On Faith and Science

Introduction and Disclaimer
          I am a Christian and a scientist. Let me just say up front that this is my opinion and that like everyone else, I feel I am right. I could be wrong but I'd like to think this an enlightened view.

My Argument
     I believe there is no conflict between my faith [:heart:] and science [science!]. Those who disagree [I feel] don't really understand either.

[Let's start with the faith side.]
The Gospel According to Me

As a Christian, my faith hinges on what I feel is important:

1. I am saved by grace and my belief that Jesus [who is divine] came to this world and died on the cross for my sins.
   
2. God is love. God loves me and he pours his love into me. I can't help but share that love because it truly does overflow and there's no way to contain it.
   
3. My faith and love compel me to action. I ever seek to live in truth and love. The two greatest commandments (Luke 10:27) say to ['Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your mind' and 'Love your neighbor as yourself'.]. I must care for others. Not just my friends or peers but also those I may not like, my enemies. There is no room for hate or apathy in my faith.
   
4. Everything else is details. You get into laws, explanations, clarifications. It’s like those first three were the Constitution of the U.S. and the rest are like laws and court rulings.

          When you find the simple principles of truth and love difficult to apply to a situation, you look at the rest for clarification. That isn’t to say that beyond the Gospel, the Bible is useless. It’s important in guiding how I live out my faith but my belief does not (and should not) hinge on any more or less than God’s love and Jesus’ sacrifice.

[So what about literal interpretation?]
          This is a tricky question that I cannot hope to answer. Bible scholars have studied this one for centuries. There are places in the Bible that are literal and there are places that are steeped in symbolism. Sometimes it’s both. For a lay-person like me, it’s not easy to determine.
          I believe the creation story shows us God’s power, even his nature. It’s a very poetic account of God calling things into being and creating order out of chaos. Is it literal? It’s hard to say. The word “day” in Hebrew can refer to daylight, a literal 24-hour day, or an unspecified period of time.
          This is where day-age creationists come in: those who believe that “day” in this sense is an unspecified period of time. Thus, “evening” would mean the end of an age, and “morning” would refer to the beginning of another. We can't know but it's an interesting view.

[Now let's look at science.]
Nature of science
          I wrote a ten page research paper on this, I know what I'm talking about.
          Science is reliable yet tentative. Everything we know is tested repeatedly. We come up with the best explanation we can given the evidence (and there's a TON of it). That explanation is and will continue to be accepted until new evidence challenges it. At that time, the theory will be modified or completely thrown out for a new one.
          Theories: In the vernacular, they are little more than conjecture or speculation, such as "I kinda think it might be like this". In science, the term theory carries vastly more weight. It is an explanation greatly supported by evidence gained and repeatedly confirmed through observation and experimentation.
          Science requires consensus; there will be no consensus without evidence. For instance, a person can publish a paper saying they've perfected cold fusion. The media will have a hey-day over it but the scientific community will remain skeptical until that person's results are confirmed by other scientists following the same procedure under the same conditions and getting results consistent with the first person's results. The peer-review process is important. Discussion is important. This is part of why it takes time for new theories to be accepted. Evidence must be gathered and confirmed. The theory has to make sense.
          So, people who say they don't believe evolution are extremely misguided at best. Evolution is not a faith to be accepted or believed in, it just is. People don't question (as often or openly) atomic theory or cell theory. Evolution or the big bang shouldn't be any different. These theories are the best explanations given the evidence.

[What about creationism?]
It's bad science.
          Literal 24-hr/6-day creationism is simply not supported by the evidence. Does this mean I believe God had no hand in the creation of the universe as we know it? Of course not, I believe he did it.
          Science, for me, is discovering how. I and my Christian friends (who are also scientists) get this. When you learn about the complexity of the human body alone, it's staggering. It's not mere chance it turned out the way it did but the result of a beautiful, intricate process resulting in what we see today.

[Um, okay?]
Let's try a metaphor
          I am writing a story [that I won't go into much detail now]. In that story has [for lack of a better explanation], a god. That "god" has this tile array [much like dominoes standing up] that he has set in place. Every tile in that array represents an action and/or reaction. The first tile was pushed and everything was set in motion.
          That's how I see it. God’s hand is in every one of those actions and reactions. His plan is complex array: sequence of events, actions and reactions all leading to this moment which is, in turn, an event leading to something else further down the line.

[So, now what?]
In conclusion
          We weren't there in the beginning. We can't know for sure unless we were. Again, scientific theories say one thing. Right know that's what we know and what we're sticking to until another, better explanation comes along.
          My faith shouldn't be shaken by something as trivial as creation versus evolution or the big bang theory. If it is, then I've lose sight of what is important. What's important is that I believe in something greater than me, something good and it inspires me to be the best person I can be...and there are no laws against that.

The home stretch, in a round-a-bout way

Quiet Spring Break
          Spring break comes to end and classes begin again on Monday. My friends and peers are slowly returning. I'm sitting here wondering if my week was wasted. Monday I saw a movie but only after wasting about 45 minutes on the phone (toll free doesn't apply to my go-phone, over $4 wasted) with some guy in India trying to get recovery discs for my laptop. Avatar (again) because a friend hadn't seen it yet; it was okay. Tuesday I hung out with David. We looked at furniture, I picked up my glasses and went to our favorite hibachi grill with Katie and her family. Her birthday is next week. I should probably get her something. *shrug* Wednesday I dropped of the recovery discs (I'm glad they arrived quickly) and was able to pick up my laptop that afternoon (ha! after two weeks they actually do something quickly). Thursday my plans fell through. Friday they fell through again (same person but it wasn't anyone's fault). I made up a tentative fall schedule but it was only eleven credit hours. I planned out an alternate schedule that gets me at thirteen hours. I'll talk more about those in a bit. At least I took care of a friend last night, he was having car trouble. It was nice to be useful after what feels like a rather unproductive week.

About college and learning
          This fall will be the start of my fourth year at UCA, sixth in college total. I came to UCA with an associate of art degree that was basically everything I did in high school in half the time but paid money for it. I hardly remember any of it. UCA has been a huge learning experience, not just academically. I really struggled to learn how to study and to find the motivation to study but I think I'm finally getting a grip on it. Socially, I've been learning a lot the things most people learned in high school. Moving to Arkansas was a good thing but somewhere along the way I stalled out. I blame the depression. I'm not very well socialized to begin with (my rather introverted nature makes it difficult) but such a sickness of the mind stunted my social and emotional development. So between sixteen and nineteen I learned and grew very little.
          I look back on those high school (especially first two college) years with some mixed feelings. I see a lot that was wrong in how I thought and felt about things but I've gained some wisdom in reflecting on those years. Romantically speaking, I didn't date anyone. Sure, there were a couple guys in junior high (back in Oklahoma) that I called boyfriends (not at the same time) and the feelings were mutual but that was it. I was attracted to a few people in Arkansas but I didn't have any relationships. There was internal drama over Alex (it was horrible) and, before that, even a little over this guy named Daniel (I see some of how he is now and I wonder how I ever could have been attracted to him). I found what I now call my "love diary". It has a couple entries on our road trip to NYC after I graduated high school. The rest are all about the guys of interest in my life. It's interesting to see I only wrote about five guys and how the entries reflect on my state of mind.
          Most were about Alex. It was like reading from the diary of a junior high girl and her unhealthy obsession with him. I wrote comments in the margins, half humorous, mostly insightful. It was good to relive and paint over those memories with a more objective and positive light. The next few were about a friend here at UCA. After him was a single entry about choosing between Matt and Derek. I wrote a follow up about it (with some reflecting) before adding another entry about one of my brothers in Christ and concluding now is the not the time for that kind of love.
          Time changes things so quickly. A little over a year ago, I'd decided I was ready to love because I no longer felt I needed a boyfriend. I'm not as hopeless broken as i once was. My view has altered some since then. I've come to the conclusion that while I've been open to the possibility of a relationship, I'm not ready for one. That doesn't bother me. I have issues to work through and school is more important. I'm deeply satisfied with my friendships (most of which are with men--yes you're men now, not boys). It'd be unfair to me and him; trying to balance our involvement in each others' lives, working through my personal problems and school all at once.
          I spend a lot of time analyzing myself: my thoughts, actions, motivations...my nature. It's been amazing to learn about myself. I know how I work and I'm learning more all the time. I refuse to regret my past and insist on learning from it. I'm rambling now. Moving on!

Scheduling Challenges
          So I'm planning out my classes for the fall and updating my degree plan. Having done all my gen eds makes padding my classes difficult, I have to pad with time rather than easy courses. I've finally learned that with my double major I shouldn't try for the standard fifteen credit hours but something closer to the twelve hour minimum to be full time. This is due to the fact that my classes actually entail more time than I'm given credit for (not that other majors aren't time-intensive). My science classes all have labs (with few exceptions) and my education classes always involve field work (usually observation). Factor in the time I need to study and the fact that I want to TA for a few labs, suddenly fifteen hours is a bit excessive and twelve is perfectly reasonable. I mentioned earlier I'd made up a couple tentative schedules, one with eleven credit hours and another with thirteen. So what do you think?