On Science and God

In my search for God I have always sought to try to solidify my belief in God by trying to successfully argue an intelligent case for God especially toward those who are the antithesis to my views. In order to do this I have attempted [and will continue to attempt, albeit in light of this new understanding] to take the recent in scientific advances and discoveries and attempt to justify God's existence through them. I have attempted to do this for the past 3 to 4 years now, and I believe that certain understandings could prove the existence of God while others could discourage such proof.

It was only in recent days that I came to an impasse, it would seem to me that God was telling me, "Jim, I am too vast, too infinite to be grasped with the tools on men, for my lowliest part is still greater then the greatest parts of creation!" How could this thought, this epiphany come to pass that allows me to still believe in God while no longer being stressed with giving proofs of His Presence? That is the point of this article and that is something I wish to share with you.

Science ought to be used as a tool/justification by serious Christians to not literalize the deep Spiritual Truths found in Scripture. During the Protestant Reformation, it was Protestants that became very weary of "Allegorical, typological, moral, and mystical interpretations... alongside historical-literal readings..." It was due to the fact that, "The hand of the Church kept the reins taut enough to prevent the Bible from becoming Babel." In order to combat this Protestants felt it was safe to adapt a merely historical-literal reading of Scripture. As time moved forward into the Mid-1800s to the 20th Century, almost all Non-Apostolic Churches (i.e. most Churches of Protestant/Non-Denominational Blend) adhered to this historical-literal outlook on the Interpretation of Scripture.

Follow this to its logical conclusions and you can see why you have fundamentalists and their militant atheist counterparts running around still to this day claiming that God and Science are at odds with each other. The biggest example that comes to mind of course is Evolution - V - Creationism. The great irony to Biblical Literalism was that, "literalism was not obscurantist or simple-minded, as it sometimes appears in retrospect. On the contrary, it developed from an effort to make the Bible fit common sense: to insist on the rationality of the divine revelation and to quash mystical exegesis that could be neither controlled nor clearly understood."

Biblical Literalism then has the hubris to demand that the profound Word of God can be grasped by human experience of day-to-day living and ordinary human terms. It wanted to make the authority of the Bible so clear that it could not be denied, however as Scientific progress has shown, we cannot interpret literally Biblical Texts. So the greatest irony then is this, that Biblical Literalism rather then acting as the constant living affirmation of the Word of God has threatened the authority of the Word of God.

Therefore, Science from a serious Christians point of view is not a threat to Christianity as a whole, but certain ill-conceived theologies that pin themselves to Christianity are threatened by science. Science allows us to refine our understanding and interpretation of Scripture, not create a divide between human endeavors and God's Will. Science has restored the original outlook that a serious Christian must seek to understand and interpret Scripture in light of the, "Allegorical, typological, moral, and mystical interpretations..." which had "flourished alongside historical-literal readings" and that, "The hand of the Church [must keep] the reins taut enough to prevent the Bible from becoming Babel." In the end the only people who will hold on so hard to Biblical Literalism are those who are, "the uneducated or uneducable."

To further facilitate this view I refer you to "The Philocalia of Origen" in which Origen states from Chapter 1 Verse 21: "For, regarding the whole of Divine Scripture, we hold that every portion has the spiritual[Mystico-Allegorical] meaning, but not every portion the 'corporeal' [Literal]; for the 'corporeal' meaning is often proved to be impossible. The cautious reader must therefore very carefully bear in mind that the Divine books are Divine writings, and that there appears to be a peculiar way of understanding them, which I will now describe."

According to Origen as is still accepted throughout the Church today, there are indeed 3 points of view to the interpretation of Scripture. The First View is the "Corporeal" or Bodily View which is the bare Historical-Literal meaning that is conveyed in said Scriptural verse. However, there can be fictious history, that which was absurd, impossible, or failed to convey the moral or spiritual lesson in a non-fictious manner was claimed to be invented by the Holy Spirit who communicated it to said writer. The Second View is the unfolding of the First View, which is the "Soul" or Moral View, that was written down in scripture to convey a moral premise. Finally there is the "Spirit" or mystical view which was designed to convey something pre-figuring Christ and His Church or to typify the things of the higher world which the things in this world has its antitype.


Now before the floodgates open and allow religion and science to bleed into one, let us keep in mind the life lessons of St. Augustine as well as some basic facts. The methods of science are different in grasping reality then the methods of religion in grasping reality, yet both methods lead to a better understanding of the larger whole for the whole of Humanity. Currently, Science deals with the material realm via empirical data and reductionism, the material realm of matter and objects; Religion deals with the spiritual realm as it relates to the material realm, this relation is based around subjects and the idea that "subjects are more then the some of their parts." Religion is more intuitional and Science is more rational, yet both are present within the human experience and neither should be fighting against each other lest we cause imbalance, but we must not allow the two to bleed into one, for both are by their essence different and should be kept different.

Now we must keep in mind the life lesson of St. Augustine in his Confessions he writes, "if they are so wrong about the stars, the sun, the moon and the earth, he reasoned rightly, how can they possibly be right about lofty and complex concepts like God, the afterlife, and spirituality?" He wrote this in light of his own history leading up to his conversion to Christianity, when he was in a different religion altogether.

When St. Augustine was younger and before he was a Christian, he was part of a gnostic sect called the Manichean's. This spiritual group, "had incorporated points of ancient Greek astronomy and cosmology into their dogmatic system; by St. Augustine's day much of this older Greek science had been discredited and replaced with more up to date understandings of the earth and the universe. As St. Augustine continued in his secular education and learned that the Manichean's were teaching incorrect ideas about science, he came to question their religious ideas also..."

Such is the danger if we begin to blend any particular scientific theory too closely with the Christian faith! Since creationism has been disproven conclusively and those who adhere to such theological outlooks that allow such babel as Creationism to exist in the first place are percieved to be gaining traction we see a great misunderstanding developing in our time and likewise we see that this gives any enemy of Christianity further justification that they are somehow right, when in fact they their justification is founded on misunderstandings. We cannot allow ourselves to fall to the temptation of "proving" God's existence through picking and choosing what [pseudo]scientific theories are present in our day, our relation to the scientific theories of our day needs to be downgraded from, "this proves He Is Real" to "it is our current understanding that God created the universe in this manner" only by doing this can we focus our energy on knowing God and realize that there is no-need of tension between God and Science.

This brings me to my final point, I cannot in good conscious really support Western Christianity because it has gotten itself more intellectualized than I personally feel is healthy to do. While I will not deny that a certain level of intellectualism is good for the learning purposes, I always felt that Eastern Christianity [whether Eastern Catholic or Orthodox churches] could help us resolve this problem.

According to author Vladmir Lossky who wrote, "Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church" he states very succinctly that, "having no philosophical preferences, the Church always freely makes use of philosophy and the sciences for apologetic purposes, but she never has any cause to defend these relative and changing truths as she defends the unchangeable truth of her doctrines." In a word, Science and Christianity are not at odds with each other per se, rather given what science says at the time can be used as a means to convey the absolute truth of God's presence in the world as we can understand it so far. So at one point via Newtonian physics we saw the universe as an ordered and structured place, but now with the rise of Quantum Physics [which makes the universe seem more probabilistic] we have to adjust our understanding as Humanity in Creation and learn how to still convey the unchangeable truth of God.

Therefore, Scientific understanding is always changing, this is not to say this is bad, rather it is part of its essence. One minute we believe in Theory X and then something comes along and either Theory X is modified or thrown out completely! We cannot tie ourselves down to theories that are subject to changes or even elimination in the future. To over-identify ourselves with a particular scientific theory/outlook is to bring about the same existential worry and doubt that St. Augustine had and like the Manichean's, if we fall to the temptation of tying theories to theology we will only discredit ourselves and the whole of Christianity. For our modern equivalent we need only look at the Creationist Christians, who take a disproven theory so seriously that in their passion they do not know how they make a mockery of Christianity.

The Fact That Scientific Understanding is always in Flux We Can Only Conclude That, While Scientific Exploration and Application is a Grace of God that Allows Us to Better Understand Cosmos and Ease Suffering in our world, its Main Purpose is to Study the Impersonal Side of God. However it is in Christianity, the fulfillment of all other spiritual traditions and philosophies that we are able to see the Personal Side of God.

I Conclude also that: (1) God and Our Relation to Him as Humanity is always heading in the same direction, but what changes is the environment that is around us as we get closer to him. (2) It is my belief, not an absolute one however, that if we are to see the constant works of God in Creation, the Logos or God Immanent it will be in the Scientific Endeavors of Physics, Psychologists and the Emerging Field of Network and Systems Science, as it relates to living systems and even inorganic systems. It is my belief also that, Science is going to go through a point of Metanoia, the Scientific Mind I believe will change in due time.

As the era of Scientific Reductionism comes to a close and the most smallest unit of material existence is understood, Science will face an existential crisis, and I believe that in response to said Crisis, System Theory and Network Science was born, this will allow Science to come to a more holistic, less compartmentalized/reductionistic mindset, and perhaps through such investigation they will see the Deus Ex Machina or at the very least, through knowing the fruits of Gods work in creation it will finally come to admit to Tree the bore those fruits.

I will confess that I have given into the desire to tie new and nifty scientific advances to my understandings of Christian theology and will probably continue doing this in the future, but in light of what I have written in this article it will only be out of a sheer desire to exercise my intellectual mind in order to better understand my faith, yet not seek to tie it to my faith, knowing that scientific discoveries will be subject to changes in the future. In the end I certainly do NOT want this article to serve as a means to justify intellectual laziness nor at the same time do I want this article or the confession stated in this paragraph to serve as a justification for a hyper-intellectualism/rationalization on Christian Theology per se.

SOURCES:
Pious Fabrications
(http://www.piousfabrications.com/2011/06/authority-of-bible-and-why-literalism.html) (http://www.piousfabrications.com/2011/01/reflections-on-science-and-religion.html)

Christian Classics Ethreal Library (http://www.ccel.org/ccel/pearse/morefathers/files/origen_philocalia_02_text.htm)