Within our culture, Christians are increasingly feeling that science and Christianity are at war, and we have to pick one side or the other. Starting the weekend of January 26-27, we kick off our new six week sermon series reconciling science and faith. We will dive deep into the fascinating relationship and tensions between the two, and see that, rather than being mortal enemies, they are actually complementary.
Join us on Saturday at 5 or Sunday at 9 or 11, and bring a friend!
This really is applicable to my work at a Science Museum. Thanks for taking time to have a sermon on this topic. 🙂 I’m very excited to listen to this sermon.
A priest and a physicist walk into a bar… and it’s the same guy
A perfect subtext to the series where we are discussing the the conflicts and compatibilities between faith and science. Many of we practicing scientists are also persons of strong spiritual faith, plus the more secular type.
The New Atheists are gunning for God. They are a big reason why 59% of the young Christians will abandon their faith because of their lack of logical reasoning for what they believe.
John Lennox wrote several books on this: ” Gunning for God: Why the New Atheists are Missing the Target” – ” God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?” – “God and Stephen Hawking: Whose Design Is It Anyway?”
John Lennox was a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford where Richard Dawkins was also.
Richard Dawkins vs John Lennox | The God Delusion Debate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zF5bPI92-5o Richard argues he can’t believe in a religion that lacks in reasoning. John agrees neither can he however all Christians are not like that, he being one, and his belief is based on reasoning including science.
Listening to this a think Richard is closer to the kingdom then many Christians. Why do I think this?
Another book: Michael Hardin “The Jesus Driven Life” would contend love wins and we’re all in. What? Well either wearing white robes or in the lake of fire. Huh?
From Greg Boyd: “For all who sense that there’s something profoundly off with the westernized Gospel they’ve been given ..and even more for all who don’t yet sense what’s wrong, The Jesus Driven Life is a ‘must read’!”
A priest and physicist walk into a bar. After a couple of drinks, the physicist confides to the priest, “Father, I have a neutrino that rarely reacts with normal matter.” “I’m sorry,” the priest replies, “But, I fear your neutrino just needs more mass.”
See you Sunday.
Reminds my of a similar joke:
The Higgs Boson and a Catholic priest walk into a bar.
The priest says what seems to be bothering you my son.
The Higgs Boson takes a deep breath and says father I’m thinking of leaving the church.
The priest replies son you can’t do that but the Higgs Boson says I’m having a real crisis of faith and I have to leave.
Father replies No Higgs me boy you don’t understand you can’t leave the church, without you how can we have Mass?
If I could geek out on a few points from the book “The Jesus Driven Life” the mirror neuron is the starting point of Rene Girard’s Mimetic Theory which take roots from Rupert Sheldrake Morphic Resonance and Fields, which really connect the dots of Walter Winks’ The Powers That Be Theology, and Eric R. Kandels’ 2000 Nobel Prize discoveries concerning signal transduction in the nervous system. Eric said that the back of the brain creates an image uses waves and casts it onto a projector. Eric, a materialist, says the next Nobel Prize will go to the person how can figure out what sees this image. Gerald Schroeder, an Orthodox Jewish physicist and teacher at College of Jewish Studies Jerusalem, commented it’s your spirit.
The point to be made is this:
If our minds are not just the activity of our brains, materialism, there is no need for them to be confined to the insides of our heads. Our minds are extended in every act of perception, reaching even as far as the stars. Vision involves a two-way process: the inward movement of light into the eyes and the outward projection of images. What we see around us is in our minds but not in our brains. Memory need not be stored in material traces inside brains, which are more like TV receivers than video recorders, tuning into influences from the past. When we look at something, in a sense, our mind touches it. This may help to explain the sense, mirror neurons, of being stared at.
From a Process Theology stand point God takes ALL the say-so’s of a plethora of spirits, principalities and powers, that includes us and creates ex nihilo, out of (nothing/the unseen), from atoms, the next now moment using the history of say-so’s from the past and then whispers, if we are listening, our best choices forward, not about the details he loves creativity, about others orientated thinking not self.
Here is what science has discovered and I will take some liberty to mesh some thinking from Michael Hardin “The Jesus Drive life”.
It appears that the enter universe is a tri-unity right down to three quarks in every proton or neutron, the only matter in the universe. We have a triune brain a triune heart and consider information is communicated across three space time continuums.
1st our next seven second (+/-) two now moment.
2nd the cell, forms two thousand proteins a second. A protein is a string of several hundred amino acids, and an amino acid is a molecule having twenty or so atoms organizing them into preselected strings, joining them together, checking to be certain each string is folded into specific shapes. Think, for each amino acid, RNA polymerase receiving a signal from some remote region and then searching for and opening just the correct spot on the three-billion-nucleotide-long helix of DNA, pulling complementary nucleotides from solution to produce mRNA that, when transported out of the nucleus, will find a ribosome that will decode it, pulling molecules of tRNA bearing just the right amino acid. And this is just the start of the each cells’ protein distribution facility plus there are a 100 trillion of them in you and me that connect forming lots of interesting stuff.
3rd at the quantum level God is very thorough so consider in the quantum space time continuum, where all the info is stored and entangled God takes 2 Peter 3:8 a thousand years, from that dimension, to put together our next seven second (+/-) two now moment. If you were there when Greg and Trip debated
Process Theology, Trip thought certain things were above our pay grade. Consider the possibility it’s others oriented thinking. Why?
Equate the reptilian brain amygdale and heart sympathetic nervous system, fear flight, to the body and Jesus who says 365 times in the bible, one for each day, Fear not.
Equate your mammalian hippocampus and heart parasympathetic nervous system, of stored procedures of thinking habits, to the soul and the Holy Spirit. Romans 7:15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. I agree with Mike and Walter that the Satan, accuser, is at war with the Paraclete inside your soul. Think of one of the functions of the Holy Spirit as a malware alert for stinking thinking. The brain left to its’ self has a self indulgent nature directing you through the left hemisphere resulting in limbic brain Platonic dualism (either/or) survival thinking.
However if you hold your thoughts captive, refrain from fearful or judgmental thinking, you will hear the whisper, from your heart brain afferent pathway, and operate via your right, others oriented, hemisphere neo cortex resulting in creative tri-nary (and) frontal lobe thinking.
Science would call this a higher power however this all ties well with the Mike is unpacking in the mission of Jesus except for one thing that has become a problem in Christianity. Science has no room for an angry higher power.
Mike contends God’s not angry at anyone, we are. Unlike the animal kingdom with its built in braking mechanism, (dominance/submission), humans, left to ourselves having mirror neurons, unconscious imitation/copy devices of each other’s desires, tend to escalate things out of proportion to retaliation leading to hostilities creating scapegoat mechanisms.
Being made in the image of God we are meant to imitate/copy God. Consider original sin was Adam imitating Eve’s desire rather than God’s and that started the Satan’s that dwell within us and creating a plethora of social, legal and cultural communities, in our terrestrial realm, and counterpart principalities and powers in the spiritual. In not hearing God’s whisper of others oriented love we instead imitate others and digress into survival mode. In our every now moments we enhance realms and this entire plethora is entangled, in a pacifist or revivalist direction.
There is a whole lot more to unpack but you will need to get the book!
References:
Walter Wink – Powers That Be Theology https://www.gurus.org/dougdeb/Courses/Jesus/Wink/Wink.pdf
Rupert Sheldrake – Morphic Resonance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtgLklXZo3U
Science Set Free https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sm9eMYSYDcA
Morphogenesis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bm8RrkIHgQ
The Extended Mind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnA8GUtXpXY
John Walton – Genesis through Ancient Eyes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR82a-iueWw
Dennis Venema & Scot McKnight: Adam & the Genome https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daZptMXLR0A
Rene Girard – Insights https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=298&v=BNkSBy5wWDk
http://www.dynamicsofgrowth.com/mythology-science/#tabs-2 under Consider the Cell – select 1st entry – Cell
http://www.dynamicsofgrowth.com/mythology-science/#tabs-4 also scroll down to In-depth Related Articles – select Consider the eye
Learning Quantum Physics http://www.dynamicsofgrowth.com/video-site-map/
Harvard Cell Animation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCx1B4INEmY
Heart brain afferent pathway https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-neural-communication-pathways-interacting-between-the-heart-and-the-brain-are_fig8_265168561 also http://www.dynamicsofgrowth.com/mythology-science/#tabs-8
Considering the triune heart/brain three layer information communication pathways several scriptures come to mind.
Proverbs 3:5-6 Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will guide your paths.
We are entangled with God in the spiritual realm.
John 4:20 I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.
We are also entangled with each other in both the spiritual and terrestrial realms. Mirror neurons imitate and discern who we follow.
Romans 12:2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world rivalistic discerning and imitating others, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Positive mimesis Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will.
Therefore:
Philippians 4:8 whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.