Wonder

We have seen how throughout scripture, creation is seen to call us to worship, joining in its song as it declares the glory of its Maker. But how does this connect to science? Science provides us the tools to understand the natural world, to unravel its mysteries and decipher its inner workings. And as we understand more and more its complexity and rich diversity, our wonder only increases. Now, not only do we see the heavens declaring the glory of God, but also the proteins and neurons, the molecules and the genomes.

A sense of wonder is what draws many scientists in initially. Biologist Darrel Falk describes how he became enchanted with biology: “The living processes of a single cell, and the unfolding and coordination of the plan for a developing embryo, were like a magnificent symphony, and I felt that I would never be able to find greater intellectual joy than I would by spending the rest of my life studying its orchestration.”1 This wonder is evoked again when new discoveries are made. Francis Collins recounts the incredible awe he felt at being the first to read the human genome, “this most significant of all biological texts.”2

This experience and drive for wonder is not unique to Christians. In the novel Sophie's World, a non-religious introduction to Western Philosophy that has sold over 20 million copies, the main character Sophie learns, “The only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder.”3 She was earlier told, “We feel we are part of something mysterious and we would like to know how it all works.”4 It as if we are in a magic trick, but we are the trick. We are the white rabbit. It is the philosophers then who want to climb up the fur and look into the eyes of the magician.5

The Christian hope is that there actually is a magician to look at. Francis Collins experienced such tremendous awe at decoding the genome because he knew he was reading the book “written in the DNA language by which God spoke life into being.”6 God is personal. He is not just some force or a grand proposition. God is a being who wants us to know him. If we believe Hebrews 1:2-3, then the one who is sustaining the processes of the universe, that same one is the God who was incarnated—Jesus who loved among us and died for us. Stop and marvel at that for a moment. The God that we see clues to in nature is the God who actually came to earth!

Continue: Wonder and Natural Theology

Wonder and Natural Theology

Holding on to the personhood of God and our wonder at his creation, we can approach natural theology rightly. The danger in trying to prove God from science is that we begin to turn God into a proposition, and we stray from a “theology which takes God’s self-revelation as its starting point.”7 And honestly, arguments from science do not form a very cohesive logical proof. Rather, science reveals God to us primarily through that sense of wonder. The philosopher Alvin Plantinga captures this vividly:

It isn't that one beholds the night sky, notes that it is grand, and concludes that there must be such a person as God: an argument like that would be ridiculously weak. It isn't that one notes some feature of the Australian outback-that it is ancient and brooding, for example-and draws the conclusion that God exists. It is rather that, upon the perception of the night sky or the mountain vista or the tiny flower, these beliefs just arise within us. They are occasioned by the circumstances; they are not conclusions from them. The heavens declare the glory of God and the skies proclaim the work of his hands: but not by way of serving as premises for an argument.8

Continue: Wonder and Technology

Wonder and Technology

Our wonder can also lead us to a wholesome view of technology. On the one hand, we have God’s original command to humans in Genesis 1:28: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the ground.” We are called to have dominion over creation, and technology is a way that we do this.

But we also join with the psalmist exclaiming in Psalm 8:3-4, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” Our wonder at the grandeur of creation (and beyond to the grandeur of God) instills a spirit of humility. Our role as stewards of the earth is both a tremendous gift and an immense responsibility. As discoveries in science lead to new technologies, we will proceed humbly, seeking to fulfill our role by using the new tools to care for the earth and for mankind.

The world of science is vast and complex, and now I would now like to give crash courses in two fields: cosmology and neuroscience. As you encounter new truths about the universe, let your sense of wonder drive you to worship the one who set all things in their place. And now let me echo the words of the mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler:

Praise and celebrate with me the wisdom and magnitude of the Creator, which I lay open before you by means of a deeper explanation of the structure of the world, by the search for its causes.9

Next Page: Cosmology