Should I be enjoying a documentary that teaches the big bang theory and evolution? I went to a conservative Bible school for crying out loud! I'm still active in my faith and in church so I'm not a "backslidden" Christian. Shouldn't I be offended by something like that? I was always taught that I should.
But I'm not offended. I see no need to be. Stephen Hawking and other astrophysicists I've read have been very courteous and respectful toward the concept of a god, and have always been respectful toward the God of the Bible.
They're following science. The process of science was designed to remove personal influence in the testing process. One of the main test of a hypothesis is that it has to be reproducible by other people. In other words, if it only works for one guy and no one else, then it's suspect. People should be able to produce the same results using the same equipment under the same circumstances.
Someone once explained it to me this way: Science is allowed to ask how something happened. It's not supposed to ask why?
Confused? Try this example:
How: A whip makes a cracking sound by focusing kinetic energy into a small tip which then moves faster than sound, creating a small sonic boom.
That's the process of how it works.
Why: My whip cracks because I watched Indiana Jones too many times as a kid (and as an adult) and I like to play with whips, particularly with multiple cracks.
That's the intent of why it cracks.
The process is true of all bullwhips that crack. How a bullwhip cracks is universal. Anyone can use a bullwhip under the same circumstances and cause the cracker to exceed the speed of sound.
The intent behind why I crack it is individual and unique.
So in other words, science questions and tests the process.
Science is not allowed to test the intent.
Now, let's take a classic example straight from my high school biology textbook: the giraffe. My textbook said that the giraffes grew taller in order to reach food that was not available to the competition. (I did go to public high school).
This sounds an awful lot like intent. If you have a giraffe that intends to grow taller to get better food, and passes that height on to it's children, you're dealing with Lamarckianism, which was debunked almost as soon as it was introduced.
That's not allowed in science. The scientific method can't test the intent of the giraffe, because intent is not reproducible.
Here's a statement about giraffes that would be acceptable to science regarding the process of tall giraffes: Some giraffes were taller than others - the short ones died out because they couldn't reach the food. Since the taller ones had an advantage, the tallest giraffes passed on their height to their offspring.
There's a good historical reason for regulating science: Back before the modern scientific method was accepted, there was no distinction between astronomy and astrology. Alchemy was still a high pursuit. Science was seen as a form of theology.
Thanks to the notorious DaVinci Code, everyone heard about the Fibonacci sequence. It goes like this: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc. It's really simple, you just add the two numbers next to each number to get the next one.
Now these numbers and their relationships to each other are all over the place in various different categories. They're in music (the pythagorean scale uses these as ratios for tuning), they're in faces (the "ideal" relationships represent the spacing and size of facial features), they are freakishly present in geometry, etc.
Seriously, just look up fibonacci numbers and the "golden ratio" (phi) derived from them and prepare to lose your grip on rational thinking for a few minutes.
Or you can start here:
http://www.goldennumber.net/
Architects, mathematicians and theologians all thought they found a "key" to understanding God. They found a pattern that crossed a lot of disciplines, and ascribed that pattern to the intent of God.
The pentagram (five-pointed star often associated with witchcraft) contains multiple examples of the golden ration in each arm of the star.
https://www.mathsisfun.com/geometry/pentagram.html
In fact, the pentagram was originally a religious symbol - it only got associated with witchcraft by intent. Basically, only authorized people were allowed to use it for religious services. When unauthorized people used it, they were accused of practicing religion without a license, also called witchcraft.
If you've ever wondered why people thought dueling to the death was an intelligent way to solve legal disputes then congratulations! You're more like me than you want to admit. The truth is that at the height of judicial dueling, the practice was permeated with mysticism. It was argued that the skill of dueling was an indicator of a person's harmony with Truth. So by default, whoever won was a true person.
The fencing manuals and teaching were as mystical as any kung-fu movie, it was just Roman Catholic based mysticism, instead of Buddhism or Confucianism.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2014/09/25/history_of_fencing_geometrical_images_of_sword_fighting_by_gerard_thibault.html
This came to a head with Galileo. His model of a solar system challenged the astrological and mystical beliefs of the "scientists" of his day as much as it challenged the authority of the Pope. When Galileo was eventually proven right, the whole scientific process had to be reexamined. The mysticism and religious aspects were removed, systems were put in place to remove intent from the process, and science was allowed to pursue what it found without fear of imprisonment from whoever was in charge of religion.
So science is not allowed to ask about the existence or intent of God. God's miracles, teaching, authority and nature are not within the realm of science. They are not repeatable, nor testable. In fact there is a lot of knowledge and belief that lies far outside the realm of science. To put it bluntly: Science will never prove nor disprove the existence of God. If it tries, then it's bad science.
Science has it's place. Where it fits into one's religious beliefs is a question for philosophy, and that's a subject of a whole other article.
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