Can Science Be an Invitation to Worship?
In some ways, the microscope and the telescope have played an indispensable role in shaping the scientific reductionism of our age. By magnifying what had previously seemed impossibly remote, these two devices greatly exaggerated our sense of mastery over the universe we inhabit. Certainly, this line of thought tends to bring into sharp focus a major source of distrust toward the hard sciences on the part of many believers—namely, the notion that they have displaced religion and made God an “unnecessary hypothesis.” From Bertrand Russell and Carl Sagan to Stephen Hawking and Neil Tyson Degrassi, plenty of celebrated public intellectuals have added their support for this claim. Hawking himself was confident that the scientific enterprise would one day yield the coveted “theory of everything.” In this sense, the temptation is not simply to rule God out as an unnecessary hypothesis. No, the great temptation is to try and occupy his throne—to usurp the creator.
Certainly, these are grave temptations, and no doubt modern science has a distinct tendency to aid and abet them. Still, this seems a rather odd way to greet the vast expansion of our horizons that the modern scientific enterprise has occasioned. What if we saw microscopes and telescopes not merely as goads to idolatry but instead as force multipliers for wonder? What if we viewed them not as scientific instruments alone, but also as instruments of worship? The psalmist proclaims, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and their expanse declares the work of his hands. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night reveals knowledge (1-2). Our technological advances have revolutionized our ability to see this divine “speech.” One recent example would be the astonishing images from the Webb telescope.[1] From the oceanic vastness of space to the minute intricacies on display in the microscopic realm, the glory of our Lord’s good world has never been more vivid.
Discovering Beauty on a Grand Scale
C.S. Lewis bristled at the thought of people calling his three sci-fi novels (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength) the “space trilogy.” (If that’s you, now you know better.) The reason for this is that the word space connotes emptiness and vacuity. There are two broad responses to the colossal scale of our universe: wonder and terror. Considering the vastness of space, a writer like H.P. Lovecraft produced a vision of “cosmic horror,” construing humanity as a feeble race marooned in a universe that was equal parts indifferent and hostile. In more recent years, the tagline for Ridley Scott’s 1979 film Alien captures this vision well: “In space no one can hear you scream.” The universe may be seething with malign entities and hostile forms of alien life, but in the end we are alone, our planet an infinitesimal speck in an unfathomably vast cosmos.
A direct challenge to this interpretation arrives in Out of the Silent Planet:
A nightmare, long engendered by the mythology that follows in the wake of science, was falling off him. He had read of “Space”: at the back of his thinking for years had lurked the dismal fancy of the black, cold vacuity, the utter deadness, which was supposed to separate the worlds. He had not known how much it affected him till now—now that the very name “Space” seemed a blasphemous libel for this empyrean ocean of radiance in which they swam.[2]
For Lewis, the vastness and breathtaking intricacy of the universe inspires wonder and reverence. The immensity of our cosmos constitutes an affront only if we overestimate ourselves. That is, if we try to play God, the vast cosmic landscape makes a mockery of our feeble efforts. In this sense, something as grandly ambitious as the “golden record” on Voyager 1 and 2 that’s meant to function as an emblem of human achievement for the benefit of possible alien beings only brings to mind the celebrated final lines of Percy Byssche Shelley’s Ozymandias: “Nothing beside remains. Round the decay/Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare/The lone and level sands stretch far away.”[3] Here, we might say, “The lone stars stretch far away.” But if Christ is indeed on His throne, the boundless majesty of our universe inspires not fear and alienation but wonder and worship.
Finding Beauty in a Grain of Sand
Time to bring in another Romantic poet. William Blake opens Auguries of Innocence with an exhortation to “see a World in a Grain of Sand.”[4] This evocative phrase serves as a fitting metaphor for the abounding richness and complexity of the microscopic realm. Thanks to the increasing sophistication of our microscopic technology, we are now in a position to not only affirm Blake’s insight, but to actually see the “world” in a grain of sand. For that matter, we are able to glimpse many “worlds,” each containing minute expanses invisible to most people down the ages. Our Lord has seen fit to reveal these marvels for such a time as this.
When the sciences are understood as tools for exploring the intricacies of the natural world, whether on the macro or the micro scale, it becomes clear that they need not threaten Christian faith. Far from it, by illuminating the microscopic and macroscopic realms, they can help us to proclaim the exuberance of God’s created order. Seen in this light, the distrust Christians sometimes feel toward the sciences is properly directed at scientism—not science. Whereas the scientific enterprise is a powerful tool for exploring and understanding the world around us, scientism is a worldview that’s dogmatically committed to the notion that science explains everything. Ironically, the statement “science explains everything” is not itself scientific. Indeed, how would one verify it scientifically? The more sensible view is that science acts as a force multiplier for our sense of wonder at God’s good world.
[1] Available online: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/multimedia/images/
[2] C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (New York: Scribner, 2003), 34.
[3] Available online: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias. You can read about the contents and the vision behind the “Golden Record” here: https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/whats-on-the-record/
[4] Available online: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43650/auguries-of-innocence
Photo Credit: Image created using DALL.E 2024 AI technology and subsequently edited and reviewed by our editorial team.
Kenneth Boa equips people to love well (being), learn well (knowing), and live well (doing). He is a writer, teacher, speaker, and mentor and is the President of Reflections Ministries, The Museum of Created Beauty, and Trinity House Publishers.
Publications by Dr. Boa include Conformed to His Image, Handbook to Prayer, Handbook to Leadership, Faith Has Its Reasons, Rewriting Your Broken Story, Life in the Presence of God, Leverage, and Recalibrate Your Life.
Dr. Boa holds a B.S. from Case Institute of Technology, a Th.M. from Dallas Theological Seminary, a Ph.D. from New York University, and a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford in England.
