SOME OF THE SMARTEST PEOPLE I know of say they don’t believe in God.
These are people who would score doggone high on an IQ test.
They’re smarter than I am. They probably seldom use the word “doggone,” if ever.
But I’ve discovered that smart people don’t know everything.
Some of them don’t even have common sense.
And you know what I mean, because you know some of those people, too. Right?
Most of the people I know who say they don’t believe in God don’t really seem to care about otherworldly, spiritual things. It’s just not something they think about.
They say they believe in science: in what they can touch and see and smell. Things they can measure in a cup or blow up with a bomb.
I get it. I, too, wonder what’s up with this spiritual dimension and why it doesn’t seem to want to interact much with the physical dimension.
I mean, for heaven sake, we’re supposed to love Jesus more than we love ourselves because he died for us – but he has never even shaken my hand. I’ve never met the guy face-to-face. I’ve never seen him on the road to Damascus, or on State Route 64 as I’m headed to Bennett Spring State Park to arrest some trout for my freezer.
So I really do understand why smart people who love science ask this question, “So you seem like a reasonably smart person. Do you really believe that stuff?”
In response I want to ask, “Since you respect science, why is it easier to believe that creation just randomly happened instead of believing that creation has a Creator?”
What’s unscientific about a Creator? And what is scientific about creation just randomly, accidentally happening?
I have trouble building a simple coffee table, even when I have a plan and a YouTube how-to instructional video. I’m really supposed to believe that something as massive as the universe just popped up out of nowhere?
Jeepers.
I’m looking out my office window, while Buddy the Dog lies on the floor behind me and catches another nap. Lavender buds and green leaves are popping out on the redbud tree. Just beyond it, there’s an ash tree we keep treating every two years so the Emerald Ash Borer doesn’t kill it. The tree has big brown buds all over it. No green leaves yet. But they’re coming. And when they come, they will be beautiful.
I don’t have any trouble believing that Someone somewhere came up with the idea for a redbud tree and an ash tree. I’m not so sure about the Emerald Ash Borer, though. That one sounds like an idea from a Republican in heaven who thought it might be a good way to create jobs for tree service companies.
I respect science. And I respect people who trust in science. But if science and Christian faith are not compatible, I don’t yet understand why. To me they seem perfectly comfortable together.
I wonder if someday scientists will discover a gateway into the spiritual dimension and then realize that though it might not be something they can measure in a cup or blow up with a bomb that it’s every bit as real as the love they have for the person they go home to every night.
For more about creation
- NASA’s Creation story
- Why some read Creation as a poem
- A Visual Walk Through Genesis, coming in July
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Nobody has ever seen a black hole. What we see are the effects caused by a black hole, including things like light bending — therefore we believe black holes exists.
Which is sort of what faith is like to believers. We may not see God — but, if we open our eyes, we see the effects of our spiritual father every day.
Thanks Steve.
You’re right, we need eyes to see.
Even people with less than great intelligence can have doubts about faith. Like me. It is difficult at times to believe. I suspect God understands our occasional doubts. I also hope he has a good sense of humor and grades on the curve when my time arrives!
If someone doesn’t have at least occasional doubts, I suspect they may be either not particularly intelligent, or they have seen something of heaven with their own eyes.
The teensy little narrow bit that science doesn’t understand (and never will)… it’s simple. GOD. It’s a concept completely inconceivable by the “brilliance” of science. Nothing spontaneously forms from absolute and total nothing. It never has and never will. Theories cannot and do not usurp Laws. Newton’s Third Law states: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”. This is replicable and provable Law. If absolutely nothing existed to initiate an action, the formation of the universe as a reaction… never happened. While scientists cringe at the premise of admitting that there is a deity involved here… no other logic fits this question. You cannot have something from nothing. The theory of big bang itself proves that something had to be eternal, either mass energy or God, and as science teaches us, mass energy wears out…
Thanks Everton. You have more science in your head than I do. You also have my gratitude for the science lesson.
My question to you….is ..in this century,can you believe in GOD and not the BIBLE?….And still strive to be a Christian…!!!
Hi Steven.
What makes that a hard question is that the Bible is a library of books written in different genres by different writers with a variety of purposes. One Christian might take the book of Jonah as history while another takes it as more of a parable, intending to teach that God loves everyone, not just the Jews. Some would say that this “history” view is the only Christian view and that the “parable” view is that of someone who doesn’t believe in the Bible.
I would expect that there would be Christians who know very little about the Bible; I think missionaries could testify to that. But I sure wouldn’t want to try living the Christian life without a Bible.
It’s disheartening to see so many on opposing sides of the creation versus science debate promoting the false dichotomy that reason and faith can’t coexist. Unfortunately, some of the smart people you speak of fall into the trap of this all-or-nothing approach.
As the debate rages between the two sides, sincere theological questions go unanswered, which contributes to religious doubt, and religious doubt can lead some to experience a crisis of faith, and before you know it, the secular appeal of agnosticism and atheism are made to appear as reasonable options, while the body of Christ loses a member.
If you believe that all truth is God’s truth then science and Christianity are completely compatible, in my opinion