When it’s dark, put the light on
Doing my research for God’s Cosmic Cookbook, the biggest ‘WOW moments’ came as I stumbled on more and more examples of universe fine-tuning… the natural laws and parameters that had to be exactly and precisely right for a universe to exist and produce life.
Did they make me religious????
No. My faith stems from personally encountering God and being overwhelmed by the love and joy that experience brought. I can’t explain what happened, but the God I’d read and heard about – Father, Son and Holy Spirit - suddenly stepped off the page and became as real any other personal relationship in my life.
So although science has now revealed many amazing examples of universe fine-tuning, some of them verging on the miraculous, (and some of which will be the subject of future blogs as promised!!), they didn’t make me a Christian. Without that personal encounter, I don’t suppose I’d have ever felt they ‘proved’ God’s existence, and I’m not sure any of us should ever expect them to. Nevertheless, as a scientist and a Christian, my experience is that my faith complements my science and, equally, that science gives me wonderful additional insight into my faith and the God I ‘met’.
Putting this another way, both the words of scripture and the perspective of God’s creation, as revealed by modern science, have given me a fuller understanding of something of nature and power and purposes of God; like two complementary lights illuminating the mystery of existence. For me at any rate, I know that this side of heaven, I’ll never do more than glimpse the glory and wonder of the God who loves me, but I’m glad of all the light I can get!
