Wednesday Wonders

Many of us start our day with a familiar ritual: We sit down and open up our web browser to answer email. And most of us retrieve some news on the way; the highlights of world news are sprinkled across the screen in mini-features. Most usually the news editor highlights one as a headliner, a feature they believe will generate some interest.

So it was this week when the headline announced, “New Theory for Why We Exist.” I read down the article with some interest. It was actually a report on some recent developments in physics concerning matter and antimatter. Ok. I find that interesting. But the leap to “Why We Exist” represented the most glaring kind of overreaching.

 There is but one cosmos, one reality, and one life. Science observes and describes it, and develops theories based on repeated and substantial observation of phenomena. Science majors in “what,” “when,” and “how.” But what science cannot offer is the “why” of existence, something outside its purview. That is why the headline unintentionally misled its readers.

 First of all and for example, if one subscribes to the theory of the big bang, that fifteen billion years ago the present universe emerged from a singularity in time in space and has been expanding ever since, it is not possible to say a single thing about the state of things before that exact moment in time. Attempting to describe anything preceding the beginning of the point of origin would be mere conjecture.

Secondly, though science deduce generalities from observation, it can say nothing, either positive or negative, about religious claims to transcendence. Dawkins and the activist atheist crowd say too much; they speak beyond their ability to either confirm or deny religious truth claims that do pertain to the “why” of our existence. Religious knowledge, though gleaned in part from observation of the natural world and its reliance structures and forces, depends on other categories of knowing. Certain aspects of religious truth are revealed from sources beyond observation or measurement. No eye has seen nor ear heard the truth that is known because of and through the spirit of God.

When the young minds and hearts of our most recent baptismal class posed the question, “What was there before the creation? Was there a time when there was nothing? Who made God?” I do not answer as a scientist, because a scientist cannot answer such philosophical or theological queries. I can answer, rather, as a person of faith in theological categories: “Time is a human construction and God is eternal; God is, was and will be at the same time; what we know of God now holds the clue to both remembering and hoping. The purposeful power of God is driven by love for the created and unfolding world.”

That is the real theory for why we exist, but it is neither new nor described by physics. To get to the meaning side of things, the purpose side of things, the reason for existence side of things, we can travel just as well by a poem, or a psalm, or the groaning of the spirit as we stand wordless before the sheer beauty, wonder and mystery of it all.