Religion Versus Science: A Radical Departure

Religion and Science: A Radical Departure

 

When I was a child, my mother did a significant amount of baking.  I never saw the process, the actual work that went into a pie, cake or other dessert as I was at school much of the day, and before that too young to really understand.  I would come home from school and there would be an array, at different times, of cake, pies, cupcakes, cookies, platz, pasties and many more baked goods.  If at some point someone were to ask me how did that apple pie come into being.  My honest explanation would pure and simply have been it was made, or created by my mom.  To me it was a type of miracle, magic or the wizardry of creation.  The pie came from nowhere.  It just was.

This analogy of the maker of the pie reminds me of the Biblical creation story.  The world, flora, fauna Adam and Eve therefore,mankind came to be by an act of God. Just that there was no apparent methodology, in a week the universe was there.  People who buy into the literal interpretation of the Bible accept this on what they call faith.  Accepting on faith negates the need for facts or process.  Thing’s just appear, as did my mother’s pies.  They seemed to apparently materialize out of nowhere.

As I grew and became a sou chef of sorts and was able to handle recipes with ingredients or steps not exceeding 8, I began to realize in baking, food preparation and likely the creation of the Earth and its firmament, that they were brought into being via adistinct and definite process.  Later, I actually observed and then helped my mother bake and became part of that formerly mysterious process.  When I understood the steps, the process, the methods used it was no longer magical, just awe inspiring. I had greater love and respect for my mom the creator.  

Today we have a schism between the Bible and its literal stories that many people construe as historical fact.  Even stating that the Earth is not millions, or even billions of years old.  That the world-wide flood really happened and clearly implying that animals two by two were Fed-Exed from South America in order to survive the flood.  If there was no Fed- Ex or its equivalent in Biblical times was there at least a process by which animals in twos were delivered to the construction site of the ark?  

Faith would have us believe it just happened.  Even the tumbling of the Walls of Jericho had a process as did the linguistic changes surrounding the tower of Babble.  I suppose that if you deny the fact that the Universe may have come from the Big Bang and perhaps is the end of one universe and the beginning of another, that time is a man-made construct and is therefore meaningless in cosmic interpretations.  One must ask if the universe came from nowhere, where did God come from?  I digress.

I think the logic gets very confusing so my simple solution to bridge the faith/science schism is to accept that there is a God and, on most days, I’d like to believe that given my Mennonite background. Then maybe just maybe He/She used a process, if you exclude magic, or by just having things appear because he is all powerful.  Maybe, just maybe God set into motion the laws of physics and used them as a tool as He/She might have done with biology and evolution. 

My mom didn’t magically make pies and cakes appear.  She had a process and later a helper for what I was worth.  God (now a mother figure) used all of the laws of quantum mechanics, physics, biology, evolution to, over time, more than 4000 years, create the cosmos and the natural world in which we live. As a topical aside it takes man much less than 4000 years to totally ruin much of this work but that is material for another essay.  

My conclusion is that basically, God and science are but one or at least two sides of the same coin.  God did not make or develop science as a discipline.  Man did that part, simply over time and with great patience with God given talent studiedsystematically, using the scientific method, developed what we call the process and body of knowledge that we call science today.  It explains everything from gravity, evolution and smart phones.

What God made is the reality of gravity, the principles of evolution and the physical laws which govern the operation of a smart phone or anything else.  Man, just figures out a small part of the master plan and is still assembling the pieces.  People will accuse scientists and say, “You got it all wrong or you changed your mind,” and that is because, from our point of view, from mankind’s perspective, we are the students learning from the master and things do change as we learn more.  Science will continue to change as it reveals new truths.  It will never be static.

There is no schism between science and religion if you don’t want there to be.  God who came from nowhere used the principles of science to create everything.  This allows faith and science to merrily co-exist, no need to be persecuted or be burnt at the stake for heresy.  But you most certainly have to have a leap of faith to buy the integration of creation and science.  God would have it no other way.