Has Science Killed God?

Science has beautifully converted many question marks into exclamation points, but it has never proposed anything about the ‘why’ part of nature. And yet, to complete the big picture, we cannot evade the ‘why’ part forever. Isn’t it, after all, life’s greatest question to ask why the universe has come to be?

The wonders of nature are beyond expression. They challenge our sense of what is real. What secrets do they hold? Black holes, for instance, are not even composed of matter but of warped space and time forming a singularity in which the laws of physics break down, and where even geometry no longer applies. Superstring theory and the study of quarks reveal that our notions of space need to be constantly revised to allow for the ever more microscopic levels of it that we discover, where the tiniest particles we now know of are as small compared to us as we are to the whole universe.

We use ourselves as the scale by which we measure what is large and small, because we humans live somewhere between two infinities: an infinitely large cosmos composed of infinitely small subatomic particles. And the more we discover, the more we realize the abyss of each extreme. Our glorious ascent has led us to the discovery of our insignificance in the cosmos. So, we now wonder: is the cosmos really that big or are we just that small? We can only speculate on how much more there is to the universe than what we know using our current technology. And this broadens the whole scheme of things: what is the nature of reality, and the reality of nature? We need to expand our thinking.

The very recent scientific realization that nature is multi-dimensional should awaken our intuitive sense to the fact that, if we hope to appreciate the really big picture, such as the existence of God, we will have to be open to realities that fly beyond experimental and even theoretical physics which, tomorrow, will have to revise their theories and start afresh.

We are attracted to the discovery of new lands, new worlds, and new insights because we are attracted to ideas like eternity and infinity. And there are within us more wonders than the ones we often seek outside of us. Our awareness of ourselves, for instance, along with our memories, can remain intact despite the fact that the composition of our cells and brain neurons is entirely different today from what it was when we were younger. So, our memories are not held together strictly by the neurons or their sub-components, because these are all different from those we had when we were young. So, what creates identity? Our consciousness is like a river that remains a river despite the fact that the body of water’s H₂O molecules flowing through it are never the same ones. The water is not the same, but the river is. Like consciousness, the figurative river is constant, and it eventually opens up to something much greater: the sea.

My point is that, rather than try to drown out current scientific thinking by denying them loudly with our hands over our ears, desperately clutching to faith so as not to be swept away by the torrential flood of scientific advancement, it is possible to embrace science entirely, including cosmology—lock, stock, and barrel, and still retain a strong faith because no science can ever explain God away. Science, in fact, increasingly points to a Creator for the reasons we have seen.

None of the newest cosmological discoveries argue against a Creator. On the contrary, they strongly point to God, and offer new ways to understand him as the author of the universe. As such they offer common ground for science and theology. When we follow the facts to where they lead, they lead us to God, and this is why I believe it is impossible for God not to exist.

We are all privileged to be living in such times of exponentially increasing knowledge and awareness provided by science in every aspect of our lives. This new awareness can help us all awaken, in ways our ancestors could never have imagined, to a more enlightened appreciation of what God’s love has masterminded. Science may well be a candle in the dark in a demon-haunted world, as scientist Carl Sagan once said, but God is the light of that candle.

The summit of Christ’s dialogue with the Samaritan woman (Jn 4:4–26) was the point at which she discovered that God is not behind the stars but within her. She realized she desired a spirit-to-Spirit communion through the inviolable freedom buried deep within her heart. It must have felt to her, in listening to Jesus this way, like a fountain of clear water (Jn 7:38) from an eternal source.

All this is so true and simple that to overly discuss it can only serve to complicate it. No one can enrich purity and simplicity with add-ons. That is why Jesus said God’s message was not revealed to the wise and the learned, but to “the little children.” They get it.

We overcomplicate things. God is best heard by the soul that stands before him totally barren, ignorant, empty and detached of all its senses, with eyes closed, in the absolute knowing that God is present.

In that great peace of God, we begin to realize what distance there is between our often complicated ignorance and his quiet wisdom. But we also sense his love for us as we are, even when we’re incapable of being the people we wish we were. There is only one love, it’s the love we feel for our loved ones, and the one God has for all his creatures. It’s the love we see in the heart of a child, simple and light, though God’s is to a degree we could never match in this lifetime. Maybe the reason we are mysteriously attracted to something as simple, yet so unnaturally profound as “love your enemies,” is because doing so is simply, well… divine.

Everything passes away. Everything passes away except God. If we can perceive this intuitively, if we can sense that nothing but God is stable, if we have a deep awareness that everything fades away, expires, dries out, and dissipates—everything, that is, except God, then we begin to sense the perfection and holiness of God.

This experience of God’s peace is unlike any other, and it is the surest support for our faith. Experience, as I have said earlier, and taught everywhere, is the best teacher. And this is experiential learning at its best because this unique form is provided by God. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid” (Jn 14:27).

Time with God is like a candlelight dinner during which he teaches us his own science, one that can only be understood with a tranquil heart. This is more than a mere self-centered search for well-being, or idleness. God will help us keep our minds attuned to the movement of his Spirit in the center of our being. This center is deeper than words, images, thoughts, and logic. It is inaccessible to sin or to anything other than the God of love.

The very desire to look for God means we have already found him. So, finding him does not require concentration exercises or attempts to elevate our spirits to higher ground. In drawing us to him, God comes down to our level, asking us only to allow him to do his work within us. In giving himself totally over to us, for all that this implies, God asks of us only a receptive, attentive, and welcoming attitude.

To acquire enough faith to desire spending time with God, we need at least just enough of it to ask for more of it, and to believe Jesus when he certified that it will be given once we ask.

Thankfully, any closeness to God depends in no way on any self-satisfaction with any virtues we might think we have. Otherwise, most of us would be too discouraged to even hope for that relation. To think ourselves worthy of God’s presence would only prove we had understood nothing about his message, and that we could not even see our own faults, perhaps starting with spiritual pride (“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” Mt 5:1-13). To make room for God in us, we need to move out of ourselves. 

Perhaps God needs to raise us as little children if we are to acquire true confidence in him. Those of us rendered so complex by life might benefit from being less preoccupied with scholarly thoughts on theology than with him and him alone. We would then rest our souls upon he who has given himself to us as Christ so that we could touch the divine through human means. We would drink that clear water of his which Jesus said would become rivers of light flowing from our hearts.

We are born with empty hands and will die with empty hands. Being aware of this helps us appreciate our dependence on God.

Love is both our origin and purpose. Don’t bother scanning the universe’s outer limits for its ultimate origin. We need to search our own hearts. Infinity is not “out there”; it’s “in here”; it is in the heart of all things; it’s in our own heart, here and now.

Creation is a love story. But every love story is the story of two, so creation is dependent on the free will and commitment of both parties: God’s yes is soliciting our yes, as in a marriage proposal. We humans are in equilibrium between the material universe from which we acquire our biological existence, and the spiritual world from which we receive the “overflow” of God’s divinity, qualifying us as spiritual beings also.

In order for us to even acquire the ability to reciprocate to God in a freely given “yes-because-I-love-you” response, creation had to eventually yield, as it did through our evolution, a freely thinking spirit such as ours. We humans, in other words, are at the meeting point between matter and spirit in a creation that tends toward spirit. But since our whole ideology and destiny hinge on whether we attach ourselves to either matter or spirit, we should choose wisely, for the only things of real value to us are what we cannot own. In fact, the only thing we will ever truly possess at all is our power to choose which of those two worlds we want to belong to because, once we have chosen, we will be possessed by it.

Absolute freedom, that summit of creation, is ours once we choose spirit (love and generosity) over matter (selfish biology). Until then, creation is incomplete in a sense, like an unfinished home designed for a loving couple but left cold, abandoned, and pointless upon their separation prior to moving in. All of creation, and its culmination, appear to have been intended for our eventual reciprocity to God’s love, a reciprocity manifested also in our love for each other. This reciprocity would complete the love loop back to God through the universe’s sighing return, through humankind, to its source: its Creator.

Our contribution to completing God’s creation cannot, of course, be imposed upon us. It is an invitation. And creation will remain incomplete for us until we achieve the only true freedom there can ever be: the one that originates from beyond our own, the one that awaits us at the moment of our absolute and unconditional yes to God. To refuse it is to miss out on what is essential because creation, the universe and all there is, makes no other sense than for life to achieve its full spiritual potential. And reaching that “spiritual potential” requires life to graduate, from our self-centered biology, to where we can see everyone within God and God within everyone, to love as God loves and to give as God gives by turning ourselves over to him. Saint Paul said it best when he said: “We know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” (Romans 8:22).

Trying to access truth and spirit any other way, based solely, for instance, on one’s experience of the physical world, would be like trying to access the sea from within a landlocked country. We have mostly overtaken, at least at this early point of our evolution, sheer animal instinct. But we are still nevertheless too often struggling to resolve our predicaments by sheer dialectic thinking, by rationality, and not yet sufficiently through kindness toward one another. Accessing the heart function and practicing the message of Christ—that is what would flash in upon our souls the fact of God; it would help cure us, socially and individually, of ourselves and accelerate our evolution, instead of being stuck in first gear. 

God, through it all, is right there with us in the thick and thin of it: in sickness and agony, in hospital rooms and prison cells, in war zones, in affliction, anguish, and desperation. He has never left us or ceased to give himself to us. He is total non-resistance in our hands: we can do with him as we wish. Hence the Cross.

Love, by definition, is necessarily submissive. But is not this vulnerability of Love—of God—the hallmark of his nobility? Deliberate fragility is anything but weakness. He has revealed to us his dependence upon our good will this way. Only a loving God would do that.