The Universe, Faith and Science.

The Universe, Faith and Science.

Ever since men were able to think, they have been wondering what this universe really is and how it came to be there. Where did the universe come from? How and why did it begin? Will it come to an end, and if so, how? And, very roughly, two views have been held. First, there is what is called the materialist view. People who take that view think that matter and space just happen to exist, and always have existed, nobody knows why; and that the matter, behaving in certain fixed ways, has just happened, by a sort of fluke, to produce creatures like ourselves who are able to think. By one chance in a millions something hit our sun and made it produce the planets; and by another millionth chance the chemicals necessary for life, and the right temperature, occurred on one of these planets, and so some of the matter on this earth came alive; and then, by a very long series of chances, the living creatures developed into things like us. The other view is the religious view. According to it, what is behind the universe is more like a mind than it is like anything else we know. That is to say, it is conscious, and has purposes, and prefers one thing to another. And on this view it made the universe, partly for purposes we do not know, but partly, at any rate, in order to produce creatures like itself-I mean, like itself to the extent of having minds. Please do not think that one of these views was held a long time ago and that the other has gradually taken its place. Wherever there have been thinking men both views turn up. And note this too. You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense.
You are asking, as all of us must. Who am I? Where am I? Whence do I go? Most of us go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing of the world around us, and what makes life possible. We may say that these are mediocre times, people are complacent, living their lives without hope beyond what they see. People have lost the ability to believe they are capable of more than meets the eye. John 14:12-14 Jesus was sent, and other people (saints) are being sent to show us we are much more capable than we can imagine. Real life doesn’t fit into little boxes that were drawn for it. The need for material satisfaction increases when people are not spiritually taking care of their souls. We can propose, for those of little or no faith, to experiment with faith. Nothing more than willingness is required to make a beginning. The experiment is in believing that God is or He isn’t. You leap one way or the other. “Either God is everything or else He is nothing. God either is or He isn’t.” What was our choice to be? John 7:17 experiment by following God’s known moral precepts as set forth in the Bible – believe that this action will bring faith in and a conscious contact with and substantial knowledge about God. Why not take advantage of all the tools that God is giving us to use. Do not let any prejudice or aversion you may have against spiritual terms deter you from honestly asking yourself what they mean to you. Some peoples wills to disbelieve is so powerful that apparently they prefer to go their entire lives without experimenting in faith, and die unwilling to try an open-minded and experimental quest for God. If we search and find nothing, we loose nothing. If we search and find God, we find everything.
The skeptic and the agnostic say it is impossible for us to find the answer to life. Many have tried and failed. But many more have put aside intellectual pride and have said to themselves: Who am I to say there is no God? Who am I to say there is no purpose in life? The atheist makes a declaration: “The world originated in a cipher and aimlessly rushes nowhere.” Others live for the moment and do not even think about why they are here or where they are going. They might as well be clams on the bottom of the ocean, protected by their hard shells of indifference. They are going nowhere and they do not care. Do I care where I am going? Unless we have the key of faith to unlock the meaning of life, we are lost. We do not choose faith because it is one way for us, but because it is the only way. For we cannot live victoriously without faith: we are at sea without a rudder or an anchor, drifting on the sea of life. Wayfarers without a home. Our souls are restless until they find rest in God. Without faith, our lives are a meaningless succession of unrelated happenings, without rhyme or reason. Have I come to faith? Am I willing to come to faith?
Christianity says, the universe started at some point in the not to distant past – it was necessary to have a first cause to explain the existence of the universe. Creation means for some to much divine intervention. This vast universe around us, including this wonderful earth on which we live, was once perhaps only a thought in the mind of God. The nearer the astronomers and the physicists get to the ultimate composition of all things, the nearer the universe approaches a mathematical formula, which is thought. The universe may be the thought of the Great Thinker. We must try to get guidance from the Divine Mind as to what His intention is for the world and what part we can have in carrying out that intention. We may consider the material world as the clay which the artist works with, to make of it something beautiful or ugly. God gives us gifts, two of which are His Spirit and the power of choice, man may choose life or death, good or evil, that which he shall choose shall be given and so by his choice he shall live. They can make something ugly or something beautiful out of the clay of their lives. Faith is a choice. On the danger of mankind forgetting its spiritual roots, whenever a civilization or society perishes, there is always one condition present. They forgot where they came from. GOD.
God could have started the universe anyway He liked – it appears He choose to make it evolve in a very regular way, according to certain laws. Science says the observable universe is a million, million, million, million miles across. Our own galaxy is only one of some hundred thousand million galaxies, it is about one hundred thousand light years across (light speed 186,000 miles per sec). We still yearn to know why we are here and where we came from. Science says that the universe is expanding, the further the galaxies are away from us the faster they are moving away, the distance between galaxies is growing all the time. Time has a beginning, this means Divine Intervention. The Catholic Church (1951) said that God could of used the Big Bang theory, and that it would be in accordance with Creation as in the Holy Bible.
Because the galaxies are moving away, there must have been a point of beginning, the universe had a beginning in time. How or why were the laws and the initial state of the universe chosen? The fact that gravity is always attractive (pulls towards it) implies that the universe must be either expanding or contracting. Either it is continuing to grow or it is coming to its end.
Einstein, never accepted that the universe was governed by chance, his feelings summed up were , “God does not play dice”. Thought to contemplate, Does the universe in fact have a beginning or an end? What are they like? Science = a set of laws decreed by God. The history of science realizes that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, they reflect a certain underlying order. We see the universe because we exist, if the universe had been different, we would not be here. If the electric charge of the electron had been only slightly different stars either would have been unable to burn hydrogen or helium, or else they would have exploded. One can take this as evidence of a Divine purpose. It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should of begun (in just this way, Big Bang model), except as the act of God who intended to create beings like us. Was it all just a lucky Chance? Suppose – God decided that the universe should finish up in a state of high order but that it didn’t matter what state it started in. Presumably He knew what He intended when He set it up! Attempts to explain the universe in the last 300 years discovered more and more regularities and laws governing it. Answer the question of why we and the universe bother to exist if there is no purpose for it or us? The fact is that God created us in His likeness and image to be His companions. We exist to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, all our minds and all our strength in this life so we will be better able to do so in the next life.
Saint Francis of Assissi taught us that it is in dieing that we are born into eternal life, and on his death bed he said “it (life) has only just only just begun”.