Glorious Morning My Precious Fellow Traveler!
We continue making excellent progress on the movie. I’ll be sending out more detailed, behind-the-scenes updates starting next week. So be sure to become a Paid Subscriber, if you aren’t one already.
Now to our main topic …
Science and religion each rely on reason and faith.
Being a scientist means I have faith in the scientific method and science’s worldview.
Being a Christian means I have faith in the Bible and Christianity’s worldview.
Many people ask: “But doesn’t science’s worldview clash with Christianity’s worldview??”
No, they don’t clash, they complement each other. Together, they provide us with a reliable picture of reality as a whole, both physical and spiritual.
Put another way: Science helps us understand the physical cosmos; Christianity helps us understand the spiritual cosmos. Admittedly, both science and Christianity leave us wondering about many things; but I, for one, haven’t found anything else that better answers my jillion questions.
Here’s an example of what I’m saying.
Science focuses on explaining our physical being - our body and brain. These are the parts of us we can see, touch, and measure using devices such as X-rays and EEG machines.
Christianity focuses on explaining our spiritual being - our mind and spirit. These are the parts of us we cannot see, touch, or measure. We cannot see, touch, or measure thoughts and feelings.
Science - modern evolutionary biology - explains that we’re Darwinian animals struggling to survive in a ruthless, dog-eat-dog jungle.
Christianity - the Bible - explains that we’re Divine, autonomous creatures made in the image of God. Because of our autonomy, however, we’re free to make very bad choices.
Those two descriptions of us don’t clash, they complement each other.
Robert Louis Stevenson understood this truth perfectly when he wrote The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In horrifying detail, he depicts the contradictory behavior of our spectacularly unique Darwinian-Divine species.
This remarkable duality is at the root of all human hypocrisy. Put another way: What we call “hypocrisy” is really just an expression of our physical-spiritual, Darwinian-Divine natures.
No one exemplifies our split personality better than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - as brilliantly depicted in the movie Amadeus. If you haven’t already seen it, see it!
Darwinian Mozart is a crude, foul-mouthed womanizer. Divine Mozart is a musical genius, composing heavenly symphonies that make our spirits soar.
Finally, this.
When someone hurts us, our Darwinian selves are naturally outraged and want immediate revenge. If we can’t get that, we stew about it endlessly, consumed by anger, sadness, and depression. The only cure for this Darwinian malady is Divine forgiveness.
The hardest kind of Divine forgiveness is Divine self-forgiveness.
When I graduated from UCLA, my mom wanted me to attend a grad school close to home - Stanford, for example. In truth, Stanford and Cornell both had world-class high-energy physics programs, but I chose Cornell because I also looked forward to the adventure of going to a faraway place that was completely new to me.
When I found out that my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer - which my dad revealed to me on the phone on literally the first day I arrived in Ithaca! - I was crushed. More than that, I felt selfish and guilty for having chosen to be far from home - far from my dying Mom.
The opposite of forgiveness is condemnation.
For years - all through my 20s - I condemned myself for having “abandoned” my beloved mother. When I became a Christian, however, I learned about my Darwinian-Divine nature and the enormous problems it could and routinely did cause me. Above all, I learned that God was willing to forgive my imperfect choices, and that he wanted me to follow his lead by forgiving myself.
So I did.
At long last, I’m at peace with what happened back then.
At long last, I understand the true meaning of the old saying: “To err is human; to forgive, divine.”
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Thank you and God bless you.
Love,
I really like how you stated “physical cosmos” & “spiritual cosmos“. it makes sense to get those two realms as come together in each of us.