Billions and Billions

I’ve been a little frustrated lately.
I never liked science much in school. I survived freshman biology and senior physics in high school and I took the obligatory freshman biology class in college. I hated chemistry and I am not a fan of math – thus eliminating any fun with physics. Lately I have been making up for lost time. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading Brian Greene’s books The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos. I feel smart again after actually grasping the basics of general and special relativity, string theory and the whole bit. These brilliant men and women, from Newton to Sagan to Greene seem to speak (or at least write) as people of faith. By that I mean they speak of theories and ideas, things which they may not yet be able to test, but something they believe could be true. In all truth, reading these books is not much different from reading some of the great spiritual classics.
But…many of the great scientists are not people of faith, in the religious sense. There is, in my opinion, an atheistic revival. At the local Borders (which, as an aside, has the best religion section of all bookstores), there is now an atheist section; one that I do not believe was there a year ago. Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins have published popular books on the subject of the non-existence of God. I have read Hitchens, God is not Great and frankly, I was disappointed. In reading Carl Sagan’s The Varieties of Scientific Experience, again I was disappointed by their arguments. Hitchens is a brilliant man and he uses his rhetorical skill by building up straw man after straw man in “exposing” Christianity. Of course if you take the absolute most broken expressions of Christianity, you can present a case for the failings and destruction of faith. But that would be like taking my 7th grade English class as representing the entirety of world literature (Hitchens is a literature scholar). Sure, The Red Badge of Courage was a good book, but it is not all there is! Likewise, Sagan (whom I love to read) pleads with his readers to use their imagination and broaden their minds and then contrasts this with a limited view of faith and biblical interpretation. That would be like me writing a book on physics using nothing but my 8th grade Earth Science textbook (no offense, Mrs. Strom). Our universe is so vast and so complex and so amazing, we injure ourselves by limiting our imagination and curiosity. Our God is so vast and so complex and amazing that we injure ourselves by limiting our exposure, imagination, and search. I think we should always investigate and examine our faith and why we believe. But I firmly believe that general and special relativity and the expanding universe are not in conflict with the belief in God. In fact, I think they are perfectly compatible! Let's have the conversation! Let's engage each other - but let's do it by first trying to understand each other. I'll read Mach if you'll read Origen.