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Helping
to heal the rift between
Science and Religion
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An great rift formed between science and religion, when Galileo
glimpsed new truths, abandoned the Ptolemaic view of astronomy
for the Copernican, proclaimed his findings, and openly challenged
the inerrancy of Holy Scripture. For this, a
Roman Inquisition tried Galileo, threatened him with
torture, imprisonment and death, and forced him to "abjure,
curse and detest" his so-called "heretical"
works.
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| Following his death, Descartes and Newton
drew form Galileo's works and developed mathematical models of gravity,
motion and dynamics. Gauss, Farraday and Maxwell applied these
mathematics to electricity and magnetism and developed the modern
theory of electromagnetism. When applied, this mechanistic view
of nature led to the steady advance of modern machines and weaponry,
and led to revolutions and wars, Manifest Destiny, and
The Industrial Revolution. Technology advanced; did humankind? |
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The rift between science and religion widened,
when Charles Darwin returned from The Voyage of the Beagle
and published groundbreaking works in The Origin of Species
and The Descent of Man. Despite the compelling
observations underlying Darwin's works, no western religion
accepted his revelations. |
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Instead, many devout Christians rejected Darwin's revelations,
primarily because their own spiritual journeys and revelations had
given them an irresistable faith that God had inspired the Holy
Scriptures. These Christians accepted the Bible as a whole,
for the many truths it had imparted to them. They had witnessed
the amazing grace of this great book - grace that had redeemed their
lives and had helped to preserve their world. For these devout
Christians, Darwin's theories contradicted the great book's accounts
of Genesis, which had brought spiritual truths and enlightenment
to humankind for several millennia. Because of their experience
and faith, they resisted Darwin's lessons and questioned the motives
of science.
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However, what they didn't understand was that
the search for God sat at the heart of scientific inquiry. In
the details
of atomic structures, in the relative positions and motions
of galaxies, in the glowing fires within nebulous clouds, in
the periodicity of the elements, in the motions of the planets,
in the strata of
the canyons, in the fossils of the canyons' rocks, in the structures
of living cells, in the classification of flora and fauna, in
the anatomy of man, in the comparative anatomies of animals,
in the nucleotide sequences of the human genome, in the comparative
sequences of the world genome, scientists search for God's truths.
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And through this intense search, scientists
have found God: God the creator, God the designer, God the
inconceivably wise, God the inconceivably powerful. But
through science, they have never found God's presence, God's
grace and God's love. For the great rift has kept these
gifts from them, for these are the gifts of the Holy Scriptures.
These are the gifts that rescue us from life's despairs, restore
our souls from our sufferings, and raise us to see our place
in God's glory. These are the gifts that fill us with
the loving passion that propels Creation and help us to learn
to live in service to it and to shepherd it for a brief while,
so it may become all that God has hoped.
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The Metadynamics Ministry is dedicated to helping heal the
rift between science and religion, to helping scientists learn
to love the spiritual lessons of scripture, and to helping
devout Christians learn to love the glorious lessons of science.
In doing so, we hope to encourage people to love God,
to love all fellow human beings, and to love Creation, and
to let these loves guide their endeavors, first and foremost.
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If you can accept that spiritual truths lie within the words of
Holy Scripture, and if you can accept that spiritual truths lie
within our growing understanding of the known universe, then we
welcome you to share in the work of Metadynamics Ministry.
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Richard Malina
Founder, Metadynamics Ministry
rich.malina@gmail.com |
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