Leaps of "faith" in science

Stand to Reason has a blog entry worth reading. Here is an excerpt which is a quotation of Robert Jastrow speaking. He was an agnostic astronomer:

Theologians generally are delighted with the proof that the Universe had a beginning, but astronomers are curiously upset. Their reactions provide an interesting demonstration of the response of the scientific mind - supposedly a very objective mind - when evidence uncovered by science itself leads to a conflict with the articles of faith in our profession. It turns out that the scientist behaves the way the rest of us do when our beliefs are in conflict with the evidence. We become irritated, we pretend the conflict does not exist, or we paper it over with meaningless phrases.

There is a kind of religion in science...every effect must have its cause; there is no First Cause....This religious faith of the scientist is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces of circumstances we cannot discover. When that happens, the scientist has lost control. If he really examined the implications, he would be traumatized. As usual when faced with trauma, the mind reacts by ignoring the implications - in science this is know as "refusing to speculate" - or trivializing the origin of the world by calling it the Big Bang, as if the Universe were a firecracker.

For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.

Science Isn't All There Ever Was

What then was there before science, you ask? Prescience, or "foreknowledge." I came across this word for the first time in Martin Luther's "Bondage of the Will." Here's what the Bible says about God's foreknowledge in Romans 8:28-30 ....



"28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified."



Truly, there was (and is) prescience before mankind ever had the chance to embark upon science. How does that hit you? Can you handle the fact that God was knowing before there was even a material world (Eph. 1:4)? Can you handle the fact that science is not ultimate, even in the present? Rather, it is foreknowledge that is ultimate in the realm of knowledge - specifically, being foreknown by God. If He has given you faith to know He is real and to know He can take your sin away - you were and are and always will be foreknown by God's "prescience".