Science Is A Gift From God … Hello Hump Day readers. I hope you will enjoy this devotion, albeit it can be very-very controversial, but you all know me, controversial brings out what I love to find and that is Scripture and what is true and what is false, so what happens when Science meets Scripture? So, I listened to a podcast with scientists and well-known theologians: John Piper, N.T.Wright, Bryan Wolfmueller, Rabbi Jacob Joseph-New York, Rabbi Shoshanah Conover-Chicago, Rt.Rev.Mariann Edgar Budde and Very Rev. Randolph Marshall Hollerith, from the National Cathedral which is Episcopalian, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of the New York Diocese, Bishop Angelo Acerra, OSB-Auxiliary Bishop of the United States of America’s Military. We had two Imams from Phoenix and 3 Buddhist priests. Talk about a “full plate” but was it good! Here’s a short version of what I learned. I hope it will lift you up to our incredible God who has given us Science, long before we even knew the name “Science!”
Let’s start with the beginning: Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Whether you are a person of faith or not, the universe can be difficult to wrap your mind around it and tons of ideas about its origin: did it explode – the Big-bang theory? Does it have a beginning or an ending? Where did all the animals come from, why are the dinosaurs extinct, how many planets are there up there? Let’s face it, it’s pretty much unexplainable. In the early 20th century an understanding emerged, forming the prevailing theory among cosmologists. Nobel Prize physicist Steven Weinberg says: “In the beginning there was an explosion–not an explosion like those familiar on earth, starting from a definite center and spreading out to engulf more and more of the circumambient air, but an explosion which occurred simultaneously everywhere, filling all space from the beginning, with every particle of matter rushing apart from every other particle. Within the tiniest split second, the temperature hit a hundred thousand million degrees Centigrade…hotter than the center of the hottest star.”
“The Matter of the Universe,” by Robert Jastrow, astronomer–founding director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies said: “It suggests the explosion of a cosmic hydrogen bomb. The instant in which the cosmic bomb exploded marked the beginning of the Universe…in a purely physical sense, it was the moment of creation.” But there’s a problem with this! From an infinitesimal point, which scientists call a singularity, the entire universe and time itself exploded into being—and science can’t account for it. So we have to again go back to Genesis 1:1 again. Theologians put it this way: “God created everything ex nihilo”—meaning “out of nothing.” Then “the bomb dropped” when Jastrow—who was not a Christian at that time, said: “For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries. For me, it was in the science that I found God!
For us who believe in God, we have a duty to be lovers of truth. It’s time to debunk the fact that science is not from God and embrace the incredible gift of science God has given us. Go to an observatory some time, it will wake you up and open your eyes wide as you learn from both theology and science—all the while worshiping the God of all truth as you look up and see a gorgeous sparkling sky above you.
We’ll never know everything about how God created this world, but in Jesus, we know everything about God—who loves us always. Science is only one of millions of things God has created for us. We don’t need to pick-it-apart, we need to enjoy it every single day! AMEN.
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