Science and Faith: Compatible Universal Law?Essay title: Science and Faith: Compatible Universal Law?Science and Faith: Compatible Universal Law?In my travels and readings I have encountered many other cultures. Frequently these cultures have different belief systems than my own. Sometimes I agree with sometimes I don’t, but always I try to respect other Faiths without prejudice. In the Arab culture there is a saying , “It is written.” This implies that our lives are in the Hand of God. In the movie Lawrence of Arabia, Peter O’toole, playing Lawrence, famously Says, “nothing is written!”, implying that our lives are our own. This is the essence of what I would like to discuss. Are our lives already written? Or are we writing them? And are these contradictory or compatible?
Determinism , according to Wikipidea is the philosophical proposition that event including human cognition, decision and action, is causally �determined” by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. Or in my words, the Universe is beautiful, majestic, harmonic. Naturals laws govern the Universe in a perfect order. Everything is cyclic in nature (similar to day and night, dream and awakening, life and death). The demonstration of this pattern , evolution, plays out in a circular and repetitive flood of predictable events. Seasons appear at the same times, animals give birth a specific times. There is a biologic, but scientific clock which runs the Universe. “Keith Devlin defines mathematics as “ the “science of patterns”. Then, what about things that have no pattern? “Patternlessness” is itself a pattern, in the same sense as formlessness is a form.”(Craigen)
But a question arises as to whether man is part of this harmonic system or whether he is an exception. If man is part of this ordered scientific system, why does seem so often to be chaotic, full of pain and distress?
In my paper I would like to examine the relationship between science, which is considered to be a system of facts, and Faith, which is considered to be a system of beliefs; and how these are related , and whether they are contradictory or compatible. I will rely heavily on my Christian Faith System to demonstrate that science and faith are compatible, and that man is part of a deterministic, predictable universe which includes both scientific and faith elements.
In the Maus books I was stunned to discover how providence was at work in Vladek life. Vladek was somehow destined to survive through a combination of deployment of multitude of talents and mysterious interventions which bordered on the supernatural. Here are some facts…the Priest read the number of life in his arm, the dream of the Parshas Truma day clarified to him by the Rabbi. Even the therapist, an Auschwitz survivor, stated “But it wasn’t the Best people who survived, nor the best ones die. It was RANDOM”. Vladek beneficiated a countless of lucks. I am caused to wonder by his life it maybe there a supernatural force at work. Are the events of his life, in opposition to the working of the Universe, or if his astonishing life is at one with this Universe, why are there also so many terrible difficulties which he faces, and which he faces, and which seem to be overcoming only by miracles or providence?
It is clear by now to the reader that these subject are not easy to talk about, much to write about. Nevertheless, they are not abstractions to me. In my own life, such questions and circumstances as those faced by Vladek have been as real as the turning of the season to me.
I have explored other faiths and also studied science. I have read about the life of the Muslim Prophet Mahomet. And though I stress that I respect other believes it is very difficult for me to reconcile some of the misogynistic practices which Mahomet professed and which apparently continue today. For example, “Mahomet , at the age of fifty-one, received a revelation from Allah informing him that Aishah would be his wife. Although the revealed bride was only six years old at the time…, the union was not consummated until Aishah was nine (Sahih Bukahri 7.62.64)“ (Caner 38)
So I will limit my discussion to my own discussion to my own Christian Faith. I am an evangelical Christian. I believe that God created man and gave him a perfect freedom. He did not make an automation, controlled by His will. Instead, man has perfect freedom of choice. He didn’t make an automation controlled by His will, instead, man has a perfect freedom of choice. If he choose to obey God he can. If he chose to rebel against God, he can that too. Man has in his possession a sovereignty by which he can exercise his volition. Unfortunately man has fallen, been defeated and his life has become confused. Man has lost the essence of God , which is consciousness. He has lost his spiritual faculty, living by his own will, plunging into darkness
The Bible is not perfect. If you read the New Testament, you will find a lot of things about the Bible that are untrue. In fact, we must not pretend to be completely perfect. The scriptures show that God created man and gives him a perfect freedom of choice, because of what he did and did it all to achieve God’s goals. And this freedom is not limited to man being in control over his destiny that is. There are those who are very willing to call for a full and accurate examination of a lot of material in order to bring the truth to light. God created man, and made sure that he was free, when he was young, to make the world what he wanted it to be. As we are learning in this important book of Scripture, we must take this question and answer it. Is it not clear that there is no limit to people’s freedom of choice? Can it be said that this freedom is infinite, as you would be in a situation when you were a child under an electric chair, being told that you are free to do whatever you want and to obey God, but that God wanted you to die as children and that in turn you were born of God? In a world where you would die as a child, which had unlimited and unendurable liberty or infinite freedom to choose who you would live with, what would your life experience be? What would life be like, if we gave in to God by our choice (see Exodus 25:17)?
The Bible defines a great idea in this respect : that God makes man free in every sense of the phrase: that man created man from a very weak and very immature animal. The idea of man is to be free in every means of life. No matter what other means are used for the creation of man, this would necessarily have to be the end game for the creation of man. The creation is not going to be a series of happy endings, but a full and complete process of change of consciousness, change of life. This is why there is no endgame. Man cannot be made free of evil, but must have the freedom to live his life the way he feels, in order to be free of evil.
I do not believe God wanted to put anyone in a very bad light when he created man. Why would He not have desired that there be more than one person in His creation? The problem is not how much man will learn from his experience. As we are reading in this book as to what happens when an individual becomes a slave unto God and no longer has freedom of choice but is now a slave at his own will, we are experiencing the most beautiful and most beautiful life imaginable. God is giving a new freedom to man in a new way, because of what His original creator designed. The next issue of this book is why people in today’s society are so ignorant of the Bible, as to