This was a post from the Juice Faith Blog that I write with a few other young pastors in town. I wanted to re-post it here to see what you all think of this topic.
Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below. Take a look:
Wow. Talk about a mind-blowing experience.
I spent the last few weeks in class at Bethel Seminary learning about God and the sub-atomic world. Isaac Newton's Principia pretty much set the standard for modern science, but as people like Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr emerged onto the scene things began to change.
Einstein took us deeper into the realm of the atomic and sub-atomic levels. Simply put, Einstein (and many others) gave us eyes to see what goes on at the most minute level of existence.
The study of this is called quantum physics.
Quantum physics tells us that there are smaller pieces of existence than previously thought. Seems as though the protons, neutrons, and electrons that you and I learned about in science class are made up of even smaller parts called quarks. Quarks, by and large, are a mystery to scientists. They behave erratically and seem to change their make-up depending on whether they are being observed or not.
Did you catch that?
They change their "shape" depending on whether or not they are being watched. In some weird, mysterious way, the sub-atomic world has a sort of "self-awareness". That's some really freaky stuff.
What does this all have to do with faith? Read the words of physicist Stephen Hawking, "the odds against a universe like ours emerging out of something like the Big Bang are enormous. I think there are clearly religious implications."
As we delve further and further into the strands and fibers of the make-up of our universe, we become more and more vexed as to just how all this stuff works. The deeper we dive, the more questions we have. The deeper we dive, the more we see that things, in fact, are not an accident. The universe is calibrated with such intricacy, that to change the gravitational pull of the earth even one thousand million millionth would either send us hurling through space or smash us right into the sun. Fascinating.
I'll sum up this post with the words of Ian Barbour, "this fine tuning [of the universe] could be taken as an argument for the existence of a designer, perhaps a God with an interest in conscious life."
Peace to you on this Monday morning...
Justin
