What is science? What is religion? What is their interaction? From times past, these questions have occupied the human mind. Is it true that religion belongs to the past, to the infantile beginnings, (postulated by science), of the human race, and science to a future period of maturity, with the second replacing the first, as some people believe? Or, on the contrary, does religion constitute the cornerstone of truth and knowledge for mankind, and only in religion, as others maintain, can science find a solution to its purely practical problems? Finally, there exists a third, a middle opinion, which recognizes the independent bases of both and seeks their agreement. But how does one reach such an agreement? The bitter controversy continues to seethe as opinions draw further apart.
For many, without any doubt, the presence of these
questions is a sign of old-fashioned belief.
The more meager our education, the more confused our understanding, the
more all these questions are considered answered. The “politically correct” consider themselves obligated to view
religion scornfully and with enmity.
In the preface of Professor Stephen W. Hawkin’s best
seller, A Brief History of Time, published in 1988, the late Professor
Carl Sagan of Cornell University, an ardent adherent of Darwin’s theory of
evolution and author of the best seller Cosmos, reflects: “This book is
about God or perhaps the absence of God…..,about the never-ending universe
without a beginning or an end, where there is nothing to do for its
Creator. In this never-ending universe,
there is no God because everything is God!”
Here is characterized our era of atheistical denial and pantheistical
assertion that God is in all.
For more than a century, a godless media has presented
science and religion, or, better yet, science and Christianity, to our society
as two irreconcilable fronts, ready at a moment’s notice for deadly
combat. Godless pseudo-educators, are
trying with all their might to inject generations of youth with a dying Marxist
theory. Science, they say, leading
mankind to progress, peace and tranquility, safeguards bright minds from dark,
ignorant times. This poison saturates
our schools and manifests itself in educational television programs.
Neo-pagans, destroyers of faith in the almighty, are
cutting the last remaining branch they stand on. Only in God, are hidden all treasures of wisdom and
direction. If the Apostle Paul states
that in God are hidden all treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col. 2:3),
if in Him we acknowledge and reap our salvation, then for us unfolds a totally
new understanding of the world’s order and its makeup. Only from here are we granted the real
possibility of comprehending the truth or our lives, mankind’s meaning and
God’s purpose in history.
In 1990, Professor Roy F. Peacock, published a book
entitled A brief History of Eternity. A professor of Aerospace Sciences, world-renowned in
thermodynamics, holder of the Galileo Chair at Pisa University, in Italy,
writes: “between Ptolemy and Einstein, there exists an unbroken chain of
scholars who, like a magnet, are drawn to God.
On the heroic shoulders of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, did Newton
find his strength. All of them were
believers in the Almighty God, the Creator and Provider.”
Copernicus freed cosmology from the Aristotle system
of geocen-trism, thus disproving the theory, which prevailed for thousands of
years, that the sun rotates around the earth.
Copernicus’ system is a triumph of truth and spirit. But is it incompatible with Christianity, as
Professor Hawkin’s asserts? Copernicus
did not share this opinion. “My goal”,
writes Copernicus, “is to find the truth in God’s majestic creation.” With
research in astronomy, he combined the responsibility of a religious person,
and it was precisely his religious outlook, which brought his religious views
to a great discovery. His personal
epitaph gives witness to this:
Not the Grace received
by Paul do I desire,
Nor the good will with
which Thou forgavest Peter,
Only that which Thou
didst grant the thief on the cross,
That mercy I ask of Thee.
The mathematician Kepler rose to great admiration in
his observance of God’s creation, and his book on planetary movements concludes
with an inspired glorification to God: “The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the firmament proclaimeth the work of His hands”, (Ps. 18:1).
Men of science have been, at the same time, students
of heavenly wisdom, of which the Holy Apostle James says that God gives it to
all men liberally, and upbraideth not, (James 1-5). And as we are led further by all that we
learn does it not lead us deeper into knowledge – to God? Concerning philosophy, Francis Bacon states
that studied superficially, it removes one from God, but investigated
thoroughly, it leads one to Him.
A true knowledge of God is inseparably linked with
His revelation in Christ. Not without
reason did the chemist and microbiologist Pasteur caution his generation of
scientists: “There will come a day when we will be laughed at for our current
foolish materialistic philosophy. The
more I occupy myself with the study of nature, the more I stand in reverent
amazement before the works of the Creator.
I pray during my work in the laboratory.” The great physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton, whose name is
associated with a whole series of scientific discoveries, in his Principia
Philosophia, he writes: “A heavenly Master governs all the world as
Sovereign of the universe. We are
astonished at Him by reason of His perfection, we honor Him and fall down
before Him because of His unlimited power.
From blind physical necessity, which is always and everywhere the same,
no variety adhering to time and place could evolve, and all variety of created
objects which represent order and life in the universe could happen only by the
willful reasoning of its original Creator, Whom I call the Lord God.” Through
great irony of circumstances, the atheist, Stephen W. Hawking, now occupies the
chair, where Newton taught at Cambridge University.
“I consulted the ‘Judeo-Christian Bible’ in order to
find the initial reason for all creation,” writes Hawking, “but there, to my
great disappointment, I could not find an answer.” Hawking is disappointed because he does not know the “spirit of
Scripture”. First of all, one must
establish a correct point of view. The
Bible is not a textbook of astronomy or geology, but a document of religion; it
is not designed to give answers to questions of scientists, nor to praise their
efforts, or even to scold them, but has only one goal: to satisfy religious
needs. For example, that which is
written about our world’s creation is not written as a natural science
abstract, but as religious edification.
For that reason, it is nonsensical to search for what is not written
there.
In the Bible, God draws our attention to the creation
of the world from nothing. Geology
begins with chaos, finds itself in a state of fermen-tation and motion. Where does this chaos come from? Geologists do not know. Holy Scripture goes further than chaos and
geology, and states that God created the very first matter out of nothing, from
which, little by little, this well-organized world was formed. For that reason, Holy Scripture says that
life on earth, the world of plants and animals, had its beginnings mainly
through an interaction of natural forces and the creative activity of God, Who
said: Let the earth bring forth, let the waters bring forth. Further, Holy Scripture states that the
earth, in its gradual change from general to individual, from imperfection to
perfection, from bondage to freedom, approaches closer to man, until un man it
forms a crowing purpose. This narration
has deep religious significance. From
it we see that man was the purpose of God’s creation. He was truly the last and therefore the first thought of God,
since God exists outside of time.
According to the Bible, in the beginning, the earth was covered with
water, then mountains appeared, and dry land, then light in the firmament of
the heavens, and the earth was adorned by vegetation, the waters filled with
fish, the air with winged birds, followed by living creatures, and all ended
with the crowning creation of man. Our
hearts and our spirits rejoice when everywhere, we acknowledge God’s embodiment
of thought. Nature is a world symbolic
and picturesque, which we must and can unriddle and interpret. Everything visible holds in itself a
mystery, an invisible mystery, but the principle mystery of mysteries is God!
“I consulted,” continues Professor Hawking, “St.
Augustine’s book, The City of God, to find out the expedient first cause
of the world, but Augustine was humbly silent.” The professor, being a pantheist and environmentalist, should
turn to the Confessions of Blessed Augustine, where he would find an
answer to this perplexing question, because that supernatural which he seeks
beyond the limits of the world, and where this world takes us, is God, the true
God, the true strength of the world.
“But what is my God?” asks Blessed Augustine, in his Confessions:
“I put my question to the earth. It
answered, I am not God, and all things on earth declared the same. I asked the sea and the chasms of the deep
and the living things that creep in them, but they answered, we are not your
God. Seek what is above us. I spoke to the winds that blow, and the
whole air and all that lives it in replied: Anaximenes is wrong, I am not
God. (Anaximenes of Miletus, the
philosopher, lived in the sixth century who taught that air is the first cause
of all things). I asked the sky, the
sun, the moon and the stars, but they told me, neither are we the God you seek. I spoke to all the things that are about me,
all that can be admitted by the door of the senses, and I said, ‘Since you are
not my God, tell me about Him. Tell me
something of my God.’ Clear and loud,
they answered, ‘God is He Who made us.’
I asked these questions simply by gazing at these things, and their
beauty was all the answer they gave.”
All things speak to us, in a unique language and we
can understand it. The language of all
things offers testimony of God the Creator.
That is exactly what Professor Hawking does not understand. Professor
Hawking says that everything happened by chance, as a result of the “Big Bang”.
“We find ourselves on the horizon of scientific
knowledge”, states Professor Roy C. Peacock.
“The closer to sunrise, the brighter the morning, so distinctly do the
creations of a wise Creator ascertain to us.
Now in the humble spirit of science, in the spirit of faith, founded in
knowledge, we draw closer to the unshaken certainty of God’s being.”
In wide social circles, Einstein’s theory of
relativity is well known, but not all know that it led the scientist to
formulate a cosmic religion. This
religion recognized the existence of a Supreme Personal Spirit, creator of
world harmony.
“Mathematical arguments say concerning the fact,”
notes academic scholar Morrison, “that for life’s rise and development on
earth, it requires an incredible number of mutual intercorrelations and
connections that without wise direction, simply by accident, could not
emerge. The speed at which the earth
rotates is estimated at 1000 miles per hour.
If the earth rotated at the speed of 100 miles per hour, then our days
and nights would become ten times longer.
In the course of a long day, the sun would burn all living things, and
in the course of the long night, all living things would freeze to death. For that purpose, the sun’s temperature equals 12,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The earth is distanced from the sun as far
as necessary, so that this ‘eternal fire’
appropriately warms us, not too little
and not too much. If the sun
gave us half its heat, we would freeze; if it gave twice as much, we would
perish from the earth, not a chance in a million.”
Proof of God’s being exists from time
immemorial. We meet it in pre-Christian
philosophy, in Plato, Aristotle and
Cicero. Their purpose is not to disprove what has not yet been proven,
but to show everywhere God’s footprints.
Not in vain does the Psalmist King David, observing nature, exclaim: The
heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaimeth the work of His
hands. Day unto day, poureth forth
speech and night unto night proclaimeth knowledge. There are neither tongues nor words in which that their voices
are not heard, (Ps. 18: 1-3). This
thought resounds throughout all Scripture, and echoes within us. But we have no need to submerge ourselves in
history’s whirlwinds and investigate its mysteries in order to find God. In our own personal life, each of us can
find the commanding, guiding, trusting hand of God, if only we believe in what
we can see and feel, as we often experience.
Conscience is our last court of appeal, unconditional
moral law in all matters. Consequently,
it is the product of a higher spirit, a higher legislator of an absolute free
will. In fact, conscience serves as
proof of the existence o God.
Conscience exhibits a moral law, the will of God, and binds our will to
His. For that reason, Cicero said: ”The
conviction of truly wise men has always been this: that moral law is not
something devised by men or introduced by nation, but something external by
which the whole world should be governed.”
This law is as old as the Spirit of God.
It is worthwhile to speak of one more point.
Concerning man’s reasoning, we find ourselves capable to judging about what we
are. This ability is due to the fact
that man is the crown of creation and the Creator of the Universe Himself
placed this spark in him.
Unknown to Darwin, the miracle of genes and other new
discoveries certify that care was exhibited about every living thing. Professor A. K. Morrison states: “The size
of genes is so minute, that all genes, if gathered together, would fit in a
thimble”, -- and because of them, the world has life. What is more, these ultra-microscopic genes and their
accompanying chromosomes are in all living cells, representing a means whereby
they govern the functions of the cell, and are primarily responsible for its
properties and behavior in man, animal and plants. A thimble can hold the individual characteristics of all six
billion human beings. If this is so,
then how does a gene include in such a minute space the psychological traits of
every individual human being?
“The fact that a few million atoms included in
ultra-microscopic genes can prove to be the absolute key to governing life on
earth, thereby, provides evidence that care has been shown for all living
things, that someone has foreseen all this”
-- and this foresight comes from the creative wisdom of God the Father,
God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, One in essence and
indivisible!
In conclusion, we can say that religion and science
interact, agree with and complement each other. The great scientist of our century, Max Planck, awarded the Nobel
Prize in physics, states: “Religion and demand for their foundation faith in
God. For the former (religion), God
stands foremost; for the latter (science), at the end of all thought. For religion, He represents a foundation,
for science, a crowning resolve.
After everything has been said, to believe in the
accidental beginning of the universe by means of the “Big Bang” theory, is to
believe whole heartedly that this article which you have been reading, is the
product of a big explosion in the print shop.
Priest
Anatoly Trepatschko