DO YOU RECOGNIZE THESE TWO IMAGES?
There is an obvious similarity between these two images. Many people will recognize the image on the left as a famous stained glass "Rose Window" hanging in a church. Very few will recognize the other image to the right of it. Ironically, that image is an even more compelling basis for believing in God.
Can a scientist reconcile faith in God? What if that scientist was one of the most credible and accomplished scientists in the world? What if that scientist started out as an atheist with no faith throughout his life?
Could such a scientist find God in any sort of scientific way? Could such a scientist find God with the help of another highly educated and intelligent atheist?
What if the scientist I am referring to based his conclusions on logic and evidence? What if this scientist came to his belief in God because it was the only plausible explanation for scientific facts?
The scenario I have posed is not hypothetical. It is a real story. If you have a hard time coming to faith, but wish you could, this story may be for you. But you would have to be a very intelligent scientific type to get through this story. If so, perhaps you recognize the image on the right. If you are an atheist, better yet.
By the way, the scientist I referred to is Francis S. Collins, the former director of the Human Genome Project. The other highly intelligent atheist who reached the same conclusion about God is C.H. Lewis.
Here is Collins simplest scientific explanation for God:
"God, who is not limited in space or time, created this universe 13.7 billion years ago with its parameters precisely tuned – that fine-tuning argument – to allow the development of complexity over long periods of time. That plan included the mechanism of evolution to create this marvelous diversity of living things on our planet and to include ourselves, human beings. Evolution, in the fullness of time, prepared these big-brained creatures, but that’s probably not all we are from the perspective of a believer.
God, in that case, having a house that’s now well-designed for it, gifted humanity with free will and with a soul. We could argue about what a soul actually means. And at that point, humans received this special status: made in God’s image, not in physical terms, but in spiritual and mental terms. We humans used our free will to disobey God – that’s what the story of the Garden of Eden is all about – leading to our realization of being in violation of that moral law. Thus we were estranged from God. For Christians like myself, Jesus is the solution to that estrangement."
Here Collins telling his story:
In a Dark Time
A poem by Theodore Roethke
In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood—
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.
What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks—is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.
A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is—
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.
Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.
