One of the most telling ideas of our modern times was summed up perfectly by the character of Lord Kelvin in the 2004 movie Around the World in 80 days when he insulted Phineas Fogg's idea of his journey around the world by saying; " everything worth discovering has already been discovered and there is no need for further progress. Of course Lord Kelvin didn't really say those exact words, he talked about a great many things concerning physics and space, what he actually said was: “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.”
But the initial quote used in the movie typifies common thinking among people of science now in that we are an arrogant people, thinking we know as much as God. Or worse, we don't even acknowledge a Creator but explain things just 'happened' in our universe and plants and animals just came to be.
But how then do you explain how Big Bang got started if not by a creator of some sort.
According to an article by Ker Than on 12/9/2019 on Live Science.com " Initially, the universe was permeated only by energy. Some of this energy congealed into particles, which assembled into light atoms like hydrogen and helium. These atoms clumped first into galaxies, then stars, inside whose fiery furnaces all the other elements were forged.
This is the generally agreed-upon picture of our universe's origins as depicted by scientists. It is a powerful model that explains many of the things scientists see when they look up in the sky, such as the remarkable smoothness of space-time on large scales and the even distribution of galaxies on opposite sides of the universe
But there are things about this story that make some scientists uneasy. For starters, the idea that the universe underwent a period of rapid inflation early in its history cannot be directly tested, and it relies on the existence of a mysterious form of energy in the universe's beginning that has long since disappeared.
"Inflation is an extremely powerful theory, and yet we still have no idea what caused inflation or whether it is even the correct theory, although it works extremely well," said Eric Agol, an astrophysicist at the University of Washington."
Hmm… so in other words, scientists still don't know how the energy got started. Nope they don't. But that doesn't keep us from trying to find out.
And that is all well and good until…well, it isn't. The problem with trying to push and probe ourselves in to figuring out everything and I mean, everything is it can take away from what we know.
What I mean is, if you base your faith on only what you know you are going to run into a dead end at some point because we cannot know everything. Sometime people lose their faith in God, in other people in life, because they cannot explain everything. There are just things in life you cannot explain. Why we fall in love with a certain person and not another, why we cannot see the wind that we feel, why the universe is so huge we cannot measure it. Lots of people get caught up trying to 'explain' these things and lose their perspective on life and other people.
Take it back to the story of Adam and Eve, which is a really good cautionary tale if you ask me. God created Adam, then He created Eve and told them they could enjoy everything in the garden except one little tree… Now God wasn't throwing out a curve ball here to trip up the first human couple. He was just saying in this world He had created there were gong to be some things that were off limits because we are human, not God and simply will not be able to understand it.
But you know how we humans react when someone says, 'don't touch that button!' Even when we know it's for our own good to leave something alone, some of us will do it anyway. And then we wonder what went wrong and why God didn't take care of us.
Accepting that we don't know everything, or may not be able to know everything is a grace. And it's one to be prayed for. If you love 'knowing' things and it drives you to sin to know everything, maybe you could pray for the grace to accept not knowing everything. I know people that spend lots of time trying to figure out the whys of something and it distracts them from the wonder and awe of just accepting.
You know how a child can look at a rainbow and just ooo and awe at it without asking how can it be? How can those colors be in the sky? Why does it arch? Why is it only after a rain? Sometimes we need to remember just the beauty and wonder of something without asking all the questions. Just let ourselves marvel at the beauty of creation.
Awe and wonder of God's creation and of God Himself is a Gift of the Holy Spirit. All of us who were baptized receive that gift and are boosted in it again when we are confirmed, but not all gifts come to the surface for us right away. So praying for the development of your gift of wonder and awe would be a start to help you if you always want to touch the hot stove. Pray to enjoy creation with wonder and awe and by all means see the discoveries we have made in the world and space, but don't let Big Bang or inflation theories trip you up. God also gives us the thirst for knowledge and that thirst is quenched when we include God in the equation. We can't leave Him out because He is the essential part of the equation.
Science + God = wonder, awe and beauty
