Faith and Science and Epiphany

I recently wrote a sermon for Epiphany titled:  Faith and Science  Audio

In it I asked, what do you see in this:  GODISNOWHERE?

Some might see "God is now here." Others might see "God is nowhere."

Not much more than 150 years ago the greatest scientists saw complete harmony between science and theology. Isaac Newton firmly believed in an elegant, mathematical universe.. He wrote more about the Bible than he did about science (See, The Clockwork Universe, Edward Dolnick)! But then some scientists began looking at the natural world apart from God. They consider the universe to be an elegant accident! But their theories are running into trouble, especially with the math. To make an accidental universe work, they are realizing they need infinite multi-verses and parallel universes. That is more fantastical than an elegantly created universe. And there is no natural evidence of such things (See, Our Mathematical Universe, Max Tegmark). 

The wisemen followed nature (the star) and God's word to Bethlehem to see Jesus. Faith and science are in complete harmony. 

Quantum Mechanics, Creation, & God

The book "Quantum" by Manjit Kumar weaves together both the discoveries and theories of Quantum Mechanics along with the personal and spiritual lives of the physicists involved. 

QM began with Max Planck's discovery in 1900 that the relationship between heat and the frequency of light generated by a heated body is not a smooth line on a graph. Rather, when Planck examined the most minute increases of heat, he found the light freqency would hold steady and then suddenly jump. 

The personal story behind this is fascinating. Planck was the last person you'd expect to make this discovery. He was told when he wanted to major in physics that almost everything had been discovered in this field. The job of a physicist was simply to extend the decimal places on all the known constants. But this kind of science suited the conservative and methodical Planck. Little did anyone know that he would blow the roof off classical mechanics. 

In classical mechanics we understand the physical world through cause and effect. Strike a baseball with a bat, and we can predict where it will go and how far, etc. Yet in the atomic and subatomic world we have discovered effects that just don't make sense. Light shining on a photo cell produces an electrical current giving us the impression that light is a particle. Light shining through two slits creates wave patterns showing that it is a wave. Fire a single electron at two slits and things get really weird. It seems as though the electron passes through both slits and apparently is capable of ending up in several different places that only God knows and why.

That last statement is what this book is really about. Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg took these discoveries and emphasized the randomness and unpredictability of the physical world. Albert Einstein and Erwin Schroedinger felt that this was not a complete understanding of the weird effects of QM. The author mentions a number of times Einstein's famous dictum: "God does not play dice." When Bohr died, the last drawing on his blackboard was that of Einstein's Light Box mind experiment which challenged the idea that the physical world is ultimately random. 

QM just boggles the mind, which is why I appreciate Richard Feynman, who said no one understands it. 

However I think QM is important because it points to the realty of things that the Bible teaches such as creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing) or that things are not always what they appear to be! 

The author doesn't really go into the spiritual beliefs of Max Planck, but I hope to learn more about that. Here is a quote by Planck about science and religion:

While both religion and natural science require a belief in God for their activities, to the former He is the starting point, to the latter the goal of every thought process….No matter where and how far we look, nowhere do we find a contradiction between religion and natural science. 
(Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers, 1949, p. 184; pp. 185-186.)

The Resurrection of Jesus is Scientifically Impossible?

How do you respond to someone who says something like this? It might be helpful simply to talk about what science really is. Many people do not really understand it. They often look at science as though it can answer all questions. For some, science has become their god.

Science is observation and interpretation. Scientists observe events in the natural world and then try to explain them. Their explanations are never perfect. They are always a matter of probability. For example, scientists have observed something as simple as boiling water and have come up with an explanation that has a high probability of being correct. We can be quite sure about our understanding of H2O molecules. However, have we come to the end of our understanding of H2O molecules? One hundred years ago many scientists would have said, "yes." As late as 1957, British mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell made this statement: "Physical science is thus approaching the stage when it will be complete, and therefore uninteresting” (Why I Am Not A Christian, p. 49). But there are not many scientists who would dare make a statement like this today. We are not approaching a stage when our understanding of the world will be complete. In fact, just the opposite is true. The more we learn, the more there is to learn. There is an infinite amount of knowledge and complexity in this world. Therefore all scientific explanations are in need of improvement as we learn more and more about the universe.

What does this have to do with the resurrection of Jesus? Science only works when you can make observations. Science works best when we can observe something happening again and again. Each time we observe it we can take a different angle, improve our resolution, or try to isolate certain variables. This works fine for repeatable events. But not all events are repeatable. Follow me on this progression: 1. There are some natural events that are very repeatable - the revolutions and rotation of the earth or photosynthesis in plants. 2. There are some natural events that repeat less often - earthquakes or hurricanes. 3. There are some natural events that are very rare - the birth of quintuplets or the occurrence of certain comets. Following this progression we could propose that there are singular events, events that only happen once. If there are such events, they are beyond our ability to properly observe and explain them.

The Bible tells us about such events: The Creation, The Resurrection of Jesus, and Miracles. Because they are singular events, we cannot observe them repeatedly to develop explanations that have a high probability of being correct. Science simply cannot prove or disprove them. So if a person would say, "The resurrection of Jesus is scientifically impossible," you could correct them and say, "Actually, the resurrection of Jesus is unobservable and therefore beyond the scope of science."

The resurrection of Jesus is not a matter of science but of witnesses. There were many witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus. What were they like? Ordinary people. How credible were they? They promoted morality and were not afraid to tell the world about their own faults and failures. They were very honest. What did they get out of saying "Jesus has risen from the dead?" Many were driven from their homes, others were put in prison, and still others were killed. Another important witness of the resurrection is the empty tomb. There were many people in high places who had a great interest in making sure Jesus stayed dead. There were also witnesses who lived long before Jesus' death and resurrection. These were the prophets who promised a Messiah who would die and yet overcome death.

In the end, the question for all of us is not a question of science but a question of witness. What will you do with the witnesses to the resurrection? Do they have a high probability of being correct?