Posted by
grad_1986 on Wednesday, April 27, 2011 7:54:46 PM
As an engineer who has had extensive math and science courses, I had often "hoped" that eventually science would come across something so bizzar that nothing could explain it except "creation". Everytime however I have been disappointed. Now don't get me wrong, I am not saying that science has a answer for everything. In fact, I believe science has often overlooked basic physics in its quest for answers and over sells itself to humanity. A simple example of this is as follows: if I take a ball and use a video camera to capture the last few hundreths of second before it strikes the ground, I can determine by playing back the video the velocity of the ball and the acceleration due to gravity using simple mathematics. However, looking at the film will NEVER tell me how long it took to hit the ground because I am missing 2 critical pieces of information: the height it started and the initial velocity. Both of these variables effect the total amount of time the ball was in the air. Physics is very good at predicting future events but very poor and determining past events. Because of this, physics cannot tell you with 100% certainty how the universe came into being, because we are missing important "initial conditions" that we will NEVER be able to determine. Science can ASSUME certain conditions but that is all. Therefore if science cannot tell me where the ball started at, it cannot tell me how the universe started either as it does not have the initial-conditions.
Another problem science must also wrestle with is "complexity". An example of this is as folllows: I can tell you with a very high level of certainty how long it will take a ball dropped from 64 feet to hit the ground (2 seconds). But science cannot tell you with any level of certainty how long it would take a feather to dropped from 64 feet will take as the other factors of drag, lift, rotation etc.. make it too complex of a problem to solve. Physics does have its limits to what it can achieve with high level of certainty. But of course what is taught in our classrooms and on our TV shows gives kids the wrong impression about science. They present an idea that science has all the answers to all the problems. (Its one reason I cannot watch the show "Numbers" because it gives a false impression that every problem can be solved with an equation or an algorithm but left out of the show is that the main character in the show has no way of determining all of variables in the equation without some serious guessing... yeah try to pass that in the court of law).
So what does this have to do with Big Bang and FREE WILL. Let me explain... God does not force ANYONE to believe in him. For him its a matter of FAITH that we come to him and surrender ourselves to him. In fact, he may have created this world using physical laws (that he of course created) so that if someone looked at the world could possibly see another way it all came into being rather than seeing God at work. He will not stop us from creating gods of our own imagination ( physics, math, chemistry, biology etc..) that we are will to put our "faith" into and bow down to in submission. In fact I believe if God created the whole world in 6 days and the world was indeed only a few thousand years old, that he would be ultimately taking away our free will to not believe in Him. Think about it. Science would look everywhere and see no dinosaur bones, no layers of sedimentary rock, no galaxies billions of miles away, no rocks dated to more than a few thousand years. Everything would point to Genesis being 100% correct and therefore we would have no choice but to believe there is a God who created it all. But God in his wisdom is not that controlling of us. He gives us the option to believe or not believe. Or I should really say to believe in God who loves us and desires us to be with him or to believe in a universe that is an accident of some strange interaction of a 11-dimensional M-brane that collided with another 11-diminensional M-brane causing our reality to come into existence (this is what they now believe happened and its all part of what they call M-theory or string-theory). Both views require "faith' but only one leads to eternal salvation and hope.
But what about Genesis and its "6 days" ?? I believe what God tells us in Genesis is what we need to know. I use this example. Imagine our 5 year old who has just seen his brand new baby brother or sister asks you that timeless question: "Where did I come from?" You don't want to lie and tell him the stork brought you. But at the same time is not ready for the whole story about the birds and the bees. So you tell him this: "A special love the only a mommy and a daddy can have was blessed by God and put you in mommy's belly". Did you lie? NO! You told him the truth in a way he understands and you have laid the ground work for that future conversation. The same goes for Genesis chapter 1. God told the Israelites what they needed to know. That he was involved in his creation. That he is a God of order and not chaos. The he loves them and wants them to be with him. He also communicates to them that they should be like him by working 6 days and resting on the 7th. He did not lie. I also believe God did infact "breath into us" and give us a soul (immortality). The choice however to believe in him or not is up to us. That is his gift of free will to us.