Saturday, March 25, 2006
Ah - The Problem
Last Saturday, I noted that a British cosmologist had been given a prestegious proze in science and wondered what that said about faith, particularly the Anglican variety, as much as science. The cosomologist, John Barrow, had an op-ed published in the London Telegraph that sort of makes my point for me.
He is also right in saying that our religious perception of the universe is dim, with one exception - we have incredible revelation in Christ Himself. Our faith is not built on our understanding, it is built on our Lord. An intellectual understanding of Christianity and its worldview will always be incomplete, but Christ Himself is wholly sufficient.
Related Tags: faith, science, naturalism, understanding, Lord, John Darrow
And curiously, our greatest uncertainties all relate to the local problems of understanding ourselves - human societies, human behaviour, and human minds - all the things that really matter for human survival.Couple of points. The first that he is absolutlely right in saying that the greatest weakness in our understanding is in our behavioral studies. There is nothing like that image of God in us to screw up a good naturalisitc presumption.
In all the science we pursue we are used to seeing progress. Our first attempts to grasp the laws of nature are often incomplete. So, in our religious conceptions of the Universe, we also use approximations and analogies to have some grasp of ultimate things. They are not the whole truth but this does not stop them being a part of the truth: a shadow that is cast in a limiting situation of some simplicity.
Our scientific picture of the Universe has revealed how blinkered and conservative our outlook has often been, how self-serving our interim picture, how mundane our expectations, and how parochial our attempts to find or deny the links between scientific and religious approaches to the nature of the Universe.
He is also right in saying that our religious perception of the universe is dim, with one exception - we have incredible revelation in Christ Himself. Our faith is not built on our understanding, it is built on our Lord. An intellectual understanding of Christianity and its worldview will always be incomplete, but Christ Himself is wholly sufficient.
Related Tags: faith, science, naturalism, understanding, Lord, John Darrow
