To be a scientist, I was trained to think in a specific way. Namely to make a hypothesis, gather data, analyze the data for a conclusion, and then to confirm or correct your hypothesis, and repeat.
Being a human, I make mistakes and encounter situations where prevailing beliefs (mine, a team, an industry) could be discovered to be flawed. When a round of testing shows a hypothesis is in error or produces results we don’t understand we pause. We have to go back and find out which assumptions were bad, figure out what outside influences were more important that what the experiment controlled. Sometimes stuff we believe very strongly just isn’t true. We must resist the urge to erase and forget. Very quickly we learn that the most important step is REPEAT. The way to truth in science is replication of results by multiple people on multiple occasions. When we can repeat at will we understand.
This is not just grade school science. As a working engineer this is mantra. If a trouble occurs in a system we don’t claim to understand it until we can repeat the problem at will — preferably in lab where the consequence of repetition is not harmful.
We do not seriously work on prevention of issues until we understand. If we do not have time to understand because the impact is bad we work around the problem — meaning we make the harmful activity unable to show itself or reduce its consequences until we understand.
Miracles were not often repeated at will, not even for Jesus. He would walk into an environment with multiple sick people and heal one. The exception is the case of the ten lepers, and even then nine forget to return to give thanks, making one wonder about their faith. Faith doesn’t always cause a cure. Lack of faith doesn’t always prevent a cure.
God becoming human in Jesus is a one time historical event. Repetition is not expected until the end of the story. Why did God do it this way? I don’t know. But the result is that any mind with normal doubt that is trained in science has that doubt amplified.
Sometimes religious people assume atheists are angry. It is not necessarily so, though sin including actions taken in anger can separate us from God and further amplify atheist tendencies.
How did I, with science training, recover faith. It was a gift from God for sure, but what specifically?
Unfortunately, in this world, evil repeats. However it is not rational and not fully predictable. God is an antidote to evil. So, why not God? In fact, my observation is that the only remedy uncontrollable evil is faith which brings hope, obedience to the God found in scripture, and in prayer, in Jesus name. Answers to prayer are personal, and do not readily convey to from one person to another. In that sense each person’s heart must attempt prayer and connection to experience God on their own.
In my life, keeping a door open to God by staying with church helped me to see the patterns of obedience and answered prayer vs. disobedience and doubt. Waves of faith and doubt over time eroded to a faith that could persist through doubt.
There is something else that seems to repeat, but points to a singular historical event. Life itself. Leading to the question of where it begins…the age old chicken and egg conundrum. We don’t create life in a lab. We just perpetuate it and it changes its form. Something outside the system seems to have breathed that first breath of life, another potentially singular event. That is who God is.
Even if we recreate life tomorrow in a lab, I am still going to be believe in the God that revealed himself in Scripture. I’ve concluded that my mind is much too small to completely figure God out, and to give him the benefit of the doubt. I expect there will be evil until we can see God face to face. That isn’t in the story till after death is or over and done with, vanquished.
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