Forget about discussing Politics and Religion, if you really want to heat things up start a discussion about Science and Religion. For many people the two are mutually exclusive, like Dry Water, but in reality each one attempts to understand the fundamentals of Creation.
There are many different Religions and many different ways of viewing the Cosmos. Ancient man attempted to comprehend the world he saw around him and the span of the sky above him. As a Christian my resource book is the Bible for the religious viewpoint of Creation found in Genesis.
Genesis tells how God was involved in and brought about everything. With apologies to my fundamentalist friends, Genesis while being Theologically true leaves out much of the details that God used in bringing about the Universe.
Humans seek truth. No one should fear the truth. Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Light.” For this discussion I wish to talk about Theological Truth and Scientific Truth.
Theological Truth is concerned with God’s relationship with us and our relationship with Him. In Genesis, after the 7 Day Creation narrative, the story concentrates on God’s promises to Man and Man’s response to God. The gist of Genesis is that God is always faithful, Man NOT so much. The New Testament fully reveals how radical God is in His fidelity to Man.
Scientific Truth is concerned with the What, How and When of things that happen in Nature. Man has used his God-given brains and figured out that the Universe follows a set of Laws that determine how Matter and Energy interact. These interactions are determined by values called Physical Constants, such as “G”, the Universal Gravitational Constant. Scientists have measured the value of G and other constants. Scientists tell us that if these constants were of a different value, by the smallest amount, like 0.00000000000000000000001 %, or such, the Universe as we know it would not exist. Now that’s precision!!!!!!!!!
For the honest person, the pursuit of knowledge should be a joyful matter. Truth will NOT contradict Truth. Theological Truth should enlighten Scientific Truth and Scientific Truth should affirm Theological Truth. A closed minded approach to studying God or the Universe will necessarily yield poor results by rejecting what is patently obvious to those who are open to both schemes.
From a purely no-God approach, the Big Bang requires us to believe that matter and energy is created out of nothing, thus violating a fundamental physical law. Multi-verse explanations and inter-dimensional interactions merely move the question back to where did these other universes come from.
From a purely ignore the evidence standpoint, some insist the Earth and everything else is only several thousand years old. The problem is that scientists and their God given intelligence have figured out that the elements Carbon, Oxygen, Nitrogen, Gold, Iron, etc. , in fact all the elements beyond Hydrogen and Helium, were created inside a star when it went Nova or Super Nova. Now stars have lifetimes measure in Millions and Billions of years. The Earth with its abundance of heavy elements is composed of star dust literally. Our bodies our composed of star dust.
Think about that for a moment. God first created the Universe with its precise physical laws. Then He used those laws to create heavier elements within the cores of massively hot stars that exploded with unimaginable force. The debris from that explosion was then gathered by Gravity to form a new Solar System that He then populated with us.
God is often described as a Potter sculpting Man out of Clay. Now we can say that God molds Man out of Star Dust and His kiln is the core of a Star. Much more dramatic!
We cannot be afraid to use our brains, God gave them to us. We also cannot become so full of our own cleverness that we choose to ignore the truths revealed to us, whether they are Scientific Truths or Theological Truths.
Find more work from Dennis McGeehan at Warrior’s World Dad. Dennis writes from Pennsylvania, and is available for speaking at your next store or parish event.
Time, space; energy and matter start at the big bang (Let there be light) event, as particles moved from the origin. All are creatures.
The null hypothesis, not withstanding, scientists, like me, who accept the existence of the expanding universe must reverse calculate to the instant of creation. Previous to the “BANG,” the material universe did not exist. Since logic tells us that everything comes from something, we get back to the un-caused cause.
I’ve worked with atheists most of my life. Most of them were smarter than me, so they blamed my beliefs on my intellectual deficiencies. Yet they believed in something far more fantastic than “creation by God:” nothingness as the source for the universe and life.
Often, their unbelief provided a convenient excuse for doing what they wanted, rather than what they should. They think it’s cool to be an atheist. One of my sons (at the time an altar boy) went to orientation at the university (actually, my university) and came home a vegetarian and an atheist. He’s still both.
He met Sarah who converted him. For some strange reason, his next 3 girlfriends were all named Sarah.
We still love him.
God Bless,
Don
Thanks Don & J.D.,
Actually Don, it’s worse than that. Those who champion a “Science only view” are dishonest when they claim there is no God as you cannot prove a negative. Also, science as we know will only work back to the origin when time equals zero (if it even works there, as Time is a construct of Space). There is absolutely no experiment that can be devised to test what happened prior to Time = Zero.
J.D. I have found that the most strident atheists are also the most closed minded. Cardinal Pell had a debate with Christopher Hitchens a while back, you can see it on Youtube. It is almost painful to watch Hitchens be blown out of the water, he comes off terribly misinformed.
The problem with a lot of such discussions are the differences between those who don’t believe in God and those who don’t WANT to believe in God.
It’s pretty easy to tell which ones are more eager to have a civil conversation.
Dennis,
I love this piece.
Let’s go one better. How about “Evolution as a proof for the existence of God?”
The usual atheistic approach to God and Evolution begins by discrediting the bible. The fundamentalist approach denounces evolution. Both ignore that God is a lot smarter than they imagine.
I’d never want to go bowling with God. God would put such a spin on the ball that God would rack up perfect scores game after game. Imaging playing golf with God. God would take a regular golf ball and any old golf club. What do we get: hole in one after hole in one. No miracles needed, God just sends the spin, angle and power from the club to the ball.
The Belgian Jesuit invented Big Bang (aka: Let there be light) posits the original release of sub-atomic particles. God granted those sub-particles the attraction to form into 100+ varieties of elements, which in turn naturally coalesced into molecules, and under favorable conditions organic molecules and biochemicals which given sufficient billions of years, formed membranes and cells. All of this came from the original spin that God banged out when God said “Let there be light!” God didn’t have to intervene along the way to push evolution from one step to the next.
Evolution as a proof for the existence of God stands tall even before humans, their immortal souls and salvation history began.
God Bless,
Don