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God and Science: There Is No Clash Between Them

This is my humble post that aims to express some little thoughts on two of the most highly regarded and debated subjects which absolutely play significant influence among mankind. I'm referring to God and science. Honestly, I don't have enough courage to discuss these things especially because these requires profound knowledge, certain degree of intelligence, and at the same time, higher level of spiritual maturity or many doses of Bible verses. Hence, I'd like to begin by simply acknowledging that my views are simply the reflections of the things I learned from my early stages of life, down from my years in school as a student, from my various roles in the society, from the way society has accepted me, and from my habit of getting information through the use of different media. In other words, I'd like to raise some practical points on how I presently recognize the link between God and science; and this is to say that God and science never clash with each other.

There is the world and the universe that become the cradle for us humans, for all other habitats, and also for all non-living things ever named by men. By simply using our major senses, we knew and we experienced lots of things that were either tangible or intangible. The environment around us constitutes both the things that are seen and unseen. How do these things begun? I, in no doubt believe that there is one great author of the whole universe, of other mystified heavenly bodies, of the living and the non-living things, of those seen and unseen, and of course that includes people like you and me. One key principle of how or why everything was taken into place is the basic system that only God has the original idea. The system of an atom, for example. Such basic system has its own purpose and absolutely coincide with another basic system, or probably with more basic systems at one or another span of time; and thus every activities of all these systems provide significant effect that can further result to a new object/specie or a different behavior among other system/systems. And of course, there also exists a larger system which actually constitutes several small or basic systems. With this larger system, it is also possible to produce even more larger system depending on what purpose the creator wants it to be. Obviously I can refer to various systems like the oxidation of compounds, the photosynthesis of plants, and the evaporation-condensation-sublimation-precipitation stages of the water cycle system.

Science, in this perspective, becomes the knowledge of God. In my own definition, it is I think the understanding of the properties and behavior of all the living and non-living matters, the tangible and intangible things, including those seen and unseen. Science provides the explanation of various processes ranging from its core functions, up to the complexities of co-existing processes. It also covers cause-and-effect relationships and all the possibilities of revealing "hidden knowledge" that leads to science's flexibilities so that new inventions can come out. Through science, man becomes co-creator of God. With my lowly opinion, out of my observations of the world around us, I think that God is continuously at work. Everything is changing out of the will of God. When I say that "God is at work" does not literally mean that way; but rather He lets man do things like bridges, cars, computers so that both earth and life stay in harmony with each other. Let me point out that science is not evil at all.

In the early history of mankind, humans fall into imperfection from its initial state of perfection. Seems to me that there is certain thought (malice) that cause humans to fall. As man begun to entertain a single unwholesome thought, most likely he/she does it. Then chain-reaction and another issue of cause-and-effect relationships took place. More unwholesome thoughts follow: greed, selfishness, envy, insecurity, pride and what have you? Yet, there is one idea that puzzles me here. Of course I personally have a great dependent on God and many times in my life I have had miracle experiences and various signs that He exists in my life. I owe God in wonders but I hope God will forgive me if I question why at that first moment of man's downfall, He allowed an incident that leads man to sin? Did He actually authored a mistaken system or subsystem that cause one man commit mistake too? Yes, I understand God gave man a free will to decide and so did the woman chose to stay nearer and nearer to the temptation. If I may have answer my own question, my answer would be: God indeed is mysterious and probably those were (and also there are) the times that God provided a gap between man and Himself; to humble ourselves, to seek Him and draw near to Him in man's ways.

Since the time that God put down His curse to the offenders, the world then was put into struggle; but He is actually within our premises, who guides, teaches, helps, comforts, and provides omnipresently. His knowledge is so huge that he slowly reveals to mankind through science. Technology, the product of science has been part of any of the world's system already. Technology is neither good nor bad. To what way it is being used that surely destroys nature. It's the people's mindset that must be properly taken care of (or cured) especially when the world is already aware of the negative consequences occurring in using technology. Something must be resolved or a new alternative must be discovered, and still science has to do with it!

On the other hand, I see that negative consequences as well as somebody's mistake provide balance to another system/person/habitat/things. In practical lives, we learn from these and we get cautious because we once made mistake already or somebody has hurt us that left impact to our lives. Another way to view adverse effect, it provides intensive approach to the same system because feedbacks can be gathered and analyzed resulting to redesign of the existing system. It follows an input-process-feedback cycle until the desired output is achieved. That's why I see that in this current lifetime of ours, both nature and technology are meant to exists for man to utilize and enhance. But man must take the responsibility to preserve part of nature or grow more of it for human consumption.

The current lifetime that we have today are still imperfect. Man and God are hand-in-hand at work to go with the process leading to a one point of lifetime known as the eternity. Before peacefulness or eternal life can happen, several struggles has to occur first because probably mankind has already enjoyed a lot selfishly, abused the environment, or broke many human spirits; but along with this struggles, something is happening to those who choose to be at the side of the ultimate Creator. Hence struggle, paralleled with transformation is the way to a life that God has promised.

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