Fifty-one questions later and my ears are ringing with truth! John Polkinghorne and Nicholas Beale respond to question after question regarding the sciences and Christian faith. I fondly remember my interaction with the Templeton Foundation during graduate studies and am always eager for good discussion at this crossroads. Having read articles by Polkinghorne then, I was happy to see a new book of his, Questions of Truth, at my local library.
I will quote one of my favorite concepts in physics, with Polkinghorne’s response, and then just let you know how blessed I am for this. (FYI, my absolute favorite concept is entropy.)
Uncertainty: What effect would a structured or organized subatomic world have on creation? Or, is everything random? Beale sets the stage by stating that the term ‘random’ is difficult to address, but ‘uncertain’ somehow does a better job. Having often been teased as random myself, and fairly regularly denied that truth, I wonder at this beginning. Here’s Polkinhorne’s reply:
“Modern science has come to recognize that the processes that can give rise to genuine novelty have to be 'at the edge of chaos' where order and disorder, chance and necessity, creatively interlace. Otherwise things are either too rigid for anything really new to happen or too haphazard for novelty to be able to persist. The intrinsic unpredictabilities of quantum mechanics and chaos theory can be seen theologically as gifts of a Creator whose creation is both orderly and open this way.”
Boom. One of the most poetic and uplifting paragraphs I’ve read in a very long time. Stuck and need a change? Edge towards the unknown. Blown around and need a change? Get more structure. This whole ‘make something new’ of anything needs enough sense and enough nonsense to get off the ground. And, my, doesn’t our world fly nicely.
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