Science

 June 24, 2020

Science

“Science and religion are not at odds. Science is simply too young to understand.”
― Dan Brown, Angels & Demons

 

 

I really like this quote.

 

I am often challenged for my faith, sometimes subtly yet other times very blatantly and in a passive aggressive manner. The tiresome “I’m spiritual not religious” is a pretty good determiner for me to see that someone has really never examined a life of spirit, but rather that is sounds attractive and sexy and “modern” to say. Or the oldie but goodie, “I find God in nature”- to which I turn to a famous living theologian who commented, “any idiot can find God in nature, but can you find God in another human being?”

 

Then there is the manner of people who will be fascinated with science, a very good thing to be fascinated by. Religion or faith or worship is kicked to the side of their street for the “truth” or “fact” that they believe science provides, apart from faith.

 

It’s interesting, that word “truth”. Pontious Pilate asked of Jesus, “what is truth?” Pilate did so in what was billed as Jesus’ trial but really ended up being Pilate’s. Pilate did have a point. “Truth” can be twisted and bent as we have seen in the modern societies such as North Korea. We have our own examples in U.S. politics but I’ll leave that for each party to play with. “Truth” can be what the people in power decide. But Jesus understood differently.

 

Truth and “fact” are often words used interchangeably. And, they are often quite abused just the same. In a world quickly accumulating statistical data which is used to establish ways in order to explain the world around us, we can lose ourselves to the sum total of this equation and that equation. The human being can be reduced to a number, separate from other quantifiable means.

 

But God, one that relies on the interaction with its creations, does not reduce any of them. Our God, my God, the God of Jesus and of Abraham and Jacob and Sarah and Mary, sees each creation as an end to a means. God for century upon century has given the gift of curiosity and creativity and abstract reasoning to humans to raise humanity even higher, above the rest of creation. But these gifts of curiosity, creativity, and abstract reasoning were never meant to become the meaning of life. Worshippers of science can and have often cast aside the intrinsic value of humanity for the beauty of the revelation of an equation.

 

Worshippers of science can find themselves entombed in the concrete of abstract reasoning just like the faithful can become entombed in concrete understandings of creation and spirit.

 

Religion and science have always been intertwined- early explanations of creation were simply the science of the day. But with each new revelation of the nature of the universe, we are simply a step closer (however yet distant) to truly knowing the infinite God.

 

 

I know that this may sound like Ken whistling past the graveyard, for we know that religion is in the state of a steep decline in the hearts of the world. But as we delve deeper into the origins of the universe and contemplate things such as the “multiverse” how much closer do we really think we are to understanding “it” all?

 

Close to you and me, within reach- tangible and sharable to all who would welcome it, is a spirit of “truth” which allows science to flourish but calls even science’s most devoted, to respect the truth of the human being. Unquantifiable, a human being is the end to the means, not the other way around. 

 

And so it has been since the beginning of recordable time.

 

I believe in science, I rely on science, I am grateful for science. I do not worship science nor do I get lost in its promises of fact or truth, which inevitably give way to something far more complicated than before. I rely on the simplicity of love, insisted upon by Jesus’ teachings, created in his relationship with God.

 

Rev. Ken