God Loves Science, And Science Loves God

1. Science is a very human thing. It’s in our nature to want to find and understand order and meaning in all creation. It probably began with studying and mapping the stars and planets, naming them, especially when they were thought gods and predictors or influencers of good and bad things (astrology). Over centuries, scientific knowledge grew as records were kept, so that later people stood on the shoulders of earlier and thus were able to go further. Babylonians, Greeks and Moslems all contributed to science, and mathematics grew as well. The Jews were told that there is only one God, and so rejected astrology. However, star and planet records helped astronomy, travel, and navigation on the seas. The Catholic Church has supported astronomy ever since it was used initially for determining the date of Easter each year.

2. Then universities began to be established., from the 1200’s on, in the cities of Europe. They were begun by Catholic religious orders, with the support of Popes, and included mathematics and science for all students. Scientific progress accelerated greatly. Leading figures, from Isaac Newton to Galileo. were among those educated, and many priests were also scientists. Galileo’s friend, Pope Urban VIII, was a mathematician. Many historians of science think that Judeo-Christian beliefs and thinking are what made science poaaible.

3. Today the universities are in the hands of nonreligious people, while scientific progress continues. It matters not the worldview of the scientist. Many are theists, many are atheists, and many fall somewhere in between. Science itself has no religious, nonreligious, or anti-religious view. But since the universities, and therefore most of the hiring and money for research, are now in the hands of the nonreligious, many think atheism and science go together. Historians know that theism and science have frequently co-existed, though modern textbooks do not necessarily reflect that.

4. The “Big Bang” and God. Science cannot ever prove God exists, nor can it ever prove God does not exist. Both of these are equally true, because if he caused the universe to begin, (the “Big Bang,”) he had to exist before the universe, and is therefore outside of our ability to observe and measure, of science itself. Atheist and other scientists held out hope the Big Bang was not true, especially because it sounded like what the Bible said. Nevertheless, it was finally proven, late in the 20th century.

5. Fine-tuning. Beginning in the early 1900’s, scientists began to notice some strange, interesting things about the strength of various forces and factors in the universe and on earth. They have been finding, curiously, that if these were very slightly different, things would not work out well. In some cases, the universe would have collapsed (gravity), or everything on earth would burn, or we could not breathe (oxygen in our atmosphere).

In physics, they are called “constants.” Many more of them continue to be discovered, in chemistry as well a physics. These are problems for anti-design scientists to explain, in physics and chemistry, even biology.

Some scientists see this fine-tuning as making life and humans possible, and even as making science possible, for example our very clear atmosphere, making the universe observable from earth, unusual from planets generally. Darwinism just insists all is aimless, random, and undesigned.

6. Living cells, DNA, and Darwin. Beginning in the 1940’s, the facts about DNA began to be known. As recently as 1953, its double helix shape was discovered. Since then scientists, using electron microscopes, have learned much more about what goes on inside living cells, and they are still learning.

Darwin, in 1869, would have known none of this, and it was assumed then and for many years there was only goo in them, dubbed protoplasm. In recent decades, their extreme complexity, like a busy but well-controlled factory or city inside each living cell, is becoming more and more discovered, using those electron microscopes and new lab methods.

Living cells are so small that 200 of the smallest or 100 of the largest would fit on a small pinhead or dot (like this.). Yet DNA, which can be up to 6 feet long, is all curled up in each, and uncurls itself to be read for directions for the building of many specific proteins needed to work in there, or for producing new cells. This happens in even the simplest of cells.

6b. The universe is full of organic molecules, but no way has been discovered, or even imagined, that they can make themselves into a living cell, and new discoveries make that even harder to imagine. And Darwinian evolution can only begin once living cells already exist.

7. Living Creatures. When a human (or animal) body begins from one cell which splits and splits, those new cells each decide where to go and what kind of cell to be to body-build. Eventually, 50 or more trillion of them make up all the various parts of one human body, working together, with varying numbers in every living creature, all extremely complex. Knowledge of all this is growing faster and faster in this 21st century. Many school textbooks haven’t kept up.

8. Design versus Aimless Randomness. All science, by atheist or design scientists, at this point just adds to our knowledge of the complexity of the universe, making it more in need of a designer. Some still say it just looks designed but that we need to resist thinking that. Some are hoping their multiverse idea kicks God out of the picture, as if the many of them needed no one to begin them, too.

As with God, science cannot reach any other universe to know if it even exists, in any case. The atheist scientists do not like the design scientists’ ideas but cannot disprove them. They think evolution disproves God, but even evolution can be, or must be, by (God’s?) design. In the 1940’s the Catholic Pope said it did not matter how God made or evolved human beings, just that he made each one of us with their own soul.

9. Chemical Elements and Us. Earth could not exist, with its myriad of chemical elements, until early stars had formed, gotten old, then became so hot and compressed as to form all the chemical elements beyond hydrogen and helium and finally explode them into space. That is why our planet is much younger than the universe. On Ash Wednesday, the ashes put on the foreheads of Catholics come with a reminder that we all came from “dust.” You could say we are not only dust, but stardust! Our whole planet is, as well.

10. Science and the Bible. The Biblical description of creation is based on the cosmology of the time. Apparently, it just did not matter to try to explain the science of it, which would not be discovered and grasped until many centuries later. Most Christians agree on this, Catholic and otherwise, though a few sects do not.

It made four points. First, the earth and universe were made by the one and only god, not a random by-product of a battle among the gods. Second, it was good–God said so. Third, humans were very special, made in his “image and likeness.” And fourth, mankind’s relationship with the creator had been ruptured, and God was going to restore it through a man named Abraham and his descendants.

11. What Might God Want? There is no way science can study God, so when we discover God, we are left to believe or not believe. He seems to want us to be free to choose or reject him, and gives us a lifetime to decide. What does he want? Check the 10 Commandments, and the Sermon on the Mount. He seems to want us to love one another, as well as to appreciate him, in the ways he thinks, or knows, best. We can listen to our conscience. That may be partly put into us by him, too. We can pray, reaching out for help, guidance and/or forgiveness.

12. God Loves Science. There are parts of the Bible that seem to encourage scientific study. God may have wanted us to share his intelligence, creativity, joy and curiosity, here in this great location with clear atmosphere to observe it all. Atheist scientists may think that religion is anti-science, though many scientists even now are, in fact, religious, studying and enjoying the beautiful creation!

13. Limits of Science (and Materialism). We must keep in mind that science has limits. It cannot study or even know about many things, like human emotions including love, so that some scientists who believe knowledge is limited to what science can teach us, do not even believe we have minds, only brains(!), and cannot make choices or have wills of our own.

Science has limits by choice. It limits itself to only physical or material reasons for anything it studies. It makes sense. The problem, as design-friendly scientists see it, is that there are no possible physical, material, non-design-based reasons for many things they study. Not now, not in the future, not ever. They are open to being proven wrong, but do not expect to be, since the problems for materialism (the add-on philosophy, not science, that only material reasons can exist) are increasing more and more rapidly.

14. Chickens and Eggs. New Methods and Instruments Speeding Scientific Progress. One problem we all have known for years–which came first, the chicken or the egg? In recent years, because of new instruments and lab methods, microbiologists are able to see unbelievably tiny, self-controlled and organized machines and systems within cells, and science labs are filling with chicken-and-egg situations of strange, wonderful, and mind-blowing type and variety.

Design scientists see no potential for “survival of the fittest” in these chicken-and-egg dilemma situations, because they see no piecemeal, slight change that would survive in order for evolution to gradually, randomly and purposelessly produce them, as Darwin insisted.

Evolution can just mean gradual development, and is accepted by most (even design-believing) scientists, just how some of it can happen is in question–accident or design. Many think it may be some of each, as we see with viruses.

15. Evolution Needs Design. Design scientists agree on evolution, just not this method or way it can happen. There are two types. Some think the universe was designed to work out the way it is now at the beginning. Others see need for new design ideas, even tricks, along the way to make what exists now, in DNA and other ways. They know that things normally fall apart with time. They do not get more complex on their own!

16. Design Scientists. So, design-friendly scientists have concluded there has to be a designer. They know it is not within science to find the designer, but they can still examine and study scientifically all that they are capable of doing because of their education, training and experience.

More than once, a feature considered a mistake in design, an aha! moment to non-design scientists, has later been found to have a special purpose, for example the appendix, which is now thought to restore gut flora when needed. Also, some DNA thought “junk DNA” has been found to have a purpose. Design elements continue to be discovered.

16b. So far, design scientists are disdained and considered outsiders, even non-scientists, by materialist scientists. But the evidence for design continues to build. It seems to be speeding up, and is becoming overwhelming. This is why God Loves Science, and it is Loving Him Back.

17. Materialist scientists are patiently waiting for things to return their way. Design scientists are finding just the opposite, more and more reasons that would be impossible. Some materialist scientists, faced with the extreme fine-tuning (as it is called), the Big Bang event, apparent design in living cells, and more, have decided there must be a God who designed this.

Some have stayed atheist or agnostic, but are noticing and agreeing there is design, somehow. Still others are busily trying to find some way other than design, for all these things to look so beautifully designed.

18. Belief in God is up to each person, whether philosophical or religious. Science is great tool, or a window into God’s greatness, however you like to think of it, or to argue over it, if you like to argue, though no one convinces anyone else. But it can enfold you into a good place in your life, totally separate from cold, hard science. Many also want to give God his due, if he is our creator.

19. Scientists are human. There always has, in various sciences, been a holding-onto of ideas that were adopted earlier, even when evidence shows otherwise. Resisting new ideas is not unusual in science. This can be seen even in the discovery of vitamins and their necessity, surprisingly.

A huge instance of resistance was by doctors when a Dr. Semmelweis, in Vienna in 1845, said he had discovered they would save maternal lives if they just washed their hands before assisting at childbirth. They were insulted, thought he was wrong to say that, and ruined him. So, when the church wanted to be really sure before accepting Galileo’s views, or atheist scientists did not want to believe the Big Bang could be really true, well, scientists are only human.

20. Resistance Decreasing. Now, due to unease about a possible God or Bible connection, resistance to the design science is very strong. The Big Bang Theory was resisted for decades in the 20th century, until it had been shown in many ways to be the case. Design by a designer who preceded the Big Bang is not scientifically provable, -or disprovable, since nothing before it is able to be studied scientifically.

So, it has been, and will be, gradual, that one by one, scientists may accept and are accepting the design idea, although they do not, cannot, scientifically know who the designer is. Even Richard Dawkins, founder of the New Atheism, has moved from atheism to agnosticism (a maybe?) on design.

21. Assumptions of Materialism. Science teachers, writers and books often use unacknowledged assumptions that sound like science to imply that all we see and know about has happened by accident and randomly, without any design or designer, like a computer being assumed as making itself. Since many scientists hope to scientifically prove there is no designer necessary, and they anticipate success, along with an assumption that design is some kind of religious belief, they also assume they are okay to pass this on to students as fact. Be wary of sleights of phrase that sound like proven science, but actually are philosophically based belief or choices.

22. Evolution Ascent (Not Descent). Living things have ascended, not descended, from earlier creatures un the process of evolution. As with updates of computers, these require new knowledge and information, and perhaps ideas plans and design. Things just do not get better on their own, inside or outside computers.

23. Missing Links? They really don’t make any difference in the need for design information, though they are interesting to see. And fossil records do not show any partially-evolved forms of life. In fact, a couple of huge finds, in Canada and China, show many new fully formed body forms seem to have appeared in a short period.

24. God Has Been/Will Be Waiting. God will be waiting, having made humans to be scientists, for them to know and appreciate his handiwork. Now that humans have invented AI and are beginning to worry that it wants to go off on its own and reject its maker, we may see how God feels with his humans!

25. Note: During the late 20th century, as the Big Bang was finally close to final acceptance, a long-lost text was discovered, a purported mystical or near-death experience from the 1300’s, from a British woman called Julian of Norwich.

She said Jesus appeared to her, and among many things, put into her hand “something small, no bigger than a hazelnut, ...so little that it could suddenly fall into nothing,” telling her it was “everything that is.” It would be interesting to know if this was the size of the “singularity” from which the Big Bang began.