Science and Religion Belong Together.
The culture I grew up in taught me that science and religion do not belong together, and actually that these two realms are at war with each other. Intellectuals would discredit any claims of divine work because it was untestable, and believers would tear apart theories that explain our world because it wasn't written in their religious texts. Scientists are discredited if they openly claim to believe in God, and believers that accept things like the existence of dinosaurs and evolution are judged by their community. Or at least that's what I had come to think.
It wasn't until I got to college when I really took a dive into the Christian faith. I had taken an introductory Earth science class that opened my mind to the idea that science can be used to explain the work of God. My professor was explaining the Big Bang theory to our class, how all the matter of the known universe exploded from an unfathomable dense one-dimensional singularity.
Interestingly the energy from the Big Bang is still propelling our universe off into…something. In fact, this is one of the reasons why the Big Bang became a theory. Scientists were able to observe that objects in space are moving away from the Earth, like chocolate chips in cookie dough that get further away from each other as the cookie dough bakes into a cookie. Scientists essentially rewound time and came up with an explanation as to how all planetary objects and stars came to be; if things are moving away from each other, then they may have had a common starting place.
I of course am no expert in this area, and I am extremely oversimplifying the topic, so, here is a book that covers the Big Bang theory if you want to know more (Fox, 2002).
At the end of his explanation of the theory, he began a more divine conversation about the formation of our universe. He posed questions like: “What was surrounding the singularity that contained our entire universe before it exploded?”, and “The universe is expanding, well what is it expanding into?”, and lastly “How did the singularity get there?”. It appeared that he was eluding to something mystical, something infinite. And since that lecture, I began to view science differently. I saw science as a way to observe the work of God, not to disprove God, which I am told is how science started (Williams, 2018).
Throughout my undergraduate, my faith grew along with my knowledge of the natural world. I found great pleasure in the scientific method and trying to find explanations that fit both realms. For example, some believers claim that the earth is around 10,000 years old based on evidence within the Bible and other religious texts (Wikipedia, 2021). Whereas geologists and other scientific disciplines have found the earth to be about 4.6 billion years old (Allègre et al., 1995). Both ideas could be right. Right? How did God create the earth? Was it formed brand new without any signs of weathering and erosion, or was it formed aged?
Here are some theories for how the Earth was developed as explained by geology:
- Catastrophism — The Earth was formed by infrequent and random destructive events.
- Uniformitarianism — Geologic processes have been the same throughout Earth’s history.
- Supernaturalism — Devine creation.
My idea is that God created the universe and the Earth in such a magnificent way that scientifically it would appear abrupt, powerful, and destructive. All creation following along a timeline similar to the Big Bang, first matter, then light, and so on. Objects in space would have been spinning around each other rapidly and colliding forming planets and stars. Earth would have been an unlivable hellscape. Now, when scientists go to observe creation, they are looking back into time. They are observing processes that are not operating at the same pace as when they were created.
To help explain. Imagine a person goes to create a clock that will keep track of how old it is once it is finished. You will be able to look at the clock and know precisely when it began to function, however, you will not be able to tell exactly how old the pieces of the clock are. Sure you can come up with techniques and strategies to get rough estimates of how old the clock is, but unless you talk to the person who made it, you will never be entirely sure how old it is.
Granted, this is purely speculative, and the geologist in me recognizes that the popularly accepted theory for the Earth's formation is likely Uniformitarianism with a touch of Catastrophism. However, I don't think it's proper to place limits on a God that is suppose to be infinite. For instance, God created time, therefore, was beyond it when it was set in motion. Furthermore, no scientific theory is ever proven to 100%. It is important to keep an open mind and be curious. Try not to be married to your thoughts.
Education inspired my religious thinking enough to push me to do a graduate program. There I chose to study something controversial to religion. Human evolution. Unfortunately, I didn't find anything profound that would shake believers to their core and push them to trust science more or vice versa. Yet, I found a beautiful story of how we became human by studying our ancient ancestors' history.
For example, as cranial capacity in our ancestors continued to grow through time, the social connections and dependency among such groups become more crucial. This is due to the simple fact that as our brains grew bigger, our heads became larger, and therefore, babies and mothers evolved so that the mother could give birth to a more immature baby so that its head could pass through the birthing canal (NOVA, 2009). In the ancient world, it would have been nearly impossible for the child and mother to survive on their own, thus group dependency was essential for survival. And as far as I know, we are the only animals that are so dependent on one another.
Much like the Big Bang, evolution is religiously beautiful. We observe what we have today and rewind to a common origin. And at some point religion and science become indistinguishable. One might ask, why even bother trying to answer such deep unknowable questions? Well, it’s simple, we are curious creatures. If we did not have the ability to question the existence of gigantic animals found in the ground, let alone our own existence, would we even be human? Curiosity is a gift. Plus, it is really entertaining.
In short, it's wonderful to see how things tie in together to get what we have today. Have an open mind with religion and science because from what I have seen, they point in the same direction. It turns out that I am not the only one in the world that carries this viewpoint. Throughout my extended education and into my adult career I have found and met many people in a variety of fields that believe in God. Not to mention that even Einstein was suspiciously religious.
“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” — Albert Einstein
