for what purpose?

If there is no God, then the order we observe in nature is a mere chance occurrence. In this case, we simply exist as a grain of sand on the beach, here today and washed away tomorrow. If we are lucky we may make some contribution that is passed down a few generations, or we may become a science experiment for future species to discover, but eventually our lives will end and we will be forgotten.

With God of the Bible there is a design and a purpose to the order we observe in the world around us. But of course, the purpose described within the Bible is beyond the scope of scientific inquiry...

I am... or am I?
Since ancient times, humans have been worshiping some form of divine being. Why is it that we all must decide for ourselves whether or not some form of a god exists? Even the person who denies the existence of a god must first be aware of an idea of what that "god" might or might not be.

As humans, we are all faced with the fact that our knowledge and awareness of the world around us is limited. Even the most knowledgeable, enlightened, and aware human that ever existed did not know all there is to know about the universe. The the more we learn about nature and science, the more we find that there is more to discover. If this is the case, then there must exist some source of ultimate knowledge beyond that of human understanding.

Now, I know this final point is not really a question of science. It is more a question of philosophy. Nevertheless, the fact all humans eventually consider the existence or non-existence of a supreme being seems to imply to me that such a being must exist.

Conclusion
I understand that different people may make different conclusions from the same observations. It may be true that while these evidences are supportive to my belief in the God of the Bible, they may also support another person's belief that there is no supreme being or creator.

I simply hope that the reading of this post and others to follow will help you to reconsider your own place in this world, no matter what your belief or background may be.

About the Author

In an attempt to give the reader a better perspective on my... well... perspective, I'd like to begin this blog with some relevant information about my personal background.

In the Beginning

I grew up as the youngest son of a pastor. During my childhood, I was taught that the Bible is the infallible and divinely inspired Word of God. I learned all of the famous Bible stories, memorized scripture, and came to believe that Jesus Christ died in my place so that my sins could be forgiven.

As a child, I kept a collection of interesting rocks I found in my back yard, and I often wondered how they had formed. I also wondered about dinosaurs. What did they eat? How did they live? What happened to them? I was obsessed with dinosaurs. I had a Christian children's book that displayed evidence of man and dinosaurs coexisting. I specifically remember one picture of a sea monster that had been pulled out of the ocean near Japan in 1977. This was all the proof I needed that dinosaurs were still alive and Earth was young.

By the time I graduated from a Christian high school, I was under the impression that modern science and biblical Christianity were bitter enemies, and I was convinced that non-Christian scientists were mainly interested in propagating their atheistic worldviews. In support of these ideas, I learned alternatives to widely accepted teachings of popular science: Earth was approximately 6,000 years old, most fossil "missing links" were hoaxes, radiometric dating of rocks was unreliable at best, and Charles Darwin had recanted his evolutionary theory on his deathbed. To me, this was the truth that scientists did not want me to know about.

The Other Side

I always been good at math, so engineering seemed like the way for me to go out of high school. After two and a half years, I knew that I could not live out the rest of my life behind a desk, so I dropped all of my classes and picked the first major that popped into my head: Geology. I knew I liked being outside and figuring out how things worked, so it seemed like an ok choice. Plus, as a Christian, I figured it would be a good opportunity to learn about the "other side" and their point of view.

I began attending geology classes with a skeptical eye on all they were teaching me. I was convinced that scientists based all of their theories on the assumption that there was no God and I felt that my Bible contained a different view... the correct view on the formation of the world.

But the more geology classes I took, the more conflicted I became. I believed every word of the Bible and had a personal relationship with God, but I simply could not dismiss the fact that my Geology courses seemed to make a whole lot of sense. More importantly, it became increasingly clear to me that every rock did, in fact, seem to have a story to tell... a story different from the one I learned in Sunday School.

The Turning Point

I eventually graduated with my geology degree and began working for a living. For four years I kept trying to push the unresolved differences between my education and my beliefs further into the back of my mind. I finally decided that I needed more answers and applied to graduate school.

During my application process, I began to search for other scientists that shared my belief in the Bible, and I stumbled across a couple of amazing web sites (linked on the right side of this page). On a web site put together by a Christian with an interest in paleontology, I found an article about the sea monster (pictured) that had been pulled out of the ocean near Japan in 1977. This article described how a team of experts from differing scientific disciplines had studied the creature shortly after its discovery. It went on to list line after line of evidence indicating that this creature was most certainly a shark and not a dinosaur.

I was shocked and didn't know what to think. I had believed in this "dinosaur" since I was a child, but my children's book had been wrong. Worse yet, I checked the date of my book and found that it was published 10 years after experts had proven the creature to be a shark.

I still believed in God, but if this "dinosaur" was not real then how many other scientific falsehoods had I come to believe?

Revelations

As I continued to search for truth, I found that historical figures such as St. Augustine had been pondering questions about science and faith for ages. I accepted that God was the creator of the universe, and I also believed that the Bible was the inspired Word of God. Gradually, I began to understand that God reveals Himself to us through both General and Specific Revelation (that is: Creation and the Bible). So, if God authored the Bible and also created the universe, then how could one book be describing a 6,000 year old Earth while the other "book" describes a 4.6 billion year old Earth? I concluded that I must be interpreting one of the two books incorrectly.

This conclusion opened up a previously unavailable third option for me. What if science and the Bible could compliment each other and did not have to be bitter enemies after all? What if God gave us the ability to observe His creation as a way to discover more about His character? What if the creation account in Genesis was not intended to be interpreted as literal science and I had been misunderstanding all of this time? Well.... what if? For me, the answer to each question was simply "peace". No more itching questions in the back of my mind. No more us-against-them mentality. No more conflict between the world I observe and God's Word.

It is this sense of peace that I want to share with you, the reader.

So if you made it all the way down this page, thanks for reading. Please understand that I'm not trying to force my beliefs on anybody. I just want to help both Christians and non-Christians understand that the God who created the universe wants you to know Him, and when He created this amazing universe we live in, He put His signature on it: the more we learn, the more we understand how little we truly know.