The Science of Unbelief
The Wisdom of God and the Folly of Man in the Secular Age
The Apostle Paul’s letter to the Corinthians continues to be as relevant today as when he wrote it: "For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”—1 Corinthians 1:25 (ESV)
In the secular age, the wisdom of God has often been deemed foolishness by man, as human logic and the pursuit of scientific understanding have taken center stage. The laboratory has become the modern sanctuary, and the Enlightenment's mechanistic worldview has displaced the teachings of Christianity. Once intertwined with a belief in God’s providence and sovereign rule, the mysteries of life have been marginalized and replaced by human pride in perceived limitless abilities.
However, life itself defies the notion of a purposeless, mechanistic universe. To their credit, some scientists now approach their discoveries with humility, acknowledging the presence of an unseen force that permeates all matter. They point to the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind behind the intricacies of creation, recognizing that the wisdom of God far surpasses the understanding of man. The words of Max Planck, the “father of quantum physics,” echo the sentiment:
As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clearheaded science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about the atoms this much: There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. . . . We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.[1]
Albert Einstein, too, marveled at the elusive mysteries present throughout the universe and the grandeur of reality's structure. For those who listen closely, the wisdom of God's creation whispers its truth to the hearts of seekers. We must quote Planck again: “Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: Ye must have faith. It is a quality which the scientist cannot dispense with.”[2]
Yet, dispense with it, they have. To those who look to “science” to validate self and the world, it is a “war between rationality and superstition.” For Neil deGrasse Tyson, “The good thing about science is that it is true whether or not you believe in it.” There is that “believe” word again. Mercifully, such hubris is countered by greater scientists: “Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.”[3]
Imagination grounded in divine revelation unleashes a spirit of inquiry and creativity. To receive the Good News of Christ is to recognize that the impossible has ceased to be.
—M. Milton
The secular age has steadily rejected the idea of God (and, it follows, God's presence and power in Creation and Providence). Instead, the religion of mechanistic rationality places unwavering faith in human logic and science’s capacity to explain everything. But this elevation of human understanding above divine wisdom is doomed to failure. For the elementary things of life, scream, “There is a God, and He is known.” This is reality. Denying reality to advance an illusion might be fun until it is fatal.
As the German thinker Jürgen Habermas (b. 1929) insightfully expressed, the secular age is ultimately unsustainable.[4] Its narrow focus on human reasoning denies the existence of the divine mind behind creation, leading to an implosion of understanding when faced with the extraordinary pressure of reality.
The Enlightenment scientific method has been proven to be inadequate to comprehend the force that creates and sustains the veritable living solar systems of atoms in the nanoscopic realm. — M. Milton
As we look ahead to a post-secular age, we must recognize that human logic alone cannot comprehend existence’s mysteries. The pursuit of knowledge, guided solely by rationality and devoid of divine acknowledgment, leads only to a fragmented view of reality.
The unseen force that governs the universe, far beyond the grasp of human logic, is the wisdom and providence of God. His purposeful creation reveals the truth that transcends human understanding. The beauty and intricacies of the natural world are a testament to the Creator's artistry.
In the midst of a culture that elevates human knowledge above all else, we are called to embrace the wisdom of God as revealed in both general and special revelation. Let us humbly acknowledge the limitations of human understanding and recognize that the wisdom of God surpasses the loftiest achievements of mankind. Mattias Desmet, Professor of Clinical Psychology at Ghent University (Belgium), put it best: “The journey of science does not end in superior knowledge but in a kind of Socratic modesty.”[5]
As we navigate the thorny pathway of the secular and post-secular ages, Christians must not be swayed by the detours from truth offered by cunning atheists in lab coats (whether secular or post-secular). Given the Ziph principle, the law of least resistance, scientists will likely put a man on Mars before curing cancer.[6] We tend to lean into what we can most easily conquer. Of course, completing a Martian mission is no small undertaking. However, the subatomic world—one possible field of study for solving cellular abnormalities—presents a thoroughly different set of challenges, one of which is the limitation of human logic. The Enlightenment scientific method has been proven to be inadequate to comprehend the force that creates and sustains the veritable living solar systems of atoms in the nanoscopic realm. In this world, “twentieth-century physics showed them (atoms) to be swirling, energetic systems, patterns of vibration rather than solid matter.”[7] It is not that Christians observe this and understand it in a technical or scholarly sense. It is that those who know the love of God in Christ for sinners can imagine it to be. Imagination grounded in divine revelation unleashes a spirit of inquiry and creativity. To receive the Good News of Christ is to recognize that the impossible has ceased to be. As Barth wrote in his commentary on Romans,
Yet, one drop of eternity is of greater weight than a vast ocean of finite thing$. Measured by the standard of God, the dignitaries of men forfeit their excellence, and their serious importance-they become relative, and even the noblest of human moral and spiritual attainments are seen to be what they are—natural of this world, profane, and 'materialistic.’ The valleys are exalted, and the high hills are made low.[8]
Hold fast to the wisdom of God in Christ as revealed in His Word, the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). And the truth is freedom (John 8:32). Thus, we will be guided by a pearl of wisdom that surpasses all human understanding and leads us to a profound and satisfying revelation of the mysteries of life. Scripture need not be justified by observation, but it is, without exception, validated as a lived truth. We are a people of the divine “idea,” the “logos” revealed. The physicist Werner Heisenberg put it this way: “The smallest units of matter are not objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas.”[9] How very like the words of Hebrews 1:3 (NKJV): “[Jesus Christ is] the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power.”
[1] Das Wesen der Materie [The Nature of Material], speech at Florence, Italy (1944) (from Archiv zur Geschichte der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Abt. Va, Rep. 11 Planck, Nr. 1797). See also Max Planck, The New Science: 3 Complete Works: Where Is Science Going? The Universe in the Light of Modern Physics; The Philosophy of Physics (United Kingdom: Meridian Books, 1959).
[2] Max Planck, A. Einstein, and J. V. Murphy, Where Is Science Going? (United Kingdom: Allen & Unwin, 1933), 214.
[3] Planck et al, Where Is Science Going? (Allen & Unwin, 1933), 77.
[4] See Jürgen Habermas, “Notes on Post-Secular Society,” New Perspectives Quarterly 25, no. 4 (September 1, 2008): 17–29, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5842.2008.01017.x; Jürgen Habermas, An Awareness of What Is Missing: Faith and Reason in a Post-Secular Age (Polity, 2010).
[5] M. Desmet, The Psychology of Totalitarianism (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2022, 178.
[6] George K. Zipf, Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort: An Introduction to Human Ecology (Ravenio Books, 2016).
[7] Desmet, Psychology, 178.
[8] Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, trans. E. C. Hoskyns (Oxford University Press, 1933), 77.
[9] As quoted in Desmet, 156.