My Search to Understand The Awesome Nature of God Lead Me to a Proof of God Proved by Science:

Even Secular Scientific Skeptics Can’t Deny This Proof

Introduction:  Far too often, I’d read and either mis-understood - or just didn’t “get” - the idea of the phrase Fear the Lord.  However, once I got studying on it, and asking for help in finding answers, I eeventually came to understand that the Fear of God actually means reverential trust and unreserved awe. 

“Fear” - that in-awe feeling you get when contemplating God's Holy Majesty - is the glimmering of our understanding, as mere mortals, of just how awesome God really is.

The term The Fear of God, as explained in Proverbs (9:10) and Psalms 111:10, is about wisdom.  “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.”

I came to understand that sense of awe, at least intellectually. However, I didn’t “feel” that awe - to me, it was a concept as remote as creation itself.   

I realized that, to really understand The Fear of the Lord, I was going to have to feel awe-struck by God’s majesty. And I desperately wanted to feel this awe, to Fear the Lord and, in doing so, find the beginnings of wisdom.

So, first, I prayed for a clear, unambiguous and “felt” understanding of God’s awesome nature.  Then, having asked for help, I went looking for that awesome nature of the God of Abraham and Moses, the God who sent his only Son to Earth as the perfect blood sacrifice for the sins of all who believe in him.  Including me.

Unexpectedly, I was led back to the beginning of everything – not by some passionate evangelical preacher, but by an extremely well-credentialed scientist writing about the geological origins of the planet earth.  That was the last place I'd have thought to look for that "awe," but God knew right where to lead me.

In the Beginning:  Follow with me as we go back just a bit farther than 13.7 billion years ago, believed by scientists to be “the beginning” of … well, everything. 

Now picture this.  Before “the beginning,” there was nothing.  Literally nothing.  Not even empty space.  Nothing existed.  Not an atom, not a photon, nothing at all.  Not even time. 

As someone grounded in matter, illuminated by light and whipsawed by the steady advance of time, it’s hard for me to imagine a “time” before time, a “time” when none of that existed.

However, God can imagine this.  After all, He was there.  Before He created all that is, the non-existence was:  “Without form and void,” as it says in Genesis 1:2 (KJV).

Then, in a blink of time too short to measure, “nothing” was gone forever.  In that blink, in a flash of light, “everything” was suddenly here. The universe – all of it.  Energy.  Matter.  Mass.  Empty space.  Even time. Created in a flash of light.

Time itself began at that instant. 

Where did all this "everything" come from?  Again, Christians know.

“And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”

More than thirteen billion years after that incredible instant, it is now possible for astrophysicists to imagine and describe the universe at the moment of creation.

More to the point, we can, too.  All we have to do look up into the sky on any dark, clear night.  The universe shines forth in incredible majesty. 

However, while we can see our glorious universe today, if we look back to that timeless nothing that didn’t exist (remember, nothing existed) before God said “Let there be light,” it’s hard for me – and, I suspect for any reasoning person – to really comprehend the absence of anything.

Scientists may be able to describe the conditions before the Big Bang with remarkable precision, but I’m not sure that even a genius like Stephen Hawking can really grasp … nothing.

Today, scientists have learned that to uncover the facts about anything in this physical universe, you must answer five simple, specific questions.

Who, what, when, where, why and how.

We can use those six questions to examine what scientists know, and what Christians believe, and perhaps draw some conclusions.

So how do these scientists stack up in their understanding of the sudden creation of the universe?

When it comes to the beginning of everything, scientists can describe in very specific detail “what” happened at the instant of creation.  And they believe they know, plus or minus a hundred-million years, “when” that instant of creation took place. They even know what happened in the nano-seconds after that spectacular instant, as creation started to unfold. 

Scientists also know approximately “where” the Big Bang took place – they are convinced that it remains at the center of our present universe, and that seems logical enough to me to "give it to them."  

But for all their supposed knowledge, these genius-grade scientists cannot explain “why” the Big Bang happened, or “how” it happened.  Or, for that matter, “who” created the singularity (a precise scientific term, explained below) that suddenly erupted into everything that is or ever will be.

Those are the three big questions about which the world’s best astrophysicists and other scientists can’t even offer creative guesses.  Some of those scientists, such as Dr. Robert Hazen, are actually brave enough, and have enough integrity, to admit that they not only don’t have answers, they don’t have clues … or even guesses.

But Christians know the answers to “why,” to “how” and – more important – to “who.”  Their answer can be found in John 1: 1-5 (NIV).  The “beloved disciple” made it clear that God spoke the universe into creation:  

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning. Through Him, all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made.   

In Him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Reluctantly, secular science agrees with scripture that before there was light, there was nothing – not even darkness.  There was nothing at all – not even the absence of something.

That nothingness is an intensely challenging concept. It is hard for scientists – or laymen – to honestly contemplate a nothingness that’s not even an empty, aching void.  However, despite their lack of answers, the challenge of conceiving of what “there” was – before there was anything – is not too great for some philosophers and some scientists to at least try to address. 

For instance, remarkably well-credentialed scientist and author, Dr. Robert Hazen, wrote compellingly of this state of pre-creation non-being in his book, “The Story of Earth – The First 4.5 Billion Years, From Stardust to Living Planet.”  I picked this book up a week or more before I began looking for the "awe" of God, and had no idea what I'd find there. But God knew that I would read:

… at the origin of all things – the Big Bang – about 13.7 billion years ago, by the latest estimates.  That moment of creation remains the most elusive, incomprehensible, defining event in the history of the universe. 

It was a singularity – a transformation from nothing to something that remains beyond the purview of modern science or the logic of mathematics. 

If you would search for signs of a creator god in the cosmos, the Big Bang is the place to start …

Imagine – a secular scientist at the top of his game is forced to turn to the nebulous concept of an un-named creator god to explain something that is beyond his science, his mathematics or his secular scientific philosophy.

Awesome Revelation:  Believe it or not, Dr. Hazen’s book, as represented by that paragraph on the first page of the first chapter (a chapter appropriately called “Birth”) came to me as the answer to that very specific prayer of mine, which I mentioned in the introduction.  

Here's how that came about.

I had been reading the term “fear God,” which is quite prevalent in the Old Testament.  However, that term was quite puzzling to me, a professing but confused Christian living 2,500 years after that first Testament had been written down.  The whole idea of “fearing God” seemed at odds with my conception of a New Testament God who so loved me that he sent his only Son to be crucified, just so I could be forgiven and justified before that same loving God.

However, upon further study, I learned that what is usually translated into modern English as “fear God” or “fear of the Lord” really meant, when it was first written, something like: “hold God in unspeakable awe for the great and powerful things he does,” or words to that effect. 

With that foothold toward understanding finally in my grasp, I prayed to the Holy Spirit for understanding. I wanted to know – to know what – that sense of awe was supposed to be. And then I wanted to feel that awe, to actually “fear God.”

Within days of that prayer, I picked up that book – which I’d ordered from Amazon weeks before I’d began puzzling over the whole “fear God” question.   I love reading popularized hard-science books - I have a passion for it, and this time, that passion led me to answers.

As I was puzzling over that “fear God” question, I read that paragraph quoted above from Dr. Hazen’s The Story of Earth – The First 4.5 Billion Years, From Stardust to Living Planet. 

Suddenly, in the blink of my own eye, I finally began to realize what it meant – and more important, what it felt like – to actually fear God.  Suddenly, I felt what it meant to be in unspeakable awe of God.  And now that I have that sense of awe, I’m not sure I’ll ever find any other single act of God that is more awe-creating than that instant of creation itself.

God not only created the universe – and all that is – in the blink of His eye; He loaded every last bit of “everything” for our entire universe in a spot smaller than a sub-atomic particle, such as an electron or quark.  Everything that is or ever will be, loaded into that invisible speck.  

 If that doesn’t inspire awe, consider this.  Our leading astrophysicists have projected that – based on what we can see and measure – there are more than 100 billion galaxies in our universe.  In those galaxies are an average of 100 billion stars - our Milky Way is enormous, with more than 200 billion stars. 

Orbiting around those billions of stars are at least 500 billion planets in the average galaxy – not to mention moons, planetesimals, asteroids, meteors, comets and space junk left over from the day of creation.  There might be a trillion or more planets orbiting the 100 billion or so stars in that average galaxy.

On some of those trillions of planets, there must be life – and, some of that life on those far-distant planets will be the extraterrestrial equivalent of sparrows. 

God, who created all that exists in our universe, and who keeps track of everything he created – including each sparrow who falls (regardless of the planet the sparrow comes from) – still sent his Son to Earth, to be tortured and murdered as the perfect blood sacrifice for sinners like me who believe in him.  Then, as foretold in prophecy, He rose from the dead to prove His power over death, as well as life.

Now that is awesome!  That is something I can feel.

God’s Creation:  Old and New Testaments alike agree – and no scientist can disprove this belief:  God “spoke” or “breathed” the universe into existence.  Before He spoke the Word, there was nothing. Not even the absence of something.  No time – nor lack of time.  Just … nothing.

Then, at His single Word, with His single breath, and in the blink of God’s eye, everything that has ever existed – or ever will exist in our universe, going back over 13.7 billion years - burst into existence. Everything that is was created in that single divinely-ordained instant.

Who but God could do that?  Even Dr. Hazen, that remarkably well-credentialed scientist who wrote that paragraph, acknowledged that his science could do nothing to explain the instantaneous transition from … nothing … to … something.  To everything.

Dr. Hazen has the intellectual integrity, when he could explain it no other way, to choose to send us looking for an unnamed creator god to explain the Big Bang. To Dr. Hazen, that creator god was not “God” as we know him.  Dr. Hazen wasn’t ready to concede that.  However, Christians should have no trouble filling in the blanks.  There are 44 verses in the bible that attest to the fact that the God of Abraham and Moses is the only God.  So if an unnamed actually creator god exists, He has to be our God of Abraham and Moses.

Returning to the moment of creation, that act he ascribed to the unnamed creator god, Dr. Hazen went on to explain what happened next.

In the beginning, all space and energy and matter came into existence from an unknowable void.  Nothing.  Then something.  The concept is beyond our ability to craft metaphors.

Our universe did not suddenly appear where there had been only vacuum before, for before the Big Bang there was no volume and no time. Our concept of nothing­ implies emptiness – before the Big Bang there was nothing to be empty in.

Then in an instant, there was not just something, but everything that would ever be, all at once.

Remarkably, this “everything that would ever be” – including all the matter to make up, as we know, more than 100 billion galaxies, each averaging more than 100 billion stars – came into existence in a volume smaller than the nucleus of a single atom. 

Scientists use the word “ultra-compressed” to describe this … idea … that everything that exists in our entire universe was contained in a single atom’s nucleus. 

To stretch your mind just a bit farther into the realm of holding God in awe, that sub-atomic particle which contained everything was … all there was.  That infinitesimal point was the entire universe. At the moment of creation, there was nothing except that point.  There was no “outside the universe.”   

That conceptual place, “outside the universe,” didn’t – and still doesn’t – exist.  At least not in a sense physics can define.  And, 13.7 billion years later, there is still nothing “outside the universe.” 

Except for heaven, of course, and hell, but you won’t find many credentialed scientists speculating about that.

For lack of a better term, scientists call that incredible instant when space and time, matter and energy all came into being, all at once, as the “Big Bang,” though most agree that a singularity the size of a sub-atomic particle is hardly "Big," and that there was no actual “bang.” 

However, I call it a miracle, an act of not just a scientifically-acknowledged but unnamed creator god, but the supreme act of creation of our own one and eternal God, the maker of heaven and earth. 

God spoke the Word, and there was light.  And that light illuminated everything.

Awesome Ongoing Creation:  But astrophysicists who study the Big Bang believe that creation – the work of Dr. Hazen's unnamed creator god ­– didn’t stop with that instantaneous creation of … everything.  That undifferentiated point-source of all that is and will ever be – that singularity – had to become … well … differentiated.   

From that single point-source of everything to become the universe we know, God had to create sub-atomic particles like electrons and quarks, then atoms – the building blocks of matter.  He also had to pull from that singularity things we take for granted: atoms, photons, time, energy and empty space.

Astrophysicists believe they can describe with incredible precision what happened every nano-second in the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang, that instant when the Universe burst into existence.  Yet no scientist can explain where “everything” came from, or how “everything” came to be.

Nor do they even have a clue as to why that undifferentiated point source singularity transformed itself into the precise elemental building blocks that were going to be God’s necessary tools for creating life on Earth, and if it exists, elsewhere in our universe.  Nor can these scientists explain the “who” of cosmic creation – God – or “how,” that spoken Word that created everything. 

Literally.

Conclusion:  Awesome God, and His awesome universe.

There was nothing random about what Dr. Hazen’s creator god did in charting out what happened from that instantaneous moment of singularity all the way through the unfolding creation of the universe.   

Our God has kept creating – stars and planets and galaxies.  And Man.  Life on our planet, and God’s crowning achievement. One that includes Dr. Hazen and all the skeptical scientists who cannot, at least not with intellectual rigor, explain away God and His creation.

With hard-science degrees from MIT, Harvard and Cambridge, Dr. Hazen knows the limits of science.  He knows where science ends and the creator god begins.

One instant, there was nothing.  The next immeasurably short span of time later, “everything” was here.

It was almost as if God spoke the Word, and everything was created, all at once.

Now, when I pray to God, I know what it feels like to “fear God” – to be in awe of his incredible powers.  I conjure up 100 billion galaxies, each averaging 100 billion stars – those numbers are awesome enough.  Then I consider all the planets that might have sparrow-like creatures, each of which God marks when it falls.  

 I think of the intricate dance of creation, where massive early-generation stars had to blow up to create the elements necessary for life which then coalesced in other stars, and other planets.  And those blew up, too, adding more elements and triggering the creation of our Earth 4.5 billion years ago.

Finally, I think of the billions of people on this planet of ours today – and all the billions who came before us – and consider that God knows and loves each one of them.  He sent his Son to Earth to atone for all the sinners who would come to believe in Christ.  Then He sent out, generation after generation, apostles and missionaries to make disciples of all nations, and all people.

With all that swirling in my head, I think on how God sent his Son to suffer and die for me - specifically for me - so that I may have eternal life. 

If you can’t find a bit of awe in all of that, you’re not trying very hard.

 I welcome your insights.

 ***

Footnote – Defining singularity:  Here are scientific and mathematical definitions of that word, “singularity” which defines the universe at the instant of its creation:

Astronomy & Physics: A singularity is a point in space-time, such as a black hole, at which matter has infinite density and infinitesimal volume and the curvature of space-time is infinite.

Mathematics: A singularity is a point at which the derivative does not exist for a given function but every neighborhood of which contains points for which the derivative exists.

Science vs. God vs. The Church - Part One ...

Originally Published on Facebook (Ned Barnett):  Science vs. God - Part One ...

INTRODUCTION: This essay was originally published on Facebook.  My goal then and now was to demonstrate that Science cannot disprove God - rather, that Science defines a possible way by which God  worked and works his miracles, and provides continuing Godly oversight to the human race.  God and Science are not incompatible - rather, God created the Laws of Science, and He then uses them, modifies them or miraculously steps beyond them - but always in the context that He created those Laws, and that He alone has the power to control those Laws.  That is still my point  here in this longer and more complete essay.

The initial series of opposing-view comments all seemed to come from people who confuse God with the Church ... for instance, they cite Galileo vs. the Pope as a reason for saying belief in God is incompatible with a search for scientific truth. They do so, apparently not realizing that the Catholic Church (not to mention one very fallible Pope), those two forces that blocked and punished Galileo, are not the same as God. They make the same mistake the Pope did, conflating their views with God's views.

 So, before I put forth the first in my series of perspectives on God and Science, allow me to offer a few thoughts on God vs. Church vs. Science.

 CHURCH vs. SCIENCE:  In most cases, when a Church stands in opposition to the pure discoveries of Science, this opposition is due more to a man-driven desire by those in the Church to retain or exert power than to any G0d-based theology.  In some cases, however, this faith-based opposition is due to a man-driven desire to encourage or force society to follow God's law ... as they personally understand and interpret God's Law.  However, most of the time, this situation of the Church or "men of faith" opposing science comes about because of a complete misunderstanding on everyone's part.  

Those of faith mistake their perception of God and His Law for the reality of God and his Law. They don't "get it" that their fallible human perception of God can never the same as the reality of God Himself, because the reality of God is infinitely beyond human ken.  That's why man's relationship with God is built on faith in the majesty of the Infinite God, rather than on provable knowledge about the totality of a well-understood and easily-categorized God.

An example of this misunderstanding can be found in the debates over the teaching of Charles Darwin, father of the Theory of Evolution through Natural Selection.  Those who avidly support Darwin's Theory want to present this Theory (perhaps I should say, "insist on presenting it") as a secular version of Divine Law: absolute, true, infallible and beyond question.  They ignore the fact that scientists themselves insist on calling Darwin's postulate a "theory," and they do so for a very good reason. Darwin's Theory of Evolution has not been proven, and despite how well it seems to explain some observable phenomena, Darwin's Theory may never be proven.  

For all its scientific and lay acceptance since Darwin first published his Theory in 1859, Darwin's vision of Evolution remains just a working hypothesis. It is an hypothesis that seems to explain many or most of the known facts regarding Evolution that the scientific community has been able to come up since 1859 - but because it's a "theory," what Darwin postulated will stand only until the next (and better) scientific hypothesis comes along, probably some time in the very near future.  Breakthroughs in DNA and molecular biology challenge Darwin at a core that he didn't even know existed - life at the sub-molecular level.

Even Darwin himself noted that his theory had many troubling problems to overcome. In his landmark Origin of Species (P.159), Darwin wrote:  "To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree."

Will Darwin's Theory ultimately be replaced?  Almost certainly.  After all, one Harvard scientist and advocate of Evolution has essentially disproved it (but in his loyalty to Darwin, he merely suggest that his new theory modifies or explains Darwin better than Darwin did) with ideas such as Punctuated Equilibrium.  This theory was created by Harvard faculty member Stephen Jay Gould to refine (his words) Darwin's theory.  I was for all of my adult life until his passing in 2002 a major fan of Professor Gould's - I read his collected columns from Natural History, as well as all of his other books, and generally read them more than once.  Genius is not too small a world to describe Professor Gould - nor was "defender of the (Darwinian) faith" too strong an accolade.  Yet it was his own work that ultimately disproved a major and significant part of Darwin, and it was only his willingness to engage in intellectual gymnastics that kept his toppling of Darwin's steady-state natural selection theory from being more widely known.

More recently than Gould's punctuated equilibrium, the science of microbiology has put up perhaps an insuperable barrier between our current Darwin's "Theory" and any future Darwin's "Law."  The same kind of replacement-through-science happened to Newton (more below), but when the dust settles, I believe that unlike Newton's continued utility in the world beyond the Quantum, there will be a completely new and different Theory to replace Darwin's Evolution ... however, I also believe that Christians who are so inclined will still oppose this new theorem, and that evolutionary scientists will, in a total absence of irony, still insist that, like Darwin's Theory before it, the new evolutionary "theory" should be - no, must be - treated as provable fact.

The sciences that are attacking Darwin icnlude molecular biology, biochemistry and genetics.  Over the past fifty years, mirobiologists and genetic scientists have come to know that there are in fact tens of thousands of irreducibly complex systems operating on the cellular level, all of which must be included in any "evolutionary" change. Molecular biologist Michael Denton wrote in his book, Evolution in Crisis, P.250, "Although the tiniest bacterial cells are incredibly small, weighing less than 10^-12 grams, each is in effect a veritable micro-miniaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms, far more complicated than any machinery built by man and absolutely without parallel in the non-living world." 

The challenge against Darwin is found in the electron microscope, not the anthropolgical digs on the Serengeti Plain.  Darwin's Theory presupposed that gross anatomical changes in a species will evolve through natural selection, and that this will occur in order to better assist a species to survive in its current environment.  Over time, these changes add up until speciation - the creation of a wholly new species - ultimately ocurrs.  However, the connection between microscopic cellular changes and gross anatomical changes is so tenuous, and the rift between Darwin's presumed cause-and-effect is so immense, that his theory - as written - shatters and crumples.  

From a purely scientific perspective, I won't be surprised if at least a few of the underlying theses of Darwin's Theory survive into a new, as-yet not-written evolutionary theory.  Darwin was, after all, a genius, and his Theory does seem to define and explain at least some scientifically observable facts.  However, on the global level, Darwin and DNA are just not compatible.  I predict that some already-born future scientist is already on his or her way toward coming up with a challenge that brings down Darwin, even as it brings something at least remotely akin Darwin into the 21st Century.  When that happens, the Darwin that scientists and secularists have insisted be treated as FACT for more than 100 years will be proven false.

Don't think Darwin can be overturned? Then consider Newton.

For centuries, Sir Isaac Newton's three LAWS were considered sacrosanct, beyond question - right up until the moment that Quantum Physics came along.  Quantum Physics demonstrated that Newton's Laws, while still completely viable at the gross physical 3-dimensional level, are completely wrong at the sub-at0mic Quantum level.  Newton identified three laws - each of them repeatedly provable, yet he was overturned at the micro-level.  Darwin, on the other hand offers only a theory which, while it seems to explain some of the observed phenomenon (though not at the molecular or sub-molecular levels - think of those to biology as quantum is to physics), has yet to be proven.  To prove Darwin would require a time-frame for observable evolutionary change that is measured in terms of millenniums, eons and epochs, rather than in years, decades or even lifetimes.

Yet some who "believe" in science, and who presumably know the difference between a "theory" and a "law," nonetheless insist on Darwin being presented and treated as fact. On the other side of the debate, some of faith insist that Darwin's all hokum - but they do so while forgetting that God can exert change by any means He deems appropriate.  

Who's to say that God can't use Darwin's theory to accomplish His timeless aims?

Not me.  And not, I suggest, my fellow believers, or my fellow followers of science.  As the English poet wrote, indeed, "God works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform." More important He's not answerable to us ... not to believers, and not to scientists.  He does what He wants, in His way and on His timetable, and any human who says otherwise, be he a believer or a scientist, just doesn't 'get it' about who and what God is - God is the Creator of All Things - including Newton's Laws and their Quantum Corollaries.  God also created the truth behind Darwin's Theory and the truth behind what is now being developed to replace Darwin with a 21st-Century microbiologically-sound alternative to Natural Selection.  

God created it, and God can use it to work his wonders.

CHURCH vs. GOD:  Church is the organized effort by believing humans to codify and act on their beliefs in God - and what those beliefs mean (or should mean) in the lives of humans.  Church is not God, and Church is not God's presence on earth.  Church is man-made.   Because men can't agree, not even on their shared beliefs, within every major religion there are many branches of that religion - denominations, they are called to Christians (I don't know what the Muslims or Hindus or Buddhists or Shintos call their inner divisions, but I do know they have them).  Church is a human construct and has no "authority" to speak for God. This fact means that whatever Churches or Church leaders say on a given subject only refer to what they, themselves, believe is accurate.  The Church's pronouncement is not the Word of God - it's the Word of Man.  

When a Church (or group of believers who share a common belief) speak out on anything to do with Science - and when they speak out AS believers - whatever they say, no matter how logical sounding, is not God's Word ... it is, at best, their honest interpretation of God's Word. At worst, it is something else.  Therefore, it goes without saying that what I present here in this essay is my view, my honest interpretetation of God vs. Science vs. Church, and not God's word.

SCIENCE vs. GOD:  Those who worship "science" (though they call this belief something else, it is obvious that "science" is their "god"), and those among science's worshippers who claim that - while science is pure and noble - churches are at least potentially wrong and maybe even corrupt have a point.  However, they are, at best, only half-right.  All Churches are potentially wrong, and every denomination has, at some point, toyed with corruption, starting with Cain for the Jews and Judas for the Christians.  

On the other hand, however, we need look no further than the "climate-gate" email scandal of a couple of years ago to know that "science" (the belief in it, and the active practice of it by fallible human beings) is just as potentially wrong, and just as potentially prone to corruption.

However, at its essence, "Science" is pure, in that it deals with provable facts, and with theories which  may or may not be provable at some future point.  Just as true, at His essence, "God" is pure, the ultimate source of creation and the one infallible element of creation.  You can believe that or disbelieve that, but it doesn't matter. Regardless of your beliefs (or mine), "Science" is pure at its essence, and so is God.  Neither require your belief, nor mine, for that to be a fact.

 God, in His infallible essence, created the universe. In this process, He created the scientific laws that man continues to try to uncover, and to understand.  At its core, Science is merely a way by which man can try to understand how God works - how He created all of creation, and how he acts within and around and above that Creation in order to express his will for all to see, and to intervene in the world when He deems it appropriate.

A Brief Side Journey - Does God Intervene?  A side point on that whole "God intervenes" thing.  There are perishingly few scholars of the American Revolution and the subsequent birth of our nation who consider George Washington anything but the truly essential man, the man without whom we'd still be British Subjects.  During the battle at Fort Duquense, part of the French and Indian War, during a massive defeat of the British, Washington had two horses shot out from under him.  His coat was pierced with bullets that didn't touch him.  By some counts, 86 holes were shot or stabbed into his clothing - yet he was unscathed.  Perhaps God didn't intervene, but he survived where most others fell, and he didso without a scratch.  He then went on to lead the Continental Army, defeat a superior British force, lead the Constitutional Convention, set an unimpeachable role for future Presidents to follow, and - in the process - proved to be the one key man without whom our nation would not have existed.

Did God intervene?  I choose to believe so, but that's an article of faith.  What is beyond an article of faith are the many prayers that are answered - some in my life, but many in others' lives.  Believe in God or not - that doesn't change this truth.

Science vs. God Part II:  Many "scientists" think (actually, it's not so much a "thought" as it is a "belief," but if I were to call it a "belief," some might choose to be insulted by this, no matter how accurate the description) that if science can prove something, then the fact of that proof must also somehow disprove God. However, this belief (or thought) is based on the unproven and unprovable (and arguably false) assumption - and as scientists, in the realm of science, they would routinely reject any unproven and unprovable assumption.  

They assume, without fact, proof or even logic, that God can only work outside the provable physical realm as defined by scientists. This unproven assumption ignores the provable fact that they are trying to narrowly define a universe-creating God. They are trying to limit a God who is without limits, a God who, in the process of creating the Universe, also created the physics, and the physical laws, that these scientists try to use to discredit their Creator.

He created the universe, and as a universal creator, He is free to choose to work inside those physical laws, or to bend those physical laws to His will.

For instance, there's no reason at all that God could not have decided, from the moment of Creation, to use what Darwin came to call evolution in order to create man, and the beasts, and the plants, and the microbes. 

The only part of Darwin's Theory of Evolution by means of Natural Selection (and Darwin himself called it a theory, not a proven fact) that stands against the idea of God using evolution to create Man is that part of Darwin's theory that calls for random selection. God takes the random out of the selection process, but remember, Darwin called his whole story "a theory" and random selection was just one small part of that.  In his first edition of Origin of Species, P. 6, Darwin admitted as much:  "I am convinced that Natural Selection has been the main, but not exclusive means of modification."

Another:  There is a mounting set of still-disputed scientific evidence that a catastrophic breech in a barrier wall keeping the ocean-level Mediterranean Sea apart from the 330-foot-below-sea-level "Black Lake" caused a  raging flood that lasted for a full year.  "Disputed" because scientists with various personal axes to grind seem to be able to find different answers to the same evidence - however, the find of a populated shoreline 330 feet below current sea level is beyond dispute. 

This deluge occurred at the very dawn of civilization, when man first discovered agriculture, created communities and instituted animal husbandry. Indisputable archaeological evidence of towns surrounding the fresh water lake have been found by reputable undersea archaeologists at the old lake-level shoreline. This great flood, while devastating, tended to advance along the shoreline at a rate of a mile per day. People living around the once-freshwater lake, now a churning and silt-laden dead saltwater sea (the survivors) were scattered to the four winds. In this diaspora, they were no longer connected by navigable waters or trade routes. 

Some survivors went to India. Some followed the Danube into the Balkans, where settlements and technology reflecting that lake-sure culture have been found. Some refugees went to Russia. Some survivors went to Turkey, or Assyria (Iraq), or even Palestine and Egypt.  Everywhere they went, they brought their knowledge, even as they intermarried and blended into aboriginal populations. Over time, their common or connected launguage, known as PIE - or Proto-Indo-European - faded, but remnants of that common tongue remain even today in the various surviving "Indo-European" languages. This language dispersion process happened naturally, but it also happened at exactly the right time for spreading the bedrock of civilization from a single location, while at the same time cutting off those first-to-become-civilized people, one from another.

Who can say with any scientific certainty that God did not speak to a man, Noah, and tell him how to survive the coming great deluge, along with his family and his flocks? Certainly any God who can create worlds can breach a rock barrier wall, when and how he chooses, and give a head's up to people He's chosen to save.  those who debunk the notion of Noah assume a certain kind of "straw man" Great Flood, one that they can then be knocked down.  But even they cannot prove that the largest flood scientifically known to have afflicted Mankind could not have been the means and basis of Noah's salvation.

Beyond that, this flood-diaspora story rings very true with the core elements of the Tower of Babel.  Here around the Black Lake was, for the first time in human history, the most advanced culture on earth. It was there, presumably, because of their proximity, they shared a language in common - a key element in the Babel story.  And, because they were at the very  forefront of humanity's transition from hunger-gatherer to agriculturist/merchant, these first-to-be-civilized humans could have conceivably had a good deal of hubris. 

Can anyone factually and with scientific rigor say that God didn't destroy the Black Lake and send its shore-residents scattering?  The fact of the deluge are there, lacking only a cause for it occurring at this very fragile time in humanity's road to civilization. And who can say for a scientific fact that this great deluge isn't enshrined in the stories of Noah and Babel?

I am not saying that God used these scientifically provable events to save Noah and disperse humanity.  I am saying that there is nothing in Science to disprove this.  Which leads me to my core hypothesis - when people claim that because Science proves something as a fact, then that also proves that God had no hand in the event, or its aftermath.  But that is an unprovable assumption far harder to prove than Darwin on the sub-molecular level.  It can't be done.

There are many other examples where an open mind could see how God both created and used natural events he created to fulfill the stories he was also creating. Some in science claim that the volcanic eruption at Santorini was the proximal  cause of the Red (or Reed) Sea pulling back, just in time to allow Moses to save his people during their Exodus. But why, then, did that super-volcano blow up in just the right way, and at exactly the right time, in order to save the Children of Israel? The Creator of the Universe - determined to save his Chosen People - had many options open to him.  Who's to say that He may have chosen to create a "natural event" in order to save His People.  If not, why not?  After all, He created everything anyway?

I'll reflect on this more from time to time, but with the holiday closing in, I thought I'd use a bit of time off to raise this issue. 

If a creator God exists, then that God created the root cause of science - which means, logically, that God can use science to manifest his Will, his Power, or any Message he cares to share.