In God are found all true things.
Every truth, whether spiritual or physical, flows from him.
It is by faith that we receive knowledge and there are countless ways we can use faith to gain truth in whatever we seek.
Prayer, meditation, and fasting are popular means. But science also is a form of faith.
Science?! But that has nothing to do with faith, you say.
Faith is a force, just like magnetism. Many animals, for instance, such as homing pigeons, use the earth's magnetism to find their way home. Animals use this magnetism to migrate year after year, generation after generation. We as children of God use faith to also navigate our way through life and find our way home. It is a sensation we experience in our core, and it leads us to truth. Faith helps us sense truth. It is a tangible force active in every living thing.
That is to say that faith is life. Because it is a force, it can have a measurable effect on the environment. This makes faith a subject that can and should be explored using the tools of science.
How often do we hear tales of prayer helping to turn a person's life around? A father's prayer for his daughter? or a church's prayer for a deathly ill member? I myself have seen countless, unexplainable miracles as a result of not just prayer, but dedicated communion with God. Seeking His will in my life and humbly following his guidance.
When we make an epic effort to bless the life of someone else, we see epic miracles.
Science itself is very much faith based. As an experimenter, you must have faith you designed the experiment, set the parameters, configured your controls, etc., all correctly. As a verifier repeating some else's experiment, you need much the same faith. As a consumer of science, your faith is with the experimenters' conclusions. This places the scientist in a roll previously occupied by a priest. And instead of worshiping in a cathedral, you bow your head in a planetarium. But you feel much the same awe at the face of Truth.
Consider that natural philosophy of the past preceded science and was the product of priestly inquiry.
The tools of science are useful for exploring the world around us. Science gives us an answer to "How?" for almost everything. But it will never be able to answer "Why?"
These two, How and Why are both valid and perhaps opposite sides of truth. The yin and the yang of the Universe. The Why of a question can be explored through meditation and prayer. God gives us the Holy Spirit to enlighten our souls. How we experience an answer or guidance has more to do with how we tune into the answer, rather than whether God answer. He is always willing to answer. He has a gift of knowledge or grace, waiting for us to grasp it. But we must make the effort.
Jesus taught, Ask and you shall receive. I think the point, though, is you receive his answer only when you tune your soul to his will. It's not necessarily a "get whatever you want regardless of the consequences" thing, like rubbing a lamp and making a foolish wish to a genie. Rather it is that you seek some worthy blessing in your life, and the Holy Spirit will reveal God's will for you in that thing and give you the peace to accept it.
If you seek truth about some point, whether it be the why of the trials in your life, or whether Eve made a good decision, or an understanding of relativity or spacetime or the Big Bang or quantum mechanics, God will reveal that truth to you through diligent study and inspiration. If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God who gives to all people generously and doesn't criticize, and it will be given to you. (See James 1:5)
Interestingly, the scriptures don't ever specify that you must only ask about religious topics. Even atheist scientists ask questions, and they receive truthful answers, inasmuch as they ask with faith they will receive. Even if they don't realize they ask God, as long as their souls inquire the Universe for truth, they will receive truth.
Because God is eternal truth from everlasting to everlasting, the All of Everything, the very soul of the Universe, no untrue thing can be found in him. Yet so many people have been deceived time and again, and many horrible things have been done in the name of religion. Why?
If we do not sincerely seek truth, but rather confirmation of our own beliefs, we can be easily led astray. We put our will at odds with that of God. Like a being without wings jumping off a cliff and expecting to fly. The first successful aeroplane designers first studied the curves of birds' wings and extrapolated to something useful to humans. They studied and hypothesized and discovered how flight actually must work . They followed scientific laws and made wings for themselves.
Similarly, to find truth for our own lives, we must seek the truth that would actually work in our lives. What is God's actual will for us? I guarantee that those who participated in the Inquisition did not pray and seek God's will before they slaughtered whole societies. Or think in their souls, "What would Jesus do?"
Science is an expression of faith. This faith is not just in the scientist conducting the experiment and faith in the theory they are testing. It is faith in our ability to understand and appreciate their contribution. This relies on reproducibility of results.
We can't stand on the edge of a black hole, yet we believe they exist in the center of every galaxy.
This works well for things that are easily quantified, but what about that which is unquantifiable? Here is an experiment for you to try. Sit down with your scriptures, whatever denomination they may be, and ask for the Holy Spirit to abide with you while you read. Ask for a testimony of their truth.
This experiment has been tried millions of times around the world. To great success. Thus we see the experiment is reproducible.
Don't just focus on the scriptures you already believe in, read the holy writings of a completely different religion and try the experiment again. Seek truth wherever it may be found. Open your soul to truth. Read a scientific text about a topic you are unfamiliar with and ask for a verification of truth (not just for a confirmation of what you already believe). You will not come to believe everything that is written about every topic because not everything written is true, but you will come to sense how everything fits together. Not one group has a monopoly on truth, and truth seekers must look for truth wherever they, and it, may be.
Truth is everywhere, it is all around you. When you come to understand quantum mechanics, you will quickly realize the need for a conscious All Seeing Observer. Where this not the case, the initial wave function could not resolve to any given value. This is true whether you subscribe to MWI, Copenhagen, or de Broglie, interpretations. At some point, the effort to abstract God away simply becomes impossible.
Without conscious observation and direction, nothing is possible. You exist in the eyes of God and therefore you and everything, from the Big Bang to you at this moment, has happened. Faith is the force we use to explore and interact with the Universe, and how the Universe (or God) interacts back with us.
Images courtesy of
Waking Times
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