Are we asking HOW or WHY?

Many of us have grown up in the Church. Our parents grew up in the Church. Their parents grew up in the Church. You get the idea. We have always been Christian and we may not know any different. Yes, we have questioned our faith from time to time, but we have always fundamentally believed that God exists, and that He wants a relationship with us. Some of the seeds of doubt that are sown in our hearts and minds are the questions: "What if it is all imagined? What if we are just starting with a set of assumptions that are simply self-validating? What if it is not so much the existence of God but rather the idea of God that really matters?" This is the position of some atheists who now practice a "Religion Without God". When our fundamental belief in God is challenged we may look for validation and are overjoyed when we hear that "Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God." The reality is that this is not in any way a new question - for centuries people who don't believe in God have been using science to "disprove Him" and people who believe in God have been using science to "prove Him." Neither one really makes any sense.

The reality is that the existence of God is non-falsifiable. There is no way to design an experiment that will tell you that He does or does not exist. This puts the question outside the realm of science. Period. End of story. Any attempt to prove or disprove God using science is not scientific - this inexorable paradox puts us in the position to either believe that God exists or that He does not - either way it is an act of faith. To illustrate the futility of science in telling us anything about God's existence let us look at two extreme positions. 

The first extreme is the extremely simplistic person's view of the world - the one with really no science. You can make this as simple as you can imagine. Take away the internet, airplanes, electricity, sanitation, and even fire if you like. This prehistoric cave man existence may be seen by some as the perfect breeding ground for the ignorance that is necessary for someone to believe in God. Since this person cannot explain anything about the world then everything must be left to "the hand of God." This is what Newton did with physical phenomena that he could not explain so this cave man who can't explain anything will have to use it to explain everything. Yes? Well, I don't think it's that simple. Isaac Newton understood enough about the world to know that there are things that are beyond his understanding and in some cases the more we know the more we are in awe of the improbability of our existence. The cave man, who knows nothing about the world, has no concept of how complex the world is and has nothing that is in need of explanation. The world just "is what it is" to use a tired modern colloquialism. Therefore the lack of knowledge does not in any way impart a tendency toward theism. 

The other extreme is the current or even future understanding of the world. We currently have a great appreciation of the world that includes command of our physical world (aeronautics, modern medicine, computer science, etc.), a deep understanding of the creatures that occupy that world (biology), an ability to manipulate the invisible properties of matter (chemistry), and even the ability to "create" matter with high energy colliders (particle physics). In the future we will understand even more and with new theories and discoveries that may 1) integrate all known physical phenomena and obviate the need of the "hand of God" cited by Newton and others, and 2) address the mechanism of creation of our complex world and thus question the very need for God in a probabilistic sense. While I find these scientific discoveries very interesting and illuminating I take issue with the assumption that if I understand HOW something happened then I also understand WHY it happened. If a car is driving down the road, the designer of that car can tell you in great detail about how the engine works and how it is that the car is able to get from point A to point B; however, the designer can tell you absolutely nothing about why the driver is going to point B in the first place. 

My goal here is not to convince you to believe in God because He can't be disproved by science. Similarly my goal is not to make you doubt in God because science can explain how everything happens even if God doesn't exist. My real goal is to clarify that science can only explain the HOW but not the WHY of our existence. God is my answer to "why?" Someone else may have a different belief of why we are here but that is still a belief that is only true to them because on a faith that is often based on a priori assumptions (Abolition of Man by CS Lewis). May we all act in faith and in love allow others to do the same.