Faith, Science and the Wind of God

Since I am pretty busy with school at the moment, I have been a slacker member of the MBCC blog.  However, I am also highly motivated by guilt (which is the main reason I am so busy at school at the moment . . long story) so in response to Bruce's prodding, here is an interesting thought I came across.  The quote below comes from Gregg Easterbrook, known as the "Tuesday Morning Quarterback" on ESPN.com's "Page Two" site.  For those unfamiliar with "TMQ," it is a must read article for thinking football fans.  Easterbrook is not your typical football columnist; he is also an editor of The Atlantic Monthly and a fellow at The Brookings Institution.   

"A Cosmic Thought: Cosmologists believe the Big Bang happened about 14 billion years ago, matter and energy filling the void in a process of unfathomable majesty, all the matter and energy of 100 billion galaxies coming from – well, we'll get back to you on that. For the first few hundred million years, it is thought, the firmament was dark: Matter was scattered and nebulae or stars had not yet formed, so there was no source of light. This assumption makes eerie the 3,000-year-old description, from Genesis, of the condition just after the creation: All "was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters." Cosmologists believe that initially almost all the matter in the universe was hydrogen – the main ingredient in water – and that it was moving outward from the point of the Big Bang at fantastic velocity, as if propelled by supernatural wind. At any rate, last month the Spitzer Space Telescope, which orbits the Earth and looks toward the deep cosmos on infrared wavelengths, photographed what might be the first stars ever to form. They appear to have been gigantic suns 1,000 times the mass of our Sol, and to have provided the first light that shown upon creation. That their light can still be seen from the edge of the observable universe is eerie, too."  (see the full article here). 

This section of Easterbrook's article captures something that I have always thought to be quite apparent, but that is often glossed over in mainstream news coverage: science and religion are often not in conflict.  Yet, it is easy to stereotype the rational, agnostic scientist and the irrational, faithful believer and set them hopelessly at odds with one another.  I like how Easterbrook suggests that God  does more than just fill in the "gaps" in current scientific knowledge (the "we'll get back to you on that" as to where the Big Bang came from in the first place).  Instead, he highlights how religious understanding and scientific understanding are interpreting the same world, but with different perspectives and language. 

To me, the poetic language from Genesis quoted above imparts something magical and true about the beginning of the universe that would be lost if told from a purely scientific or secular point of view.

Comments

[Bahata]

Readers of this article may find the Q & A in [http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/110210] interesting.

[Derrick Weston]

some of the people in this world that have the strongest faith are scientist. They realize that you can only explain to world to a point and then you have to put things in God's hands. They also, better than your average joe, recognize how organized and (dare I say it) intelligently designed the world is. I agree that the words of Genesis are poetic and convey a truth far deeper than any scientific explanation can. I really don't think science and faith ever have to be in conflict. God gave us brains for a reason.