Dale
November 12, 2022, 6:02am
24
Some notable excerpts:
The scientific explanation helps to expand our knowledge, for sure. But the scientific story is only one of the ways at getting at what is true. Our Christian faith also expands our view of the world and helps us find truth.
…verifiable data is only one interesting question.
…Part of being a scientist and being humble as a scientist is having the capacity for surprise. And so I think as much as the questioning and the self doubt is there, it’s also being open to looking at the data in a way that you might not expect.
…And so if you don’t have that ability, and you think that you know it all, and are not humble, it’s hard to progress forward and actually make interesting discoveries.
…it’s this team sport
We’ve been talking about humility within science. But the humility required for good science to be done and required by all of us who attempt to learn and understand the world using science, is the same humility that is taught to us by Jesus. Humility is a value that is shared between science and faith and the practice of intellectual humility can help to promote individual humility as well as the other way around.
I would say that through my work as a scientist and needing to be humble enough to recognize what I don’t know and always being open to being wrong and being surprised and needing the help of others to progress, also helps me in the Christian life be able to be open to being surprised by the Christian faith…
And you can still be surprised and grow and work through the community and make the world a much bigger and better place than if you kind of stayed within your preconceived notions and stayed within the box, of either what you think you can know through religion or science.
Earlier before that last bit came up I was thinking that some of the same kinds of things could be said of being surprised by God, and then was gratified to hear something similar and see it in print in the transcript. If we limit God to not being able to intervene at all or if we specify the ways that he must intervene before we believe in him, we certainly are not likely to be surprised! But we have seen multiple instances of delightful surprises, maybe not initially delightful in every case but certainly in retrospect!