This morning, I found this in an old journal of mine and I think it is apropos of my new blog. I should comment here that I think Carl Sagan was a good scientist and a good teacher of science. I learned a lot from Cosmos. My comment about him in the following piece simply referred to his not sticking to science.
Thanksgiving 1985
I received a book, These Were God’s People, A Bible History, which had a very apt remark concerning science which especially hit home with me because my father is a geophysicist and I grew up with science in the home constantly.
Historically, the initial reactions of the church, or at least part of it, has been either to condemn those who set forth new views and close the mind to further investigation or else to go into panic over the new discovery, feeling that everything will crumble if we are forced to change views that religious men have previously held. Neither of these reactions are to any avail, however, for they do not change the facts, if they are facts. (e.g. sixteenth and seventeenth centuries–the earth being the center of the universe)
It goes on to say we need to avoid a couple of pitfalls, one being
an anti-scientific attitude that treats scientists as enemies of the faith. The scientist is seeking the truth about the world, basing his conclusions on the best information available to him. This should also be the desire of every student of the Bible. If the Bible is a hoax and the universe is not dependent on God, condemning the scientist will not change matters. On the other hand, if God does rule over it as sovereign Lord, we need not be afraid of anything we may learn about it.
Last Wednesday (11-20-85), we video-taped a program on PBS The Creation of the Universe which I thought quite refreshing after the glut of Carl Sagan we have had the past several years… They said that, as unbelievable as it may sound, we can understand the universe’s operation back to one ten billionth of a second after the Big Bang but that the Bang itself is not comprehensible mathematically and that we would probably never solve that mystery; that the entire universe came from a piece smaller than a quark; that matter was created from void and that they are looking for an equation that governs all the forces of the universe (Unified Field Theory). Many believe it exists and want it to because of the simplicity and beauty of it. They even mentioned the ultimate essence as being God.
Several of the scientists interviewed stated that we were not here by mere chance, that everything was too well-ordered for that to be the case. I thought of the verse that says our God is a God of order. And when they said they could understand this order back to but not including the Big Bang, I thought of Revelation 4:11.
Worthy art Thou, our Lord and our God to receive glory and honor and power; for Thou didst create all things, and because of Thy will they existed, and were created.
