thinkingabout

Merriam Webster tells us that faith is like loyalty, and can be a fidelity to our promises, or a sincerity of intentions. This is not the kind of faith I was thinking about, though. Of course, like many English words, faith has many uses, so-
That same dictionary claims that faith is also expressed as a belief in God, including both trust in and loyalty to Him. This is more what I was thinking about, but not quite exactly. Of course this definition extends to a belief in religious tenets. I have the belief in God, and by extension, belief in religious tenets, even though my religion includes the fact that religion, as a whole, is the scourge of mankind. But again, this is not quite what I had in mind. Finally I found the definition I was thinking about:
“firm belief in something for which there is no proof” (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Faith)
That’s the one. The thing I was thinking about today was that my scientific friend thinks I am “superstitious” for my faith, because, he claims, there is no proof that God exists.
So I was thinking about the world, and its infinite complexity, the universe and the vast power expressed in its existence, and the scientific evidence my friend has expressed his own faith in. Of course, if there is proof of its existence, it isn’t faith, so why would I say my friend has faith in his scientific ideas?
Well, for starters, physics is a very interesting thing. I believe that even God has to obey the laws of physics, at least in this universe. Maybe he lives in a universe where there are different physical laws, but here even He is subject to these basic rules.
So you ask, “How does he make the bush burn without being consumed? Isn’t that a violation of physical laws?” I answer, not so much. I could plant a light bulb with a diffusion lens under the bush in a place where Moses couldn’t see it, and power it with batteries. Moses’ primitive experience would have no other way to describe what he sees except to say it was burning. Just because he doesn’t understand how I have done it doesn’t mean it is a violation of physical laws.
So if God exists He must have infinite (at least by our standards) power. Having access to energy allows one to circumvent physical laws. “Objects in motion tend to stay in motion,” until acted on by an outside force, or energy. We also know that matter cannot be created or destroyed; it only changes its state.
My scientist friend tells me the universe was created by a Big Bang. He claims there is ample evidence of this event citing things like residual gamma rays that are still bouncing around the universe that could have come from just such an occurrence. He speaks of the expansion of the universe, and tells me about evolution and the ample evidence collected to date that supports that theory.
I can’t argue. He is right about all of that evidence; it has been collected by faithful (the first definition) and diligent researchers, men and women with open minds who are seeking the answers to some big questions that have plagued mankind since the Garden of Eden. Most of that plague is actually occasioned by a lack of faith (the second kind) because my knowledge of the existence of God explains most of those big questions.
But once again it is the third definition of faith I have been thinking about, because I don’t get a couple of things about this scientific explanation of our origins. For example, if matter cannot be created or destroyed, how did the Big Bang, an event that is mindless, directionless and source less, manage to create so much matter? That completely violates the laws of physics as we know them. Some have postulated that all matter did indeed exist before the Big Bang, but that it was contained in a single point, an object so small it had no measurable dimensions.
There you go, my friend has more faith than I do. I can believe that an Intelligence that understands the relationship between energy and matter and has an infinite supply of energy can change the state of some of that energy to matter, creating a Big Bang and thereby starting our universe. I have a hard time believing that nothing suddenly became everything, for no apparent reason and without any apparent cause or source of energy.
While there is no evidence of how the Big Bang came about, the evidence that it did is pretty compelling. Of course, that doesn’t preclude the notion of a Creator; rather I think it supports it. In fact the idea of a Big Bang without God is a complete violation of all the physical laws that my science friend so adamantly claims is proof there is no God.
So next my friend falls back on his argument about evolution, and I have only more proof of my claim that God does indeed exist.
The DNA molecule is the basis of all life as we know it. There is nothing alive on this earth that doesn’t have it. The human version of this molecule is so complex as to take 13 years and at least 200 different labs around the country to map its basic structure. The organism that possesses this molecule can use it to adapt to the environment it finds itself in.
If this earth was an accident, how did that complex molecule accidently fall together? And if the world was indeed created, couldn’t its Creator be intelligent enough to allow for a changing world to continue supporting the organisms that keep it in balance? Evolution speaks eloquently in favor of a creator. It is one more piece to the complex puzzle that is this world, and that complexity itself speaks to the necessity of having Intelligence to design it.
I think the idea of accidental origins would be like a 12 trillion piece puzzle being thrown up in the air and all the pieces coming down in the right place so the puzzle is solved upon reaching the ground, except the puzzle has a better chance than the world because all the puzzle pieces were in the box. The exact conditions needed for DNA to accidently form have never been found in nature, nor has science been able to set up the conditions in a laboratory. I know Dr. Stanley Miller proved that in the right circumstances some of the necessary proteins could be manufactured accidentally, but no-one has yet managed the whole recipe. Also, as a point of interest, managing it in the lab is still not the same thing as managing it on accident.
I would like to make another point. If it were possible for this to have happened, why have we never found this most important link to the chain of life? For years anthropologists sought the mysterious “missing link” in the chain from primate to human. I would like to see the missing link from no life to life. If it is so probable that this did indeed happen, why hasn’t it happened again and again? But of course, it doesn’t take faith to believe it could have happened once and never again. After all, it takes more faith to believe in this accident than in a God who has thought the whole thing through carefully and created the right conditions in His laboratory: Earth.
One more point I could make about the accidental life theory. One of the laws of physics states that the universe tends to be more chaotic with time and that the longer a thing exists the less organized it will be. The DNA molecule is the single most organized molecule that could ever be imagined by our frail human intellect. In fact, it has been estimated that out of all the combinations possible with the four elements of DNA, only about three percent of them could support life, and only one of those almost infinite combinations would support the one life form that supposedly could have accidentally formed in the primordial soup.
That’s a pretty big violation of those physical laws that supposedly prove the nonexistence of God, and in my mind, more evidence of His existence. I mentioned that even though I am deeply religious, I believe religion to be the scourge of mankind. That is because science and religion are often in conflict over the existence of certain physical laws. Galileo surprised the Church with evidence that the solar system had the sun in its center, instead of the earth. But while his discoveries contradicted the Church authorities they never contradicted the Bible. Modern science doesn’t contradict the Bible either, though it seems many scientists and religious leaders and fanatics are trying hard to make it do so.
The evidence of evolution is touted as proof that God didn’t create us, but that just isn’t so. Evolution speaks of our lives, not our creation, and the Word of God has not contradicted one iota of that theory. The Big Bang, again, cannot contradict the Bible, because science only backs up what is said. Genesis speaks of the creation of this earth, not the universe, and God may have started with a world that had once been peopled with dinosaurs that existed in the wider and already existent universe.
These things are not important to our lives here, so the Bible doesn’t try to explain them; it only tells us what we need to know to make it through this life and back to our home with Father. Science is a part of our working our way back to Him, and where contradictions are imagined it takes less faith to figure them out than to believe in them. My scientific friend has a right to his opinion, as do I, but as far as superstitious thinking goes, I would have to say he has far more faith than I. That third kind, anyway.

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