Tag Archives: science

“I am beautiful; I’m exceptional; and I’m powerful; all because love is inside me calling me to be a daughter of destiny.”

These lyrics from “Daughter of Destiny” on the latest Ginny Owens album sum up the views of many religions.

Who is the “you” in this famous passage of Psalm 139? Why, Apple computer, of course! No? Maybe it’s Google? Microsoft? OK, maybe the more appropriate question is who is “me”?

The late evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould coined the phrase “non-overlapping magisteria” in 1997 to convey the idea that science and religion essentially have nothing to say about each other; that religion can’t contribute to or detract from science and vice versa. Recent collaboration between psychologists and Buddhist monks, however, seem to indicate that Gould may have been wrong, and that perhaps religion can have something to say about science.

John Bunyan’s famous work "The Pilgrim’s Progress" pictures a man raking filth while an angel tries to crown him with eternal glory. The angel repeatedly calls him to “Look up,” but the man is so intent on muck that he doesn’t see the angel or the crown. Bunyan’s originally intended to impress upon his readers the hope of their salvation rather than the cares of this world, but the image has been reused many times since then, often referring to writers who work in the journalistic mud.

But what about the minds that made the cell phone? If a cell phone has billions of transistors, your brain has hundreds of billions of tiny neurons, many multiples more than the most complex computer has transistors. Each neuron has tens of thousands of complex interconnections.

On Feb. 15 an asteroid will pass by the earth in what is considered by NASA to be a close approach (see record setting asteroid flyby). There’s no danger of collision, and even if there was, it wouldn’t be the end of world. But what if it was? Or to put it another way, do you believe God would allow an asteroid to end it all?