“Science and Religion” – hearing the topic for a nearby seminar, I had signed up before you could say “Jesuit retreat”, which is where it was going to take place. Fifteen years ago, however, I would have run from a science retreat as fast as I was running to it last week. So, since I know both sides, this is not a post to judge, but one that seeks to understand what motivates so many modern people today to refuse science with a passion.
I’ve spent many years in a Christian environment that thought of science similarly to what they thought of other religions – something to save, if possible, and to fight, if not. A good example of the unfortunate dilemma these groups have gotten themselves into is the desperate clinging to the idea that the world is around six thousand years old (a number you get when adding up the ages of the families and tribes in the Old Testament since Adam and Eve) And I know why, despite such overwhelming evidence from literally every field of science, they still cling to it.
During my time with these groups of Christians, the most common response we used to give to scientific-minded people was, “Your God is too small.” By this we meant, if you can’t imagine that God could create things outside of scientific explanations (all the way to creating stuff that only looks billions of years old), you underestimate God. God can do whatever He wants, and if it says in the Bible that He created the earth in six days, then that’s what He did. It’s your mind that is limited in imagining God’s ability to work outside of scientific facts.
Granted, I always felt uneasy talking about this topic. For one thing, my dad is a nuclear physicist, and growing up, science had been a source of positive fascination and wonder to me. But when I started following Jesus at sixteen, suddenly science seemed to be laying traps all around my newfound faith. Darwin became new public enemy number one, closely followed by Steven Hawkins and other atheistic scientists like him.
At the heart of all of this suspicion and fear was the question of loyalty. And I believe it’s the same question that still drives millions of sincere people to slander, hate, and in some instances even kill their fellow humans today. For if you tell me my choice is between God and science (or God and another religion, or my country and another one, or my race and another), I will be loyal to who’s important to me, and dig in my heels against the “other”. You cannot produce a more dogged, fierce, and merciless response from a human than when you’ve convinced him that there are only two sides to choose from.
Personally, I sensed a profound loss whenever my religious belief supposedly forced me to ditch a scientific fact that had previously evoked wonder in me. Not only did it push me into a very uncomfortable corner with anybody outside my circles, it also forced me to call scientists wrong on topics they knew so very much more about than I did. Even to a sixteen-year old (who, of course, knows basically everything), this didn’t sound like the best idea.
Today I understand that what evoked wonder in me when learning about science of course had the same root as the wonder I feel when contemplating the love, forgiveness, and beauty of Christ. Unless we actively resist it, nothing that is created by an infinitely wise, powerful and caring Creator can leave the human heart untouched.
What I didn’t know was that there are never only two choices. We live in a world of infinites, not of dualisms. You can be faithful to God AND fully accept all findings of serious science. Believe in the Bible as God-inspired AND know that the earth is 4.543 billion years old. B a dedicated follower of Jesus AND respect, love, and learn from people of other religions. Have deep ethical and moral values AND still show compassion and patience towards those who violate your values. You can even find new freedoms AND still try and understand and care about those who are stuck in a bondage you came out of.
I loved literally everything about the retreat at the Jesuit center. The speaker, a physics professor from Georgia Tech, is a deeply spiritual man with a refreshing sense of humor. Listening to him, I could tell that he is still in constant awe of everything he studied and is now teaching, even after decades of academia.
One of the first quotes he presented at the retreat was:
Science is organized wonder.
Engineering is applied wonder.
Religion is experienced wonder.
Connor Johnson
Why is this man’s faith not threatened by the findings he makes as a scientist? Maybe because ascientist who is a Christian needs an understanding of God big enough for growth. As science evolves, as our understanding of the world grows, so must our understanding of God be allowed to grow. This is not to say that we try to fit God into what we now believe scientifically. Rather, we acknowledge that we will never fully grasp God’s scope, and anything new we find out scientifically just sheds more light on the grandeur of God that has always existed.
For years, I had seen faith as something that is received, and then conserved (and of course, shared). When talking about growth, I had mostly thought of becoming more thoroughly acquainted with the truth I had already been given. As an example, “growing” in terms of my Bible meant to read more in it and about it, and to make it come alive in my heart.
But as my fear subsides – the fear of other, of the dualistic choice, of my world view being threatened -, my curiosity revives. Instead of conserving my faith, I invite it to grow, to expand, and to widen as well as deepen. Or, in the example of the Bible, I’m ready to read it in light of history, culture, time, and – yes, science. As I do, things get threatened at first. Can my faith withstand in this new light in which I see it? Will losing one certainty rob me of others as well? And what will be left?
But while an expanding faith will lose many certainties and dogmas, it will at the same time allow other aspects to flourish: Aspects like love, compassion, wonder – and a devotion to the Creator of all these amazing truths that no dualistic worldview could ever have produced.
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