Creative Thinking and the Invisible and Eternal God

It's very late for a new post, but since I fell asleep on the couch while watching T.V. earlier this evening and then awoke a few hours later, I decided to read some email before closing my browser for the night.

One of my favorite Christian bloggers has a new essay up. I found it in my email box tonight and I encourage readers here to go check it out! Charlie at Another Think has written and excellent and thought-provoking essay entitled "An Uncertain Reality"

Brief excerpts:

The great scientific project at the dawn of the twentieth century was to expose the hidden mysteries of the atom.

[W]hat made this investigation remarkable, and maddening, was the inaccessibility of the systems they were trying to understand. Using only the crudest experimental devices combined with ingenious thought experiments and audacious hunches, these young scientists tested theories and conducted their research in the blind. To make matters worse, Werner Heisenberg theorized that the nature of atomic particles was such that they could never be measured or probed by any traditional methods, because the very act of observing them would change them in unpredictable ways.

His insight was roundly dismissed at first, but grudgingly came to be accepted and formalized as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

Quoting Bernice Eiduson again: "Creative thinking demands seeing things not seen previously... and taking risks by departing from reality."

Faced with an unknown and uncertain reality at the sub-atomic level, these scientists dared to depart from accepted conventions and imagined a world that broke the known rules, something the scientific establishment of the day did not quickly accept.

As I've been thinking about this remarkable scientific era, I have noticed similarities between the challenges and creative demands required to uncover the secrets of the atom, and the creative leaps and risks inherent in belief in the invisible and eternal God.

Read the entire essay HERE



I wrote a comment there, but must have copied the text in the spam preventing box wrong so I got an error message when I tried to post the comment!

*Sigh*

Anyway, here is a copy of the comment:

Hi Charlie,

What an excellent and fascinating essay! As usual, you make the connections that a non-believing scientist might want to ignore or even shun (because of purposeful disbelief in God), and turn it into a better explanation of reality because of your skill as a scientist utilizing your faith in the God of the universe, Jesus Christ!

What you have written triggered some thoughts I recently contemplated.

My 86 year old mom has often stated how wonderful the "discoverers" of prescription drugs are in sustaining and prolonging the lives of people who might have suffered more, and/or died at younger ages without the use of such drugs.

We know that many drugs can be used for good (and helpful) purposes - as well as for evil (and addictive) purposes.

I was thinking the other day that since we are always only "catching up to God" in the scientific realm of this life on earth, how awesome it might be to one day discover (in eternity) that we probably had the "tools" here on earth all along to cure any and every physical, mental, and emotional ailment? Yet, because of our fallen, sinful nature such discoveries had been made by scientists in a gradual and incomplete way? Hope those last two sentences made some sense!

One example. A relative of mine succumbed to Alzheimer's disease and her mind deteriorated at such a rapid pace back in the 80's because no drugs were yet created to halt the progression of that devastating disease. Today, there are drugs that considerably slow down the progression of the disease and patients often get to live close to normal lives for many, many more years than previously ever imagined. That's not a small or insignificant miracle!

Your entire essay displays the "wonders of the Lord" and I love your final paragraph:

So too with faith. God invites us not to abandon reason, but to give up our iron grip on what we think we know, what we think must be true. The Christian faith invites us to open our minds to the possibility of a different reality than we have ever imagined.

Beautiful!

God bless,
Christine

Hat Tip:

Another Think

Update:

Yay! Tried to post the comment two more times over at Another Think and the third try (currently in moderation) was the charm! ;-)