The Great Mystery: Science, God and the Human Quest for Meaning by McGrath Alister

The Great Mystery: Science, God and the Human Quest for Meaning by McGrath Alister

Author:McGrath, Alister [McGrath, Alister]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: John Murray Press
Published: 2017-05-03T16:00:00+00:00


What makes the theory of relativity so acceptable to physicists in spite of its going against the principle of simplicity is its great mathematical beauty. This is a quality which cannot be defined, any more than beauty in art can be defined, but which people who study mathematics usually have no difficulty in appreciating. The theory of relativity introduced mathematical beauty to an unprecedented extent into the description of Nature.33

Now an appreciation of the beauty of a theoretical representation of nature – such as a mathematical equation – neither requires faith in God, nor the absence of such a faith. It is neutral. Yet the framework of meaning which is provided by the Christian faith helps us understand how the beauty of such equations arises within and corresponds to the beauty of God. The great astronomer Johann Kepler (1571–1630), for example, argued that, since geometry had its origins in the mind of God, it was only to be expected that the created order would conform to its patterns. Since geometry is ‘part of the divine mind’, should we be surprised that it ‘provided God with the patterns for the creation of the world, and has been transferred to humanity with the image of God’?34

Yet perhaps it is the third point that is the most important. For the Christian, the natural world is embedded with signs pointing beyond itself to its creator. An appreciation of nature from a Christian perspective leads effortlessly and naturally to an appreciation of God as creator. This connection is, of course, entirely absent within an atheist framework of meaning. There is no transcendent domain to be signposted by the natural world.

For the Christian, however, the natural world bears the fingerprints of God. Our experience of delight evoked by the beauty of the world is only a hint of the greater delight evoked by the sight of God, who bestowed that beauty in the first place. To appreciate the beauty of nature is thus to anticipate an experience of the overwhelming loveliness of God. Where Dawkins suggests that Christians miss or impoverish the beauty of nature, the reverse is actually true. Christians are primed to discern that grandeur, knowing it will trigger off an exquisite longing to see God face to face.

It might be objected that this way of approaching nature is purely subjective. It has no objective reality in itself, open to rigorous scientific analysis. There is an obvious truth in this objection. Yet it misses a still greater truth: that the subjective world of experience matters profoundly to human beings, so that no philosophy or worldview that fails to engage with human subjectivity will ever secure the deep traction of commitment. As the philosopher Rudolf Carnap noted, a totally objective scientific account of things – such as Einstein’s theory of relativity – ‘cannot possibly satisfy our human needs’. What humans need to lead existentially satisfying and meaningful lives necessarily lies ‘outside of the realm of science’.35

Yet even this concern about subjectivity needs to be challenged. All mental frameworks are ‘subjective’ – no matter how well they are evidenced.



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.