Surprise! - The Science of Life Points to God

“This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.” (1 Corinthians 2:13, NIV)

“You are the God who works wonders; you have made known your might among the peoples.” (Psalm 77:14, ESV)

“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Romans 11:33, ESV)

There is a remarkable thing about scientific discoveries—they tend to be surprising. No scientist expected that the universe had a clear beginning—that space and time started at a particular moment, before which there was . . . well, nothing.

The fact that the speed of light is a constant, whether you are moving toward it or away from it, was a big surprise, and a very disturbing one at that. It made no sense at all, until Einstein came up with special relativity—which is pretty hard to understand. But even Einstein never quite liked quantum mechanics, with photons playing tricks and going in all possible directions at once until they are observed. What is that all about? Quantum entanglement, “spooky action at a distance,” makes relativity look simple.

Biology is worse than physics. Genes are made of huge DNA polymers, and there is a code (where did that come from?). We biologists were pretty sure there had to be around 100,000 human genes in order to code for all the uniquely human stuff we do. But surprise! There are only about 20,000 genes in people, less than in some plants and flies.

Photosynthesis is based on the mysterious quantum behavior of light, where photons try out all possible reaction pathways simultaneously in order to find the most efficient pathway for energy conversion. That was a big surprise.

Why is the universe so surprising? And how does this all point to God? I think a universe without God would be much more boring and ordinary. The wondrous complexity of everything, from galaxies to protein synthesis, is a reflection of the immense majesty of the Creator. When we study molecular biology, we are doing theology. When we map the new exoplanets circling faraway stars, we are learning about God’s infinite power. When we look into the eyes of our beloved and see love there, we are witness to the miraculous nature of God’s creative genius.

Who is the Agent that produced us, animals with this strange gift of being able to understand the world? As we learn more and more, as one discovery after the next surprises us, makes us wonder, forces us to think and work harder, we should grow closer to God, the source of all this beauty. There is nothing “mere” about our world; there is nothing ordinary about any of us: everything we do is an experimental confirmation of the great scientific finding that God made the world, and that we are loved by him.