Seeing Creation

Over the last couple of days I’ve seen postings on the internet with the following statement: “Stop fighting over who created the world and fight against the people who are destroying it.”  My first reaction to the saying was wholehearted agreement.  It made sense; what is important at this point is not arguments about the origin of things but doing what we can to preserve and protect the world.  Upon further reflection I’ve concluded that it’s not that simple.  The question of origins is very important and even affects how we do approach the environmental crises we currently face.  For me environmental ethics cannot be divorced from theology.

I’m not exactly sure who is “fighting over who created the world.”  I’ve been reading about an upcoming debate between a well-known creationist and television’s “Science Guy” but I’m not sure if that is what is being referred to.  Perhaps it’s not a specific reference at all but instead to the more general, and age old, “battle between science and religion.”  Personally I do not feel that there is a true battle between the two and agree with Martin Luther King, Jr.’s (whose birthday we honor tomorrow) summary statement: “Science investigates; religion interprets.  Science gives man knowledge which is power, religion gives man wisdom which is control.  Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary.”   Science can address how the world came to be; that is within its realm. Religion is not in a position to deal with the “how” of creation but it is able to delve into the questions of “why” and “by whom.” These are for me the far more important questions.

Martin Luther King noted that science deals mainly with facts and religion mainly with values.  It is my religion (Christianity) which leads me to believe that the world is good and that this goodness is derived from its divine origins.  Repeatedly throughout Genesis 1 God declares that the world is in and of itself “good.”  It is also my religion which causes me to believe that the world exists primarily for God’s glory, not ours.  These two core beliefs provide powerful reasons to work hard to protect the earth.  If the world was made by God then it is supremely valuable and deserves protection.  If God has declared it to be good then we must resist those forces which would diminish its goodness.   And if the world exists foremost for God’s glory, protecting and preserving it is perhaps our noblest calling.

Dr. King indicated that “science gives man knowledge which is power.”  This power has obviously been used for both good and evil.  At times science has given us what we need to make this a better world but at other times it has given us that which may very well destroy it.  That is why religion plays such an important role when it comes to the environment, it “gives man wisdom which is control.”  We desperately need this “wisdom” today; we desperately need this “control.”

In the end I’d love to see more dialogue (not “fighting”) between science and religion.  Both offer something the other side needs.  I’d also like to see religion (all faiths) working with science to find ways to help us protect and not destroy God’s Creation.  After all, as Martin Luther King reminded us, “The two are not rivals.  They are complementary.”  Working together there is hope, while failure to do so could be devastating.  My suggestion is let’s keep talking about the origin of the world and together do everything we can to prevent its destruction.

–Chuck

(I took the magnolia image at Pikeville, KY, the mountain removal picture near Hazard, KY, the mountain scene at North Cascades NP in Washington, and the bald eagles in Alaska.)

This past week there was a good bit of news coverage about Stephen Hawking’s new claim that “Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”  Hawking has apparently moved to the point where he sees no need to posit a Creator.

I certainly respect Hawking’s intelligence and contributions to science but when he makes such a claim I realize this is simply his opinion.  He can no more prove that God was not behind Creation any more than I, or anyone else, can prove that God was.  In the end, both conclusions are faith statements.  They are what we have come to believe based on our observations and experience.

Ironically, on the same day that news of Hawking’s statement broke I received in the mail a new book by William P. Brown called The Seven Pillars of Creation: The Bible, Science, and the Ecology of Wonder.   In this book Brown seeks to show how theology and science are not mutually exclusive and that both benefit from the other.  He recognizes that both disciplines “represent independent fields of inquiry” but that they also have “common points of interest.”  One common point of interest is wonder.

In the introduction to the book Brown writes: “Is science really hell-bent on eroding humanity’s nobility and eliminating all sense of mystery?  Not the science I know.  Is faith simply a lazy excuse to wallow in human pretension?  Not the faith I know.  What if invoking God was a way of acknowledging the remarkable intelligibility of creation?  What if science fostered a ‘radical openness to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be.’  The faith I know does not keep believers on a leash, preventing them from extending their knowledge of the world.  The science I know is not about eliminating mystery.  To the contrary, the experience of mystery ‘stands at the cradle of true art and true science,’ as Albert Einstein famously intoned.  ‘Whoever does not know it can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead.’”

I realize that many Christians today see science as the enemy but I concur with Brown that we need both theology and science.  I believe that he is on target when he says, “The God in whom ‘we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17:28) has all to do with the world in which we do indeed live and move and have our being.  The world subsists in God even as God remains present in the world.  It is, admittedly, a mystery.  But through science we become more literate in the mysteries of creation and, in turn, more trustworthy ‘stewards’ of those mysteries.”

Even though I disagree with the conclusion Stephen Hawking has come to, I’m glad that it has gotten people thinking once again about the relationship between science and religion.  In my humble opinion, when it comes to “seeing Creation” fully it will take both.

–Chuck

( I took the image of Mount McKinley and Wonder Lake shown above at Denali National Park in early September a number of years ago.)