Building Puzzles with the Cosmos
If you have ever built a large puzzle, you will know it is possible to think that pieces fit together when they don’t, and you will also know it is possible to think that pieces don’t fit together when in fact they do.
Only upon the completion of the colossal work, can one gain complete comfort and certainty over the myriad of nuanced steps taken in the process; but the dogmatic puzzle-builder who refuses to take a humble re-look at a forced, ill-fitting puzzle piece will never experience this pleasure.
The celebrated astronomer and scientist Galileo Galilei saw the universe as a house with two windows, the first being the Book of Nature, and the second being the Book of Scripture. Just as Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece cannot be explained by Chemistry alone, so understanding how this incredible universe around us came into existence and became what it is today requires a ‘double-sided puzzle’ approach.
Oftentimes, the humble investigator needs to undo large patches of work to make true progress. This intellectual honesty is the epitome of real scientific, and faith-based, progress because science is not a destination, but a journey.
As Proverbs 25:2 says, “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter.” And in the words of Albert Einstein, “The more I learn, the more I realise how much I don't know.”
Now, to understand how the Scripture side of the puzzle gets built up, one needs to acknowledge first and foremost Galileo’s statement, ‘The Bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go.’
In other words, the primary purpose of the Bible is to show the historically verifiable record of how Jesus of Nazareth conquered the grave and can therefore legally acquit the sinful human, allowing them access to eternal life.
There is a symmetry to this of course - science shows the way the heavens go, not the way to go to heaven. The scientific study of the universe often leads us to a sense of awe for the Creator, and all the more so when we discover creation’s harmony with Scripture. If we are to study both sides of the puzzle with fairness and accuracy we must possess an attitude of intellectual humility.
For example, one could dogmatically see the 7 days of Genesis as 24-hour periods, of rotations of the earth about its axis relative to the sun. However, when one realises that the sun was created on day 4 in the Genesis account, and that from a general relativity perspective, calculation of a particular period of time can be a couple of seconds, or trillions of years depending on the frame of reference used, the arbitrariness of hankering on about this becomes obsolete.
Similarly, it was only a century ago that all self-respecting scientists held the view that the universe was static - no beginning and no end. In fact, even Albert Einstein worked some scientific trickery to ensure he didn’t come up with a theory that was continuously expanding so as to suit the period’s dogma - even though the result was an unstable model for the universe.
Deception is often subtle at first, and being wrong from time to time is part of the human condition; but as we can see from these two examples there are certain perils in approaching either the Book of Scripture or the Book of Nature with a narrow-minded view.
So, let us with open and enquiring minds consider the beauty of the double-sided puzzle and the Creator Who breathed it into existence.
See, for example:
1.https://ardalis.com/the-more-you-know-the-more-you-realize-you-dont-know/
2. A detailed discussion of the two Books may be found in “God and Galileo” by Block and Freeman, available on this link: https://www.amazon.com/God-Galileo-400-Year-Old-Teaches-Science/dp/1433562898