Science and Theology

Science and Theology

Genesis 1:1-2:3

            You might call me a fence-sitter—but I’m not, really.  I just find it impossible to choose between science and God.  Let me explain.

            However carefully I read the first chapter of Genesis, I still can’t see why people argue over creation.  One camp says that the world and everything in it evolved slowly over millions of years.  The other camp says that can’t be right.  God created the world in seven (sorry, six) days, and that’s that.  In 144 hours the universe went from nothing to what we have today.  Science has to be wrong.

            Both camps see me and those who believe like me as enemies.  Nobody likes us because we find the truth somewhere in the middle.  Yes, the universe began with a big bang, and expanded outward from there—is still expanding if I’m correct.  Yes, it took millions of years for life to develop on this planet, and it evolved from simple forms into more complex forms.  Yes, life on earth is still evolving and will continue to do so.  Science is correct.  Evolution happened and is happening.  Every bit of scientific proof we have points inarguably in that direction.

            But how did it start?  What caused the Big Bang?  Was it an accident?  Did this huge release of energy—all the energy in creation—just happen to happen?  As far as I’m concerned, people who believe in an accidental beginning have more faith than I’ll ever have, even though (I believe) that faith is misplaced.

This is where, for me, God comes in.  Science tells us that the amount of energy and mass in the universe is a constant.  Energy is constantly being transformed into mass, and mass into energy, but the total of the two is always the same.  I once proposed that perhaps that total of mass and energy might be a partial definition of God.  While this is probably naïve from both a theological and scientific point of view, it may be a starting point for a discussion between the two camps—if that is possible.

Another piece of naiveté (perhaps) is accepting 2 Peter 3:8 at face value:  “But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”  But why not accept it at face value?  We believe God stands outside time, that God sees all time in a panorama; that what has happened, what is happening, and what will happen are, in one sense, all the same to God. 

Doesn’t that mean that God measures time differently from us?  We talk about events happening “in God’s time,” speaking of it in terms of human patience.  God takes the long view, we say, while our lives are limited to only a few short years.  Why couldn’t each “day” in Genesis 1 have taken several hundred, or several thousand, or several millions of years?  How can we measure time as God sees it?

            If that could be true, then why couldn’t God have chosen evolution as the means of creation?  The sequence of the creation story in Genesis 1 is roughly the same as what scientists tell us happened in the evolutionary process.  Why couldn’t God have chosen this method to bring creation into being?  What would have prevented God from doing that?

            You can understand why both camps see my way of thinking as the enemy.  I (and others like me) am not willing to choose sides in this debate.  Christians say that God is omniscient—all knowing.  Isn’t science (descended from the same root word) knowledge?  If God is omniscient, then science is a part of God—perhaps God revealing God’s self to humankind. 

            Who are we to say what God can and cannot do?