The Heavens Display God's Glory

Jerry Newcombe asks the questions which has haunted the 20th Century, and seems to be a continuing controversy in the 21st century: does science disprove God?  You can go read it at Townhall.com in a piece by the same title here. Newcombe writes:

A Pew Research Poll released last week reports that fifty-nine percent of Americans see science and religion in conflict. But they also found that, “highly religious Americans are less likely than others to see conflict between faith and science.”

I’m not a scientist, and I don’t play one on TV. But it’s amazing to me to see how some scientists like to claim that somehow science has disproven God.

I was trained as an engineer. I had to use mathematics, physics, and chemistry to do my work. I used a number of sub specialties of physics as well, including structural mechanics, hydraulics, some gas dynamics, and so on.  As a student, immersed in the study of these various topics, and attempting to manipulate them in ingenious ways to design something that makes peoples' lives better, I will admit that it can seem as if science has all the answers.  But after you leave school, and have time to contemplate what you have learned, it becomes fairly clear that all of these tools are built on an assumption:  that the universe is rational.

Therefore one can posit that our God is a rational God, who does not change his mind on a whim.

Therefore, the laws of the universe are discoverable.

Science is the tool by which we can discover these laws.

Belief in the rationality of the universe is first and foremost, an act of faith.  Everyone ultimately has a faith that the world will act the same today as it has in the past.  You would be very surprised and probably scared if you jumped in your car, and it started floating away, right?  But, just as a hammer is a tool to pound things with, but it has no meaning beyond its usefulness when one needs to pound something, so science itself conveys no meaning.  It is a tool to explain what is happening.  One must ask the next question:  why is the universe rational?  That question can lead one on a journey to true faith in God.

Newcombe again:

Alfred North Whitehead said that Christianity is the mother of science because of “the medieval insistence on the rationality of God.” A rational God had made a rational universe, and it was the object of the scientists to---in the words of the great astronomer Johannes Kepler---“think God’s thoughts after Him.”