Tuesday, August 13, 2013

God explained by science

I know that when you want to talk about spirituality, religion, God, or faith that there are always those who don't believe.  They don't believe for a variety of reasons but one of the biggest arguments I have come across is the one about proof of God's existence.  For many years I didn't have a way to talk about this argument other than to say that faith is a matter of the heart and not the mind; and I still do believe that.
Faith is something that is easy to have when things are going your way and harder to have when things are going against you.  But true faith isn't faith unless things are going against you.  At least that is kind of the idea I have always had.  It would be like believing that the Twins could win the world series when they are up 3-0 in the postseason compared to still believing they are going to win when they are 0-3.  (If you don't watch baseball that would be they are one win away from the championship vs. one lost away from losing the whole thing)
I have always approached the idea of God from the perspective that I believe and I have faith that He exists and I am not going to worry about the science of it.  But this morning I read something else and it really helped me add onto this belief.
Don Miller writes that "God does not live within the philosophical science He made".  Yeah, that makes sense I told myself when I read it and I was prepared to move on.
But then I really stopped and thought about it.

Would we really want God to live within a scientific method we have developed?

If so, why would we want that?

Is it perhaps that we are so self-centered and ego driven that we still want to see ourselves as the center of the universe?  Is it the simple idea that we like to be in control of ourselves and our destiny and the thought that there is something so great out there the controls things that we are afraid to consider how insignificant we feel compared to the entire scheme of things?
I think that must be part of it.
I, like many other people, like to have that sense of control within my own life.  But so many times (and especially lately) I have had to remind myself again and again that God is in control of my life and He will do the right thing.  I just need to have faith and trust that things will be fine in the end.  (There is that faith concept again!)
But it is hard I think to accept that we are not in control of our own lives in so many ways.  There are so many outside factors just in day to day life that we cannot control that can affect us in so many ways.  Simple things like driving to work and the other drivers on the road and what they are doing or how they are driving can make a huge difference in our lives.  And that is just the most basic of concepts.
So we are not in control at all in many ways.  Yes our own decisions and actions but how many times have your own decisions and actions been the only contributing factor to a situation?  I can't think of a single one in my own life because the whole "no man is an island" quote is so true. (If you don't know that one look it up, it is a pretty good one)
The other part (and I know I have done those questions backwards) is the part about God living within our own science and scientific method.
This one is a simple thought to me.  I love the thought that if God in His omnipotence and greatness is going to watch out for us that He would be all powerful and mighty and that He would not have to live within the realms and boundaries that He has set for us.  If He did then what would make Him so great?  Would He be able to do anything that we wouldn't be able to do ourselves?  If God was restricted by gravity, by physics, by the ideas of matter and mass and density, what kind of God would that truly be?  Sounds like a man or woman to me albeit a really smart and cool one.  Is that who you really want running everything?
The greatness of God is the greatness of God if you follow me.  It is the fact that God is greater than all that we see.  A God that is greater and outside of science and the restrictions that come with it.
I never worried about whether God existed and those people that always talked to me about the proof of God's existence.  I have always believed that you can't explain God with a set of rules we have developed within our culture (because science is just stuff that we have all agreed on as ideas and theories that we have proven within the limitations of our senses but don't even get me started on that because that is a whole new post) but that instead God is beyond our understanding.  This just emphasizes it and expands my thoughts on it.
Yup.

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