On God and Science

I was raised Roman Catholic. I got my first version of the bible when I was maybe six years old, a tiny paperback with little writing and a lot of colorful pictures which depicted maybe seven of the most important stories of the bible. Over the years, I was given various versions of these bibles for children, each getting more violent and having less pictures the older I got.

When I was 10, I started attending a Catholic school, was taught mostly by civilians, and had mass every Tuesday, first class in the morning. My art teacher was a priest who drew amazing abstract art, had a piercing and wore jeans and t-shirts. I read the entire bible during two years of incredible boredom during religion classes, after which I left the school, but if I had stayed, I would have learned about evolution and astrophysics and the big bang in my science classes – without stickers on the textbooks which claim it to be “only a theory”.

Religion was part of my childhood, and my mom’s guardian angels protected me from monsters in the closet and under the bed - I cannot remember ever being afraid of them. Praying consoled me when I was worried sick about something – that my parents would divorce, an important exam the next day, or that my grandparents could become ill and die.  

Yet, I am a geek. I have always been one, fascinated by science, the world around me. And my parents, being academics, have always supported me, buying me books and encouraging me to ask questions. I have never, as a child, really felt the conflict between religion and science, because in my family, both were allowed to co-exist. And my mother, who is quit religious and was the driving force in my family to educate me and my siblings religiously, calls creationism ridiculous and shakes her head at people who demand it to be taught in schools.

But it is not that easy for me. I am caught in a conflict between religion and science, my upbringing and an idea which has given me a feeling of safety as a child, and the reality of this world and science. I have difficultly employing this double-think mentality (not that there is anything wrong with it), and have been forced to admit that God has no place in science, not in the traditional way at least.

The origin of live - how living things, the first primitive cells, arose from a few acids – or the origin of the singularity which started the Big Bang, or even what caused this singularity to evolve into the Big Bang… A lot of people try to use these things to explain the existence of some intelligence, some kind of God - it’s the typical God of the Gaps. The practice to stuff God into every gap in science, to explain his existence with the things science can’t yet explain. I know what it is, this God of the Gaps and how it works, and I know that science will most likely find answers to these questions. To employ this God of the Gaps to justify my belief in God would again result in a double-think mentality, something I have enormous difficulties with.

But maybe the mistake here is to look for God in science and for science in God. Maybe God, religion, the supernatural, is just a human instinct, the desire to explain, the desire to seek comfort and safety in something which will always be there to rely upon. Maybe there is no need for God to exist, at least not in any physical way. Maybe it is just a concept that exists in our heads.

Or maybe, possibly, it is something else. Maybe God can be found in science. In the way everything fits together, like pieces of a big puzzle. How simple equations, a few letters and numbers, can be used to explain the behavior of particles, objects, light and sound, how patterns can be found in even the most chaotic places and things in this universe.

Maybe it is like Einstein once said: “I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.”  

Warning Labels for Evolution Textbook Stickers

From time to time, a new incident regarding the creationist stickers in biology textbooks appears in the news. I propose that instead of all the drama, we simply make this mandatory:

 

 Here's the actual sticker:

Warning Sticker by me. But please feel free to distribute it, or print it out and glue it on every creationist sticker you see. Just to be sure, of course. And to avoid excessive vomiting.

Science Fiction and Science

I’m going to be straight here. I love science fiction. Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate Universe, Doctor Who… I don’t know why, but I am hooked. And most of the time, I’m absolutely absorbed in a strange world where no man has gone before.

I have went without food, fresh air or sun light for the better part of a day on several occasions, because, dammit, I was going to- I had to- finish this season of Doctor Who or Star Trek in the next three days!

But sometimes, something just completely snaps me out of this hypnotized staring at a screen. 
Sounds in space, characters dodging lasers, explosions in space, aliens who have never encountered humans before, but speak perfect English, or FTL without even an attempt at explanation. One of these things, and BAM! my brain kicks in and screams "This is rubbish! This couldn’t possibly happen! This is not scientifically possible! Let's watch something else"

I used to try and defy my brain.

I used to lean back in my chair, hit pause, and glare at the screen. And then I’d try to come up with a reason why things in science fiction are the way they are.

And every single time, I’d fail. Because I just can’t come up with an explanation, no matter how much I twist it, that doesn’t cause my brain to call B.S.. I don’t know if that’s because the screenwriters have absolutely no idea of physics, or because I have too little idea of it to come up with some decent explanation.

But either way, I don’t try anymore. I have given up. I try to accept the errors, to tell my brain to shut up, to forget about these mistakes as soon as I’ve seen them flitter across the screen. I try to pretend that somehow, magically, it all makes sense.

But that's the point. That's what still drives me crazy when I see aliens that look just like humans, except with green skin or an enourmously bulged forehead, or when someone explodes in vacuum. It’s not magic that's supposed to make everything work in the science fiction universe, or is used to explain everything, but science. Hard, fast science and facts.

I don’t complain in the scientific errors in Harry Potter. I don’t complain that every second page, at least one fundamental law of physics is broken. I don't complain that it makes absolutely no sense that according to Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration, it is impossible to create food out of nothing, but that a simple spell can create birds out of thin air which could then, in turn, be killed, roasted and eaten.

No, I simply accept that this makes absolutely no sense. Because it is magic. It doesn’t have to make sense, and especially does not have to obey the laws of physics, because the magical world in which all these atrocities take place is not based upon science.

Science fiction, on the other hand, relies on science to explain almost everything that makes the story interesting – enemy robots, space travel, sonic screwdrivers and laser weapons.  And then it completely cocks it up.