“Science is the slow revelation of God’s blueprint.”
(Bioshock Infinite, “God’s Blueprint,” Level: Fink Manufacturing, Date: April the 19th, 1908)”
― Hattie Gerst
The word of God, interpreted differently by different faiths.
I have never seen religion and science as disparate. I’ve always seen them as different sides of the same coin, different ways to see a similar truth. I grew up in a Catholic tradition where the Bible was not literally translated but instead viewed through the lens of history, tradition and the knowledge that men and women can sometimes be wrong, but that God is never wrong. So, while the moral, ethical and religious content of the Bible is nothing but correct (Jesus died on a cross to save all humanity from original sin), certain other, more metaphorical things might be… open to interpretation. For example: did God really create the world in seven days?
While biblical prophets and writers had the essential truths of salvation encased in the sacred Scriptures, in other ways they were woefully misinformed. They didn’t know about quantum theory or the reality of space travel, or even that the planet was round or that there was a planet; they knew only the truths of their time, so that’s how they interpreted God’s words and message. The author of Genesis only had the reference of the sun rising and setting over the hills of Galilee; modern authors, of course, know about the infinite darknesses of the space between stars. Must we keep God’s “days” as the ancient Judeans did? Might we be we limiting the God of quantum theory and sharks living in underwater volcanoes by saying that he created the world in seven sunups to sundowns?
Or however many sunups and sundowns might count on Tattooine?
Must science be presented as so disparate from faith? Can’t we wonder at the mysteries of the new dropleton found at the Large Hadron Collider and praise God for his unfathomable mystery?
I wonder: In the future, when people look back at us, in which ways will they shake their heads and mutter: “But — they didn’t know any better?”
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photo credit: My reward is with Me. via photopin (license)
photo credit: Sacred Heart via photopin (license)
