From Chapter One, Likings and Loves for the Sub-Human.
Many people -- I am one myself -- would never, but for what nature does to us, have had any content to put into the words we must use in confessing our faith. Nature never taught me that there exists a God of glory and of infinite majesty. I had to learn that in order ways. But nature gave the word glory a meaning for me. I still do not know where else I could have found one. I do not see how the "fear" of God could have ever meant to me anything but the lowest prudential efforts to be safe, if I had not seen certain ominous ravines and unapproachable crags. And if nature had never awakened certain longings in me, huge areas of what I can now mean by the "love" of God would never, so far as I can see, have existed.
Of course, the fact that a Christian can use nature is not even the beginning of a proof that Christianity is true. Those suffering from Dark Gods can equally use her (I suppose) for their creed. That is precisely the point. Nature does not teach. A true philosophy may sometimes validate an experience of nature; an experience of nature cannot validate a philosophy. Nature will not verify any theological or metaphysical proposition (or not in the manner we are now considering); she will help to show what it means.
What I'm getting from this is something like: science can't validate nor invalidate God, but God can validate science. (let science and nature be equivalent in that sentence)
ReplyDeleteSo when some people say that b/c there's such a low probability of the universe forming on its own, there must be a creator; are they going about it in the wrong direction? B/c by that thinking, they're using science to try to verify God.
(By the way, you don't have to answer that if you're busy). I personally think it goes both ways :P Or at least in the sense that learning more about science shows God's glory and how much detail he's put in every single thing, and learning about God is just darn awesome.