No Conflict Between Faith and Science

I value the sciences.

Science is useful and helps answer questions like what, when, and how? These are what I call mechanical questions, the answers to which allow us to understand the mechanics of our universe and what we might do to appreciate it, harness it usefully, and advance the condition of the world. Where would we be without science?

Science, of course, cannot answer questions like why and who as we look at our universe. These answers have to be revealed to us, which I believe they have been through the God Who first showed Himself to Israel and then to the whole world in Jesus Christ.

There is no conflict between Christian faith and the sciences. Science is incapable of telling us whether God exists or what He's like, although it may present us with tantalizing suggestions.

And God's Word, the Bible, cannot tell us the particulars of genetic engineering or the effects of solar flairs. It was never intended for that purpose.

But, in the Bible, we can learn about the One Who created the universe employing the very mechanics that science seeks to understand. And, it can give to us, when we trust in its message, what science cannot: life and peace with God that never ends.

I say, "God bless the sciences and all scientists, including the millions who are also Christians." May we be open to the facts science uncovers so that we may live more responsibly on the planet God gave to us.

And may all people be open to the truth revealed in Jesus Christ, as Jesus Himself tells it: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me" (John 14:6).

We need Jesus because even after you've answered the mechanical questions, only Jesus can guide us in using them responsibly, lovingly, and with an eye to justice.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Should the 2016 Rio Olympics Be Scrubbed?

A member of the medicine and law faculties of the University of Ottawa, writing for the Harvard Public Health Review, says the Rio Olympics should be "postponed, moved, or both, as a precautionary concession," giving five reasons.

1. "Rio de Janeiro is more affected by Zika than anyone expected, rendering earlier assumptions of safety obsolete."

Rio de Janeiro’s suspected Zika cases are the highest of any state in in Brazil (26,000), and its Zika incidence rate is the fourth worst (157 per 100,000). Or in other words: according to the Brazil’s official data, Rio is not on the fringes of the outbreak, but inside its heart.

2. "...although Zika virus was discovered nearly seventy years ago, the viral strain that recently entered Brazil is clearly new, different, and vastly more dangerous than 'old' Zika."

Phylogenetic mapping demonstrates that this particular virus arrived in Brazil from French Polynesia in 2013. Although the danger went unnoticed in French Polynesia at first, retrospective analyses now show that the risk of microcephaly increased by 23 to 53 fold.

Later studies from Brazil now powerfully argue that the relationship is truly causal.

3. "...while Brazil’s Zika inevitably will spread globally — given enough time, viruses always do — it helps nobody to speed that up."

In particular, it cannot possibly help when an estimated 500,000 foreign tourists flock into Rio for the Games, potentially becoming infected, and returning to their homes where both local Aedes mosquitoes and sexual transmission can establish new outbreaks.

4. "...when (not if) the Games speed up Zika’s spread, the already-urgent job of inventing new technologies to stop it becomes harder."

5. "...proceeding with the Games violates what the Olympics stand for."

The International Olympic Committee writes that “Olympism seeks to create … social responsibility and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles”.  But how socially responsible or ethical is it to spread disease?  Sports fans who are wealthy enough to visit Rio’s Games choose Zika’s risks for themselves, but when some of them return home infected, their fellow citizens bear the risk too—meaning that the upside is for the elite, but the downside is for the masses.

In the build-up to the games, we hear all manner of assurances about the healthfulness and safety of the Rio venues. (Although I don't think I'd want to participate in any of the water events.) But Attaran's points raise a whole added dimension of concern over the advisability of Rio as a venue for the Olympics and Paralympics.

But big money--both that spent, committed, and anticipated--will likely leave these concerns, warranted or not, unheeded and not discussed.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]

Heisenberg, God, Atheism, and Openness to Faith

My son shared this today over on Facebook.

Heisenberg's experience was exactly my experience, though I certainly never delved into science as deeply as he did, obviously.

I became an atheist in my early teens, when I first began to really learn about science. But after I learned more and recognized that knowing about the universe didn't mean a person understood the universe, I became more open to faith in God.

Science answers useful questions like what, when, and how.

But it is God who must reveal the answers to the most important questions about our universe: who and why? This He does in Christ and in His Word, the Bible.

Faith isn't contrary to reason. But you cannot reason your way to God from the data in the observable universe. You can't say, "There's a tree. I know how it works. Therefore, there is no God."

Nonetheless, the awe that looking at the universe and its elegant mechanics revealed by science's questions left me open and willing to believe in the God revealed in Christ.

God creates faith in Christ in the lives of those who are willing to believe, but belief in the God we cannot see is a miracle of grace. Faith is God's gift to the willing.

It's a miracle that, with what I know about life and death and the world, I nonetheless believe in God and trust God in the flesh, Jesus, to be my Savior and that the life He gives to forgiven sinners like me beyond the grave, gives me confidence to live today.

1 Corinthians 12:3 says: "...no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, 'Jesus be cursed,' and no one can say, 'Jesus is Lord,' except by the Holy Spirit." God's Holy Spirit takes our willingness to believe each day and turns it into faith.

And Hebrews 11:3 says: "By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible." When you know the God made plain in Jesus, your awe of the mechanics of the universe uncovered by scientific discovery only increases, as does your appreciation of God's grace.

Ancient King David understood how the more one observes the universe, the more opened up to God we become. David wrote: "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands" (Psalm 19:1). Amen

Is confirmation that Einstein was right about gravitational waves a big deal?

A very big deal per this beautifully done video from the New York Times:


Read David Overbye's excellent report on the detection of gravitational waves here.

Are first-borns smarter?

I always told my siblings I was smarter than them. The study mentioned here claims it's possibly true, that there's a 1.5-point decline in IQ with succeeding each child in a family. In honesty though, I told my daughter, who sent the link for this article to me earlier today, that I'm skeptical of the findings. (By the way, she sent the link to me because she found the article "funny." She's the second child.)

Message in a bottle, yeah

A German woman, Marianne Winkler, on holiday at the German North Sea island of Amrum, has found a message in a bottle.

It came from a marine biologist in Plymouth, England who set that bottle and over a thousand more of them into the North Sea sometime between 1904 and 1906. The researcher, George Parker Bidder, was trying to learn more about "deep sea currents."

Bidder's reward for those who broke the bottles, retrieved the messages they contained, and notified him at the Marine Biological Association of the retrievals, was a shilling. The shilling basically went away in the UK in 1968, then definitively in 1971. But the association was true to Bidder's promise. According to the smithsonianmag.com, "the association found an old one for sale online" and forwarded it to Winkler.

Read the whole thing.

Once in a blue moon...like on July 31

We have a "blue moon" tonight. Thanks to Howard Wilkinson for sharing this. The moon was beautiful last night.

Does Science Point to the Existence of God?

Carl Sagan, the entertaining popularizer of science and creator of the original Cosmos television series, once said that there were two conditions for the existence of life forms and with that proclamation, confidently predicted that we would eventually find more life in the universe. We might do just that.

But it turns out that Sagan was off wildly about the numbers of conditions needed for life. The two conditions he posited were:

...the right kind of star, and a planet the right distance from that star. Given the roughly octillion—1 followed by 27 zeros—planets in the universe, there should have been about septillion—1 followed by 24 zeros—planets capable of supporting life.

After decades of probing by science and the space program, it now appears that there are more than 200 factors identified as necessary for life to exist and, as a result, a shrinking number of candidates on which such conditions might exist.

But, Eric Metaxis says in article in The Wall Street Journal, there are even more mind-blowing results and implications from years of scientific inquiry:

The fine-tuning necessary for life to exist on a planet is nothing compared with the fine-tuning required for the universe to exist at all. For example, astrophysicists now know that the values of the four fundamental forces—gravity, the electromagnetic force, and the “strong” and “weak” nuclear forces—were determined less than one millionth of a second after the big bang. Alter any one value and the universe could not exist. For instance, if the ratio between the nuclear strong force and the electromagnetic force had been off by the tiniest fraction of the tiniest fraction—by even one part in 100,000,000,000,000,000—then no stars could have ever formed at all. Feel free to gulp.  

Multiply that single parameter by all the other necessary conditions, and the odds against the universe existing are so heart-stoppingly astronomical that the notion that it all “just happened” defies common sense. It would be like tossing a coin and having it come up heads 10 quintillion times in a row.

Science seems to be suggesting that the universe didn't just happen from some underived vacuum.

Read the whole thing.

7 Deadly Things

These seven things, which The Week has identified from scientific research reported in 2014, will either kill us or make us sick:

• Too much sugar
• Artificial sweeteners
• Smoking pot
• Being a pop star
• Playing football
• Having too little Vitamin D
• Being in an unhappy marriage

No surprises here, I suppose.

Read the whole thing. (It's short.)

Double Trouble

This made me smile. The Biblical story of Jacob and Esau struggling in the womb apparently isn't as far-fetched as some people might think. Twins really do struggle in the womb. This will not come as a surprise to the mothers of twins.

Amazing Video of Baby Yawning in the Womb!

"We already know that unborn babies can stretch and even hiccup in the womb," says a report from The Telegraph, "but new research from the University of Durham concludes that they can also yawn." This stunning video makes that point.

Read the entire Telegraph report here.

A plausible scientific explanation for the parting of the Red Sea?

This was interesting and it's certainly consistent with the Biblical witness that God, Who made the universe, not only sets aside laws of nature and physics to accomplish His ends (in miracles), but also works within them for those ends.

The Bible doesn't need to be "proven"; the functioning of the Holy Spirit in the lives of those who dare to believe in Christ is proof enough of the Biblical witness to the nature and will of God for believers. But this scientific paper will give everybody food for thought.

For background, you might want to read here.

Will spiking your egg nog eliminate the possibility of salmonella?

Actually, I've never had egg nog, spiked or otherwise. But the answer to the question above is maybe.



Too much of this spiked egg nog could cause other problems. So, a bit of advice, don't go on the road after consuming it. And only try this experiment at home.