What can science tell us about the mystery of God? Earlier this week I responded to a friend’s quotation of Philip Yancey in his devotional book Grace Notes about the “fine-tuning” of the universe. Here’s a replay of Yancey’s point:
“Rumors of another world sneak in even among those who restrict their view to the world of matter. Scientists who dare not mention God or a Designer speak instead of an “anthropic principle” evident in creation. Nature is exquisitely tuned for the possibility of life on planet Earth: adjust the laws of gravity up or down by one percent, and the universe would not form; a tiny change in electromagnetic force, and organic molecules will not adhere. It appears that, in physicist Freeman Dyson’s words, “The universe knew we were coming.”
To those who know it best, the universe does not seem like a random crapshoot. It seems downright purposeful—but what purpose, and whose? I find more of a spirit of reverence among secular science writers than in some theologians. The wisest among them admit that all our widening knowledge merely exposes our more-widening pool of ignorance. Things that used to seem clear and rational, such as Newtonian physics, have given way to gigantic puzzles.”
In the 20th century, a scientific revolution even greater than Newton’s profoundly changed how we understand our world. It was quantum mechanics. Subatomic particles do not follow the laws of classical Newtonian physics but behave in quite aberrant and even whimsical ways. Fritz Rohrlich speaks to the challenges of moving from the familiar world of classical Newtonian physics to quantum mechanics:
“There is no reason other than prejudice to expect the quantum world to be expressible in classical terms. Since that world is admittedly strange to us, being very far removed from our experience, it should come as no surprise that many of the problems we have in comprehending it are due to our lack of proper words for its new and unfamiliar concepts and for its peculiar nature.”
As with the classical Newtonian physics, most Christians operate within “classical” Christianity most of the time. When asked for his definition of the gospel, Karl Barth, theological giant of the 20th century, is said to have replied, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so!”
But as with Newtonian physics, it is dangerous to assume this is all there is. Einstein and others showed that the quantum world revealed deeper mysteries. The quantum world did not mesh well with what classical physics had come to expect, and while this new world was not irrational, it was rational in a way never before considered (or different from what Newton might have defined as rational).
If God created reality in such a way that the subatomic world operates on a completely different set of principles than the world we see and touch, why might the same not be true in the realm of the Spirit? And if the paradoxes discovered in natural phenomena (light exhibiting properties of both particles and waves, for example) stimulated scientific seekers to discover the quantum world in the first place, why might biblical paradox not stimulate spiritual seekers in the same ways?
Saint Jerome had a notion of such levels of spiritual reality in mind when he wrote: “The Scripture’s gospel is shallow enough for babes to wade in and never drown and yet deep enough for scholars to swim in and never touch bottom.” Are you wading… or swimming…or somewhere in between?
Question: Up to now, have you seen science as the enemy of faith? Why or why not? Please share a comment.
