Scientists Perspective

To begin the discussion, I think it is helpful to give you a taste of what my world view used to be like, show you the issues I wrestled with because of that view, what I have found, and ultimately how I see things today.

Figure 1 – A double rainbow

To do this, it will be helpful if you understand how I think. We all live in this modern world so although my worldview may amplify the scientific perspective, we all share a similar worldview to some extent. That is why we’re talking about this in the first place. But I think it is necessary that I at least try to demonstrate to you the full extent of my worldview.

Figures 1-4 show four different pictures. With each picture I will tell you what I see. There will hopefully be both commonality and difference between what I see and what you as the reader see. The differences, assuming you do not share the same background as I do, should give the reader a small taste of how I see things so that you can better understand my worldview.

Figure 2 – A campfire.

In Fig. 1, I see a beautiful rainbow. I also see an aerosol water mist in the air that scatters the suns rays and reveals to the photographer’s camera the visible spectrum of light. The brighter and more concentrated inner circle occurs at an angle of 40-42 degrees. The darker and less concentrated outer circle occurs from double reflections inside each droplet and occurs at angles of 50-53 degrees.

Figure 2 shows a heat source that pyrolizes the wood fuel so that the volatile compounds contained in the wood evaporate. The pyrolized gases burn when they come in contact with the air because the temperature of the gas is higher than its minimum ignition temperature.

Figure 3- A cloud or thunderhead.

In Figure 3 I see a large thunder head forming with rain beneath it. I also see a warm summer day with the sun heating the moist ground and evaporating the moisture on the ground. This water vapor is less dense than air so it rises upwards until it passes an altitude whose pressure is equal to water’s vaporization pressure. Once it passes below this pressure, marked by the discrete altitude plane, the water condenses into water droplets to form a dense mist at a significant density that scatters the light causes a white visible cloud to form. The updraft has significant upwards momentum that the flow is turbulent, which is what makes the cloud have a bumpy upper surface.

Figure 4 – A picture of a sunset taken from midway up Mt. Baker in Washington.

In Figure 4 I see a beautiful mountain sunset. I see blue mountains. The reason I see blue mountains is because the sun’s heat during the day has pyrolized the volatile compounds in the wood trees and caused them to sit over the mountains. The evaporated hydrocarbons are the distinct smell that is associated with evergreen forests in the mountains. These molecules scatter light in the same way that the sky appears blue, which is what causes the mountains to appear blue.

The sky is yellow in this picture because the sun is just above the horizon and the more direct rays coming from the sun allow us to see other colors beyond blue such as yellow, orange and then red as the sunset finishes.

My World View

I do not expect you to understand my explanations in detail, but rather understand that I see the world as a very predictable place. The physical world does not hold much mystery for me anymore. I was amazed in college, as I learned about the physical world and the laws we have to describe it, to discover just how predictable the world was. I couldn’t help but share it with other people. If you knew me during college you may have remembered how I liked to explain to others why things work the way they do. At some point I stopped explaining things to people, or at least I didn’t do it as much. Perhaps I stopped because I discovered that people don’t always want to hear about how things work. I may have also realized that through my gaining of knowledge I had also lost something, namely the mystery in the world. My worldview had changed. It is a predictable and understandable place. If there is anything I don’t understand, I should be able to find an answer. And if I don’t succeed, someone else will.

But I don’t think my worldview is all that different from others. I see the beauty and magnificence of the cosmos just like everyone else. Many people, including me, believe there is a reason for why things happen or work the way they do, but my reasons do not require God. God is unnecessary to explain how things work. I, as well as most other scientists, believe that there is always a logical explanation for natural processes. It is this assumption that has produced the technology that we all rely on today. The world to me appears to be very predictable and deterministic.

While I was getting my undergraduate education, a conflict evolved with my Christian belief that God is active in the world. How could God be a theistic God (intimately involved in the world) and not a deistic God (separated from the world as a bystander) if the laws of physics are so deterministic that we know them to never be violated? How can we explain the miracles in the Bible? I remember trying to find ways to explain the physical processes of how the miracles of the Bible might have occurred, like

• Parting of the red sea – high winds
• The flood – not global, but local

But some of the stories were too difficult to explain:

• Turning water into wine
• Walking on water
• Sun standing still
• Manna for food

I had a few options:

• believe that what these people saw was not an accurate account of what really happened
• believe that somehow God could cause these things to happen through quantum and chaotic manipulation – Polkinghorne’s non-energetic divine intervention (to be discussed later).
• believe that the events may never have happened at all, they were myths or stories told for purposes other than documenting a miraculous event

I must point out that I never had the option to say that science is wrong and what the Bible says is true. There is too much right about the laws of physics and how they describe the world and too much wrong about the Bible and how it describes the physical processes of the world to believe that the Bible has anything to offer on scientific issues. In reality I had to rely on all of these, but I leaned most heavily on the first two and not much on the last.

Reconciling Faith with Science

In order to survive in churches over the last 14 years (since I left Irvine Pres.) I have had to separate my faith from science. I have my faith in one box and my science in another. At the beginning of college it was not so neat and tidy, but as science began to rigorously show how it could explain most of the physical phenomena we observe in the world I began to separate the two. Because while one was maturing and establishing a solid foundation to stand on, the other was not. Science became this enormous tower of knowledge and power and my faith paled in comparison. I knew at some point I would need to apply the same level of rigor and investigation to my faith as I have done with science.

Over the last year and a half I’ve been in the process of trying to unite my faith with my science. I have been applying the same level of rigor, investigation and research I have been taught through my academic education. One of my biggest struggles as a scientist is relating to people that insist on the inerrancy of the Bible. There are different ways of reading the creation story and the Bible in general and the differences ultimately boil down to what categories you give the Bible authority over. There are basically three different authority levels that people give to the bible. They are

• Young Earth Creationist – ultimate authority with exact literal intent
• Old Earth Creationist  - ultimate authority but some flexibility in intent
• Theological authority – texts read in context they were written

The young earth creationists believe that the earth and the entire universe are only about 10,000 years old. This originates out of giving the Bible ultimate authority over everything. If science conflicts with the Bible, science must be wrong because the Bible is the ultimate authority on all matters.

The old earth creationists also see the Bible as the ultimate authority on all matters, but they allow some flexibility in how it reads in order to try to accommodate other sources such as science that are authoritative. They tend to go to great lengths to explain conflicts between Biblical and scientific accounts of creation.

There are also people that believe that the Bible only has authority to answer metaphysical and theological questions.

Clearly I am not a young earth creationist. I have dabbled in old earth creation concepts a bit, but found them intellectually unsatisfactory because of the necessity for the Bible to still be inerrant. Inerrancy is a problem not just in the creation story, but the rest of the Bible. It forces one to accept the miracles that contradict the laws of physics to be truth and that science is wrong. As I have said before, there is too much consistent between science and the physical processes of the cosmos and too little consistent between the Bible and the physical processes of the cosmos.

Clearly I lie in the last category, that the Bible can answer questions of theology and not science.

Now let’s briefly revisit a bit of what my Dad discussed last week about the ancient Near Eastern people, their religious views and what that means for our discussion of divine action and modern science.

Biblical Divine Action

In a book called “Divine Action and Modern Science,” Nicolas Saunders paints a portrait of the ancient beliefs and religions around the time the Pentateuch (the first five chapters of the Old Testament) was written. He describes the early Babylonian religious view that each of the forces of nature such as harvests, storms, fire, rain, etc were all personified into deities.

Let me now quote directly from his book in different excerpts to communicate where I am going.

“The consequence of this [forces being personified into deities] was the view that natural processes were fickle and that order and regularity were not things to be taken for granted – man felt precariously balanced at the apex of many divergent intentions, most of which he could only implore to remain calm and regular.”

“What made the Hebrews account fundamentally different from its contemporaries was its radical insistence on monotheism.” “The Israelite account of nature is steeped in terminology of other Near Eastern peoples, but the Hebrews did not view regularity in nature as the product of a balancing of many personal wills, but as an expression of the faithfulness of the one supreme Yahweh.”

“Another crucial change that Israelite monotheism introduced was an elevation of the status of man in this cosmic scheme. In the Mesopotamian creation myth, the Enuma Elish, man is almost created as an afterthought… In the Hebrew Bible, however, the conquering of chaos and disorder by Yahweh has the focus of making the world ready for occupation by man. This aspect is particularly clear in the cosmogony presented in the Book of Genesis (itself heavily influenced by other Near Eastern sources) where the creation of man forms the climax of all God’s creation. Accordingly, because of the central locus that mankind occupies in the Hebrew account of creation, it followed that human beings could naturally claim that Yahweh was providentially concerned with their future.”

The concept that Yahweh is concerned with our futures is key to the discussion of divine action as it provides the overall point of what these stories were trying to say about God, his people and the relationship between them. God not only created the cosmos and man, but He cares for it and us as well. The Hebrew God is the one supreme God under whom all natural processes existed as expressions of his personality and will. Natural phenomena are personalized in Israelite religion.

As a scientist, this concept is difficult for me, because my world view basically presupposes that all natural processes obey the laws of nature. There is nothing moral about the laws of physics, they just are. But a scientist’s conflict with this description of natural processes is not a problem of science, it is a problem in how we’re reading the text.

Henri Frankfort said “for ancient man the surrounding world was not an ‘it’, it was a ‘thou’. In fact, there wasn’t even a word in the ancient near east that could be translated into ‘nature’ or at least the modern sense of the word.”

Now quoting Saunders again, “the source of the problem is that the interpretation of nature which modern philosophy of science adopts distinguishes natural phenomena as fundamentally ‘it’, rather than ‘thou’.” These are two very different ways of looking at things that are seamlessly interlinked with the cultures and worldviews of two very different times. I’m not saying that its impossible to reconcile the two, but its much easier to reconcile the two if we don’t impose our modern 21st century views onto a document written thousands of years ago.

Divine Action

Let us now discuss the philosophy of divine action and how philosophers deal with the topic. First of all, it is convenient to break divine action into two different types, General Divine Action (GDA) and Special Divine Action (SDA).

Saunders defines the two as:

General Divine Action: “Those actions of God that pertain to the whole of creation universally and simultaneously. These include actions such as the initial creation and the maintenance of scientific regularity and the laws of nature by God.”

Special Divine Action: “Those actions of God that Pertain to a particular time and place in creation as distinct from another. This is a broad category and includes the traditional understanding of ‘miracles’, the notion of particular providence, responses to intercessionary prayer, God’s personal actions, and some forms of religious experience.”

GDA can be seen as the laws of nature, “an overall government of the universe through the universal laws that control or influence nature, man, and history, without the need for specific or ad hoc acts of divine will.” (Langford 1981). This may sound more like a deistic form of divine action, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be so.

SDA displays the personal side of God, the loving, caring and providential part where God performs special actions at specific times and places for special reasons.

These definitions seem somewhat artificial and I’m sure there are some instances where there is overlap and the lines aren’t so clearly defined, but most of the literature draws these distinctions because it is productive to the discussion of the topic.

Science’s view of the discussion

Scientists tend to see the world as a fairly predictable and deterministic place. Deterministic means that if you know a system and its initial starting point, you can determine where it will be at some later time. It is because the laws of physics are deterministic that the technology we have behaves as reliably as it does. Now you might say that its not deterministic enough because my car breaks, electronics break and I’m constantly shelling out money to fix things. If it is so deterministic, why do things that we understand and build still break? The answer is that it is usually because they were only designed to work for a certain time period. It is possible to design things so they don’t break, but it normally makes the product so expensive that no one can afford it.

It is fairly easy for scientists to accept GDA because it is consistent with our world view and experience. This is because GDA is defined in manner very similar to the laws of physics and their deterministic nature. What is not easy to accept as a scientist is SDA, the idea that there is openness within the cosmos and its physical processes.

If you are somewhat educated on this subject you will know that the beginning of the 20th century brought about a new way of looking at the world and the laws of physics, namely quantum mechanics. And the second half of the 20th century brought about another phenomenon called chaos, which we will talk about as well.

Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle:

Quantum mechanics basically takes the classical wave theory description of the universe and creates a particle-like model in which wave phenomena can be essentially quantized. What we end up with is a duality in descriptions of the same thing. Waves can be described as particles and particles can be described as waves. One of the most infamous parts of quantum mechanics that many people have heard about is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

The Heisenberg uncertainty principle basically says that there are limits to how well we can know the position and momentum of particles. If we know the position with infinite accuracy we know nothing about its momentum. If we know the momentum with infinite accuracy we know nothing about its position. This principle has lead many people to conclude (incorrectly) that there is indeterminism explicitly contained in the laws of physics.

When this principle was originally developed, there was a great amount of philosophical reflection that went along with it. The thought that indeterminism could exist in the world was such a new concept in the world of physics many physicists rejected it entirely. The debate eventually resolved, but the details are too complex to describe here.

As for our discussion of divine action, many theologians have latched onto the Uncertainty Principle and used it to claim a possible mechanism through which God can intervene in the world’s natural processes. Until I began putting together this talk, I was one of those people.

Personal side note:

Around my sophomore year of college when I was first introduced to quantum mechanics and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, I adopted the idea that God could interact with the world through the apparent indeterminism I understood to be present at the molecular level. I basically adopted Polkinghorne’s non-energetic divine intervention concept (without really knowing it) and it was relatively easy to do so. Quantum mechanics was so different from the rest of the Newtonian, Lagrangian, Hamiltonian mechanical descriptions of the world that it was easy to see the uncertainty principle as a limit to which man can know and understand the world, which lead me to believe that this is how God can act in the world.

It is quite ironic that I received a Bachelors and Masters in physics and only briefly questioned this concept of divine intervention. I remember doing my graduate quantum mechanics homework and wondering why there was always an answer to each problem. I remember asking “where is the indeterminism?”

Falsity of Quantum openness:

As I prepared to give this talk I slowly and methodically deconstructed this belief. What I realized, which I should have known all along, was that quantum mechanics is in fact just as deterministic as classical physics. That just goes to show how easily we can dismiss perfectly good scientific arguments and rely on our previous worldview without as much as a hiccup.

Steven Hawking says, “with the advent of quantum mechanics, we have come to recognize that events cannot be predicted with complete accuracy but that there is always a degree of uncertainty. If one likes, one could ascribe this randomness to the intervention of God, but it would be a very strange kind of intervention: there is no evidence that it is directed toward any purpose. Indeed, if it were, it would by definition not be random.”

Quantum mechanics describes the behavior of a particle by solving a wave function in Hilbert space, which contains as a small subset, the Euclidean space of classical mechanics. The wave function represents the probability that the particle will be in any given state. The system as a whole though is completely deterministic. Ernest Nagel in the Structure of Science says, “an examination of the fundamental equations of quantum mechanics shows that the theory employs a definition of state quite unlike that of classical mechanics, but that relative to its own form of state-description quantum theory is deterministic in the same sense that classical mechanics is deterministic.”

It’s not necessary for you to understand all of the details, but what I want you to understand is the conflict it creates for me as a scientist and a Christian. Through my investigation of divine action I have completed deconstructed my whole belief system of how God acts in the world. I can’t say that it hasn’t been at least a bit destabilizing as I have asked questions such as

• Does God act in creation at all?
• Is there any point to petitionary prayer? Is there any point asking God for anything?
• How is it that God is supposed to be a theistic God that loves, cares and plays an active role in creation when the world I understand suggests He is more of a deistic God that has created the world just to sit back and watch?

These are tough questions, but there is hope.  Let me briefly visit just one more area that scientists have explored to provide a mechanism for divine action.

Chaos Theory

Chaos is basically the study of systems that have a sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Given any two sets of initial conditions, now matter how similar they are, you will arrive at two very different outcomes. I won’t go into any more detail, but chaos theory has led many philosophers and theologians to see it as a way for God to act in the universe. However, chaos theory is based upon classical physics and is also a fully deterministic description of the world. Similar arguments made for quantum theory apply to chaos theory as well.

Summary

If I could summarize what the scientific discussion has to say on divine action, I would have to say that there is no final verdict that exists to claim how divine action occurs. And more importantly, I have found that science does not have much to say on the matter other than if God does act in creation, we certainly can’t measure his influence. But is that really surprising? Isn’t this the classic case of a category mismatch? Am I trying to use the tools from one domain of inquiry and apply them to another?

Divine action, if it occurs, permeates all of creation. It is present historically, theologically, personally or experientially and in some limited sense scientifically.

One might argue that if God does not act through physical processes he can at least act through human beings or the Holy Spirit, right? Well not really. If the world really is deterministic like the laws of physics, then our brains would be deterministic as well. This would mean that all of our thoughts are not actually free thoughts, but thoughts that occur through natural physical processes. There are people that believe that, such as Calvinism, but I am not one of them. I believe that we have free will and that is an assertion I am making about the world.

If we are to make an educated assessment of whether or not divine action occurs we need to be using all forms of epistemology or knowledge. The big bang theory and the creation of life at least suggests that there may be a God. The stories and theology we have suggest that divine action occurs. Intelligent life seems to have free will and the ability to freely think and decide to do one thing or another.

At this point I would like to return to the original presumptions on which our laws of physics have been constructed. We have assumed that the world is predictable and we can know things about how the world works. Consequently, we have created a large set of knowledge, theories and models that are based upon empirical tests and observations. The realm of science alone can lead one to believe that the entire cosmos is deterministic.

It’s at this point that a scientist must remember that there are other epistemological sources that can contribute to the discussion. After all, other domains of inquiry suggest that openness does exist and that the world is not completely deterministic. Let us be clear that they cannot prove it, but they do (at least in my mind) suggest it.

So what are we to do about the deterministic laws of physics? I’m not exactly sure. Perhaps they are merely a subset of the larger domain of creation that is indeterminate and open. In any case, science is based upon the ability to measure what is repeatable. One cannot test what is not repeatable, and God’s SDA events cannot be repeatably tested with scientific inquiry. Other forms of epistemology must be used to determine whether or not one can believe in special divine action.

It is easy for scientists to make the assertion that the deterministic laws of nature constrain the entire universe to be deterministic. However, using the predictability of the world to conclude that the entire cosmos is deterministic is not a physical assertion, it is a metaphysical assertion. While the world may appear to be deterministic, one cannot prove that it is deterministic. When a scientist concludes through the study of the laws of physics that the entire cosmos is deterministic he has made a metaphysical assertion, an assertion outside his domain of inquiry.

Just as theologians falsely use their tools to make scientific claims, scientists also falsely use their tools to make theological claims. When Carl Sagan said “the cosmos is all that is, ever was, and ever will be,” he is making a metaphysical statement, but masking it as science. I doubt that he even realized he was doing that. I never realized that I was making a category mistake until just a few weeks ago. This metaphysical assertion I made long ago has certainly created much grief for me over the last decade or more, but even though I don’t know how divine action occurs, I can believe that it occurs.

Final Remarks

When my Dad and I first started preparing for this series he sent an email to N.T. Wright asking about his view on divine intervention in relation to the resurrection. He wrote back and this is what he said:

I do not myself like the word ‘intervention’, because it implies that God is normally ‘outside’ the processes of this world and would then be ‘stepping in’, like a headmaster ‘intervening’ in a lesson where the ordinary teacher couldn’t cope. Instead, the Bible offers us a more interesting and dynamic model of cosmology (heaven and earth and how they relate) and of God’s being and action therein. God, says the Psalmist, ‘feeds the young ravens when they call on him’. Is that ‘intervention’? Or do we call it the ravens’ ‘instinct’? Or is it both? Of course that could then collapse into pantheism and the BIble is clear that isn’t the answer either. But you see the point: God is always around the place, always active, and sometimes that activity results in things that take us by surprise, rather like … Einsteinian physics takes Newtonian physics by surprise (curved space? time warps?). Or perhaps like a sphere takes a circle by surprise. So, yes: another dimension, intersecting with the usual ones.

…

As to ‘how’ God works in the world, the answer is multiple. Often it is through human beings, who will find an idea, an impulse, in their heads and hearts which they find they have to obey, only then to find (for instance) they meet up with someone who had been praying for them, or whatever. I have no idea how this ‘works’, but I know, as do many, many people, that it does in fact. William Temple said, ‘When I pray, coincidences happen; when I stop praying, the coincidences stop happening.’ He was a wise man.

Sorry, that’s all I have time for. Give your son my greetings and suggest he reads the Psalms while thinking about his questions…

Warm greetings and good wishes

Tom Wright

Tom Wright was wise to tell me to read the Psalms while thinking about these questions, because there are other fruitful approaches to understanding the world than mere science.

In each class there is a video that we watch where this guy goes through these different fundamental questions. His response to this question was actually quite simplistic and in a way, stereotypical of how simplistic people believe Christianity to be. His answers were based straight out of the Bible, taking specific passages that say things like “for all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God,” Rom 3:23. He went on to say that Jesus was an atoning sacrifice for our sins as well as other analogies for why Christ died on the cross. There are actually several different analogies the disciples used to try to explain Jesus’ death and resurrection, but they were all attempts to explain something that they didn’t understand completely. So when I heard this guy explaining why Jesus died it rubbed me the wrong way, as if it were really that simple.

In the end he did admit that why Jesus died on the cross is still a mystery, but one thing we can be reasonably sure of is that he did it out of love. It was at that point that I finally thought he had come close to answering the question, because the question for me is not why did He die, but why did He exist at all?

The Christian message is often summarized (and butchered in my opinion) by quoting John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” This verse can mean many things, depending upon which theological tradition you come from. All too often, it is summarized to mean that in order to go to heaven we must believe in Jesus Christ. It can become an inward, self-centered view of God’s cosmic redemptive plan for creation. Unfortunately, that’s kind of the message I got from video. To his credit, I don’t think he really thinks it is that simple, but he didn’t make it feel very mysterious either.

What if you are from a mainline protestant tradition that doesn’t boil the good news down to a ticket to heaven? What if you don’t subscribe to the “sinners in the hands of an angry God” theology? What if you don’t believe that Jesus came to save us from God’s wrath? Rather, what if you believe that Jesus’ death and resurrection was God’s way of declaring once and for all that death has been defeated and that God’s desire is that “all” shall live eternally in communion with Him. Whether or not God gets what He wants is a different story, but the question of why Jesus died still remains. If God is all powerful and desires to grant eternal life to “all” that will trust Him and embrace the life He has to offer, why did Jesus have to come and die on the cross at all? He could have just said that since I’m God and I want my children to be with me for eternity that death isn’t the end. Why did Jesus have to come at all and die such a gruesome death? The question still remains.

So what am I to do? How can I deal with this question? I believe the best thing to do is take a step back and look at who the Bible describes God to be as a whole. If the Bible could say just one thing, I believe it would say that God loves us. So I will start from there. God is love. If the Bible could say just one more thing, I think it would say that He wants to be involved in his creation. That is, He is a theistic God that is actively involved in His creation, not a deistic God that created the universe and then sits back and watches it unfold.

Now imagine you’re God for a moment (we’re supposedly created in His image so I think we can do that at least  for a second), and imagine what it must have been like to see all the pain and suffering in the world. What are you to do? Well, you could call out to the people of the world and tell them that you’re there, that this is just a glimpse of what is to come, that you love and care for them, that you experience their pain and suffering just like they do, but they won’t listen. Or if they do, they listen for just a little while and then forget about you a while later.

Then there was this one man named Abraham that listened to God. He listened and trusted God, albeit a bit imperfectly and God made a covenant with him that through him all people will come to know the one true God. Through that man came the Israelites, God’s chosen people that are supposed to be His light to the world. But they are all prone to falling short of the image of God as the rest of creation. So I guess God had a choice. He could either just allow us to continue wandering through life with only some stories that describe Him, or He could be born into creation, walk among us, provide a perfect model of who He is so that He can set the record straight once and for all. Or perhaps when He made the covenant with Abraham He knew the Israelites would fail him and His whole plan was to send a messiah in the first place. This seems like a more likely scenario.

In my mind, that is what a loving God would do. He simply couldn’t restrain himself. The only way He could even come close to telling us how much He loves us is to come and be with us Himself. His gruesome death was inevitable. He experienced a very real and horrific death so that no one can say that God can’t relate to their suffering, but He responded to the violence and anger with love and peace.

So why did Jesus die? I’m not exactly sure. But I’m pretty sure it has to do with God’s love for us.

Everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell-and great was its fall! Mathew 7:24-27

It has been a while since I have posted anything on this blog. Many things have changed in the past year. I have decided to go back to academia to be a professor and am now doing a postdoc at Caltech. I spend most of my time now doing scientific research again and do not have time to write on this blog anymore, but my thoughts and questions never end. I have had many storms in the past year, but none of them were quite as difficult as the self imposed dissection of my faith.

Much of that dissection process is present here on this blog, but what is here and visible is a collection of thoughts and questions that are still incomplete and open. That intense time of inquiry was quite the storm for sure. Before the storm I had a rather comfortable home. It was by no means a mansion, but it was definitely large with all the amenities one would need so that it was not really necessary to venture outside. As the storm came, my house of faith shook to the very foundation and significant portions were destroyed [1]. My house had grown very large in size during college and much of it was built on sand. Those parts are now gone. The winds blew, the waters came and all that is left now is a basic frame with a roof.

In the context of the sermon I would like to believe that the reason I have anything left is because it is the only part that was built on rock. Everything else was superfluous. What is left is distinctly different from what was there before. I once had a very comfortable living environment that sheltered me from  all of the difficult questions and unknowns. Now all I have is a basic frame with a roof. But don’t be fooled by its simplicity because that structure, although simple, is strong and can withstand any storm that comes its way.   What is ironic is that many of the superfluous items that washed away in the storm would be considered by many Christians (but certainly not the majority) to be non-negotiable statements of faith.

Rob Bell has just come out with a new book called “Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.” It’s supposedly a very controversial book and virtually everyone and their dog has an opinion on it. I have only read the first few pages of the introduction on Amazon’s preview page. In that introduction he asks several powerful questions that I have been pondering over for the past several months, well before Rob even came out with his book. One of the Amazon reviewers made a comment that was very interesting. He said there are two types of people in the world, people that like questions and people that like answers. Rob Bell is a questions kind of guy. So am I. People like us like to ask questions that have no answers and we’re ok with it.

In discussions with my wife I have developed a similar dichotomy that includes people that like concepts and people that like details. The concept people would be like the people that enjoy questions and the details people are the people that like answers. I am a concept guy. I don’t like details because details without an underlying concept are useless to me. Laws and rules are made to accomplish a purpose. I focus on the purpose and not on the details, which can lead me to breaking the rules when they are counterproductive to accomplishing its purpose.

So what does that have to do with today’s sermon? Well its the frame that is left over from the storm. My faith is now quite simple in what I truly believe to be true and very gray on the rest of the details. It is more concept now than detail. For a while it was debilitating. Nobody walks away from a storm like that without some serious life changes. But the winds have calmed and the waters receded and I rest firmly now in my belief that God is good and it is up to Him to handle all the details that Christians have been bickering over for centuries.

I’ve come to realize that storms are an inherent part of life. The question isn’t if they come, it’s when they come. I’ve also realized that even though these storms are painful, they are also very good. They help us to weed out the superfluous parts of our lives so we can ask the hard questions. It’s possible that life’s storms may actually be opportunities for God to spend intimate time with each and every one of us while we wrestle with the fundamental questions that He hopes will inevitably lead us to a life built on a rock. Maybe that is why one of my favorite songs is “Let the waters rise” by Mikeschair.

[1] As I began this dissection process I knew full well that I was going to do some damage as I mentioned in a post long ago. I just didn’t know how much damage would occur.

What is remarkable to me is how this story has come to exist in the first place. If you grew up with the nativity story, it is easy to blaze through the birth narratives in Mathew and Luke and imagine the traditional nativity story and read into the text all these little details that are not actually there. Around Christmas 2009, the pastor at our church in Arizona revealed that there is very little of the nativity story as we know it that is actually written in the Bible. Since then I have heard this a few more times and this Christmas decided to look into it for myself.

The only information about Jesus’ birth is contained in the gospels Luke and Mathew. Mathew focuses on the tale of the wise men or magi or astrologers. They were not kings. It does not mention how many there were. Western tradition has held to 3 magi while eastern traditions have held that there were 12 [1]. Neither number can be quantified by the text. When they find the child, the only information we get from Mathew is from Mathew 2:11 where it says,

On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Here the wise men meet Jesus in a house not a stable, barn or cave.

The other more significant portion of text about the nativity story comes from Luke 2:1-21

¹Now in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus, that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth. ²This was the first census taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. ³And everyone was on his way to register for the census, each to his own city.⁴Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, ⁵in order to register along with Mary, who was engaged to him, and was with child. ⁶While they were there, the days were completed for her to give birth. ⁷And she gave birth to her firstborn son; and she wrapped Him in cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. (NASB translation)

At no point in the text does it say that Mary gave birth immediately upon arriving in Bethlehem. It simply says that while they were in Bethlehem the time came for the baby to be born. There is no mention of where she gave birth, but simply that he was placed in a manger after birth. Jesus’ birth in a stable or barn is simply implied because he was laid in a feeding trough and there was no room for them in the inn [2]. The greek word for inn used in this passiage is kataluma, which is better translated as guest room [3] as it is in the NIV. The idea that Mary and Joseph went to an inn and met an inn-keeper that had no room for them is implied through a poor translation of the text.

Bible archeology experts believe that Jesus was most likely born in the house of Joseph’s relatives, but not under the normal living quarters of the main house [3]. In those days as well as in primitive modern cultures, it is normal to find mangers within houses, which is more consistent with the previous text in Mathew [4].

Luke then goes on in verses 8-21 to tell the story of the shepherds. It does not say that it was night time even though that is what we typically imagine. All we learn is that an angel appeared to a group of shepherds and told them that a savior has been born and can be found in a manger wrapped with cloths. It does not say it was at night and there is no mention of the wise men. It is unlikely that the shepherds and the wise men were there at the same time.

We also celebrate Christmas on December 25th, but this is also not likely when Jesus was actually born. It is more likely that he was born in the summer or early fall [3]. December 25th was chosen to be Christ’s Mass by the Roman Catholic Church in order to replace a pagan festival that celebrated the elongation of days after the winter solstice on the 21st [3]. The idea was that it is better to replace a tradition with another one than to simply take one away.

Although the nativity story as we know it today originates from the Bible, it is highly romanticized and unrealistic. It serves its purpose more as a cultural reminder of an event of unprecedented proportion over 2000 years ago. The nativity scene is a summary and reminder of the individual events even though many of the details are implied or fictional.

References

[1] Misunderstanding the Bible, Common misbeliefs about the Bible – Was Jesus born in a stable?, 1/2/2011,
http://www.abarim-publications.com/Misunderstanding_Bible/Jesus_Born_In_Stable.html

[2] Mark Goodacre, NT Pod 46: Was Jesus Born in a Stable?, 12/15/2010,  http://podacre.blogspot.com/2010/12/nt-pod-46-was-jesus-born-in-stable.html

[3] Myths about Christmas, 1/2/2011,  http://www.christiananswers.net/christmas/mythsaboutchristmas.html

[4] Was Jesus Born in a Stable, 1/2/2011,  http://www.christiananswers.net/q-abr/abr-a012.html

Many Christians have been raised to believe that the universe was created in 6 days. Extrapolating information from the bible many Christians have come to believe that the earth is about 6,000 years old. I have never believed in a young earth and probably never will, but thats only because there is really no evidence to believe this to be true. The archaeological and geological findings all suggest that the earth is extremely old. Old enough to be measured in millions to even billions of years old, not thousands. There are many different methods to date different fossils and rocks, such as radioactive decay measurements, tree rings, glacial and sediment cores, etc. Since these methods essentially show that the world is much older than 6,000 years Christians naturally have attacked these methods and tried to disprove them.

I have never bothered to look into any of the young earth creation evidence before because I didn’t think it was worth my time and energy. However, since I’m on this journey to understand all the different ways of looking at things I decided to look into the alleged problems and inacuracies of carbon dating. If you do a search on carbon dating you will find a lot of creationist material bent on proving carbon dating to be inaccurate and unpredictable. You will not find much material fighting back against this opinion. That is because the arguments or “science” they use to justify their arguments is not in fact science at all and no scientist will believe that any of their claims deserves an ounce of their time.

There is no point in even opening a discussion because there is no science involved in their work whatsoever. They may think it is science, but as most scientists would say, its just a bunch of hand waving, which is a derogatory way of saying nice try, but try again. Any attempt to open a dialogue would result in each party simply talking past each other. Most of their scientific arguments originate out of highly outdated material and they cling to the tiniest little fraction of data that supports their argument while ignoring the vast majority of the data that shows it is actually a quite reliable and accurate dating tool.

All of their arguments did make me start to wonder if the technique is still in its infancy and is not quite developed yet. The more information I found the more I realized that carbon dating is actually a very mature science, which is why you see most of the Christian’s counterarguments based upon work that was done over 40 years ago. Back then there was a lack of understanding to how sensitive the specimens are to contamination, the concentration of carbon 14 in the atmosphere throughout history, etc. However, the current information indicates the technique is very well developed and when used properly is decently accurate. It has been cross-checked with multiple different independent dating techniques and I found it quite remarkable how thoroughly the technique has been investigated and refined. I found a journal article in Science magazine (probably the highest ranked science journal that exists) by H. Kitagawa et al (1) and in this paper it shows the accuracy of the technique when used on fossils to an age of 45,000 years old or newer. What is contained in that paper is real science with real evidence that demonstrates how remarkably accurate the technique truly is.

With all that said, I find it unnecessary to actually go into detail picking apart the creationists erroneous assumptions and sources of their information. What would be the point. I’m not going to change their minds and its not worth my time. I just have to learn to live as a Christian knowing that there are people out there that believe such things.

(1) Kitigawa, H, van der Plicht, J, Atmospheric Radiocarbon Calibration to 45,000 yr B.P.: Late Glacial Fluctuations and Cosmogenic Isotope Production, Science 279, 1187 (1998).

Why is it then that when someone does a small little something extraordinary for us we do not devote the same time and energy towards praising that person for what they have done? Why do we not yell and scream and praise the person for the act of kindness they have brought upon us?

I think the reason is that we have unreasonable expectations for how the world should run. When we do this, it leads us to focus too heavily on the evil that exists in the world and not enough on the love. We dwell on the bad rather than the good.

For example, I wrote about our stroller that was broken in an earlier post. I got all huffy and puffy with the baggage services people and had no problem making them feel bad for what happened. Later that week in my hotel room one of the cleaning ladies went above and beyond the standard. She made the room look like I had just walked into a resort, with a swan on the bed, pillows fluffed beautifully and all the other fine details. On the bed was an employee nomination card that gives guests the opportunity to provide positive feedback about extraordinary employee’s and their work.

At first I thought that since I didn’t ask or pay for this kind of treatment I would just blow off the nomination card. However, after coming to realize that I would rather spend my time further contributing to the love in the world than the evil, I found it necessary to take the effort to fill out the nomination card and thank that woman for her extraordinary service. It was a first step towards focusing on the good rather than the bad.

As a Christian and an Easter person that is a part of God’s new kingdom that was inaugurated with Christ’s death and resurrection, it is my responsibility to contribute to and be a vehicle through which God started, continues to and someday will finish redeeming His creation. It is my duty to absorb the evil within the world and replace it with God’s love. This is what Jesus did for creation and it is what we are called to continue doing until he appears again. If we see the world in this light the shift in mindset from bad to good should come naturally.

I realize that many people would be unwilling to do this because it can directly impinge upon one’s ability to live life if one is used to things being very black and white. I was raised in an environment that always encouraged me to examine both sides of the coin, which I think has allowed me to not only excel in the areas of science, but to live and excel in a world full of uncertainty. However, I would be lying if I did not admit that examination of my faith under the level of scrutiny I am used to within the realm of science has had at least some debilitating effects on me.

If you asked me questions about my faith today there would be things that I am more sure of than I have ever been before and have good reasons to think so. On the other hand, there are many things that at one point I may have had an answer to, but now I do not. I am amazed at just how different my faith is now than it was just 6 months ago.

Many Christians would say that my faith is weak, that I am too skeptical and that this search of mine is just a manifestation of that weakness and skepticism. I think they are dead wrong. It takes alot of guts to subject one’s faith to the level of scrutiny I am allowing it to receive and on top of that be open and willing to change. Many Christians cling to their faith and blindly believe it because that’s what they were told. I understand that is enough for many many people in the world. But I am a scientist and I have been educated to question, research and advance knowledge. If I am to be holistically honest with myself I cannot hold my Christian faith to a different standard. I must question. I must doubt. It is in my nature to do these things.

I have set out on this quest with the hypothesis that YHWH, the Judeo-Christian God, is the one true God and creator of the universe. I have set out on this quest to ask the tough questions and seek a level of understanding that is intellectually satisfactory to me. I have set out to understand if it is possible to have a conversation with another scientist and have a legitimate reason to believe in and trust God.

This search is about trusting that the Christian God is the one true God, and that if He is the Lord of the universe, then my faith is not at stake. I realize that I am putting myself in a vulnerable position, but this is something I must do. I doubt that anyone can say that my faith is weak or I have abandoned it because if faith means to trust, then this journey is a large leap of faith with no one to catch me other than God Himself.

We checked our stroller at the gate and when we arrived in Florida our stroller was delivered to us in two pieces instead of one. Both the person at the gate that retrieved the stroller and the flight attendant in the jetway assured us that the baggage office would reimburse us for any damages. This was not true. We were devastated to find out that the people at the gate were misinformed and that the airline does not cover any damages to strollers. There is a whole host of problems you can immediately cite within the airline itself; poor communication, false representation, baggage people feeling they can abuse our baggage because if they break something its ok because they believe the airline will reimburse us, etc. These are all things that reflect quite poorly on the airline and threaten the patronage of travelers like me.

Initially I did get all upset about the whole thing. I demanded that things be set right, that the wrong be corrected, but the airline would not budge. After a while I began to take a step back and look at the situation within the framework that I am starting to process things through. If you compare what happened to our stroller to the earthquake in Haiti, our defilement is nothing more than an inconvenience. Sure it sets us back a bit with having to find and buy a new stroller, but do we really have anything to complain about in the grander perspective?

Another way to look at it is that as long as we are wasting our time trying to fight with this airline we are fighting a battle that may never be won. At the same time, we could be spending that time and energy with our friends and family, enjoying their company and presence.

You may be wondering why I’m not shouting the airline’s name at the top of my lungs. My answer would be–what’s the point? What is it going to accomplish? Is the airline going to change their policy? Are they going to reimburse me for my stroller? Probably not. The reason why I’m not screaming their name is because I don’t want to waste my time trying to right something that has such a small return on my investment. I could easily spend the same amount of time to help someone else out and make a huge difference in their life. There are people all over the world with real problems, serious problems, life and death problems. A  stroller, in the grand scheme of things, is nothing worth even blinking an eye over.

I have been reading N.T. Wright’s book Evil and the Justice of God and tonight I read something very profound. He said that the Gospels tell us the unique story of how God the creator took responsibility for what has happened to His creation and how He bore the weight of its problems on his own shoulders. He says that “what the Gospels offer is not a philosophical explanation of evil, what it is or why it’s there, nor a set of suggestions for how we might adjust our lifestyles so that evil will mysteriously disappear from the world, but the story of an event in which the living God deals with it.” If I agree with him on this then there is no battle worth fighting because the battle has already been won.

God came to earth in the form of the Messiah to address the injustice in the world. He won the battle against death, against evil, by absorbing it in one horrific event, undeserving and without revenge. He fought the battle not with violence but with love and through that act of love he ushered in God’s new kingdom, a kingdom that is called to continue what Jesus started until He appears again. As a Christian, I am called to be a light unto the world, to change the world, to be its steward, and part of this call is to respond to the evil in the world with love, not evil. This is why I choose not to fight back. I choose love and not violence. I choose life and not death.

I noticed that in all of these movies the main characters, at some point or another, are in a state of defeat. They are essentially dead inside; their heart is hard and they are unable to love or be loved. They are the classic tragic life story. Through whatever set of previous life experiences, pain and suffering, they have numbed themselves from the inside out. They have hidden their hearts from the pain and suffering of this world to protect themselves from any further vulnerability.

I think that one of the overall objectives of these movies is to show that living life this way not only prevents one from being rejected, but from being loved as well. It is a reminder that part of being human is to love and be loved. In the movie He’s just not that into you, Gigi basically says that she would rather suffer from a broken heart over and over again the way she does than live a life free from the possibility of a broken heart. She realizes that his dispassionate approach to things has little to do with an enlightened sense of the world and everything to do with a dead and emotionless heart.

This is a very Hollywood type of statement and I don’t completely agree with it, but it does possess a significant amount of truth. If we are to live our lives purely as dispassionate and logic driven beings, without taking the risk required to love and be loved, we are missing out on the full human experience. That approach may lead to less pain, but it also leads to less joy.

It is extremely logical to stop doing things that hurt us. It is all a part of our natural instinct to survive. Pain is necessary so that we will adapt, change and modify our actions in such a way that allows us to survive. Application of this instinct to an area such as love is only natural, but love does not come without the risk of rejection. And in the midst of the turmoil we face from rejection it seems that the pain and suffering far outweighs any good, but most would agree this is not true. A popular quote is that ”it is better to have loved and lost, than to never have loved at all.” When it comes to love and many stories like this, it seems that the joy and happiness one can experience is worth the risk. The potential good is more valuable than any evil that may be inflicted on someone, even if there is no guarantee they will receive it.

It seems that many stories, such as these, serve as simply a reminder that as humans we must acknowledge and use the other epistemological tools we possess. They remind us that it is not by pure logic and reason that we can know things and seek fulfillment in life. Rather, we should live life with a healthy balance of all methods of understanding. Even though life in this balance can lead to pain and suffering, it can also lead to great joy, happiness and a fullness to life that we all desire. Within the human heart lies the desire for more than just survival. Deep down we long not only to survive, but to love and be loved, have purpose, prosper and thrive.

What struck me most interestingly was the effect his illness had on me as a parent. It was painful to watch him be in pain. It made me almost sick to my stomach and it was just a silly little cold! These emotions stirred up the question again of why would a good god create the world to be full of suffering? In my other post I discussed the topic of natural evil from the perspective of God’s grand plan to finish creation, but with my son suffering I was forced into the position where I myself had to ask God firsthand, why?

The Bible claims in Genesis 1 that we have been created in God’s own image. Under this assumption, God, as the creator of the universe, is essentially my parent and my son’s parent just as much as I am. I have always thought that one of the reasons God created us in His image is so that we can understand Him more. If I am having these emotions, pain and suffering for my son, then God must be as well. When we are hurting, He must be hurting right there with us. But is there anything in the Bible to substantiate this?

Greg Boyd in his book Letters From a Skeptic briefly touches on this idea. He says that “the gospel dares to proclaim that God was born a baby in a bloody, crap-filled stable, that He lived a life befriending the prostitutes and lepers no one else would befriend, and that He suffered, firsthand, the hellish depth of all that is nightmarish in human existence.” In essence, God knew that as humans on this earth with all the inherent pain and suffering that it would be difficult to believe God is good. So He sent his son into the world to demonstrate not only that He understands our suffering firsthand, but that there is hope for a new creation that will be without it.

This is by no means supposed to be a conclusion of any kind. It is merely some thoughts I had that I thought were worth sharing. This discussion actually brings up many more questions than it does answers, but thats all part of the process.