“So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” Those famous and familiar words from the opening paragraphs of the Holy Scriptures were in my mind last summer as I found myself surrounded by about 3 dozen human bodies all lying cold and lifeless in a basement room of a local medical school. The previous day, I had given a lecture to 150 doctors about the spiritual aspects of their work, and now I had joined them in some of their continuing education at an anatomy lab. For a couple of hours I watched and listened as they practiced their craft on human cadavers. And the conversations we had with each other were fascinating. In the midst of my own crash course about skin elasticity and facial nerves and a whole host of other amazing bits of information about the human animal, the presence of a “man of the cloth” elicited quite a variety of responses and questions.

Most of the doctors in the course were on the young side, while the various faculty members were more in my age category. That almost got me into serious trouble at the lab that day. Like everyone else, I was required to wear a white lab coat. And so I shouldn’t have been surprised when one of the young doctors turned to me to ask my advice on how best to suture a skin flap on the face of a cadaver that had already seen quite a lot of practice and experimentation. I was tempted—for about half a second—to give an answer, but my better judgment prevailed and I quickly referred her to a real physician. I did not shy away, however, from the theological questions that were tossed my way. Some of the young docs were quick to tell me that they could not comprehend the human body without believing in a divine Creator who made it. Others confessed their honest questions about a Creator-God. And a couple told me they didn’t really believe in God, but that they were still quite impressed with the human body as an amazing machine. Most of them asked me what I thought about the lab experience, and many were eager to chat about things like life and death and the meaning of life. The lesson I learned that day was that there is nothing quite like the mystery of life and death to force you and me to ask the big questions. When you are surrounded by the mortal remains of so many people, the questions take on a special urgency.

You know the big questions. From where did everything come? Is there a God? What is the origin of humanity? Does everything that exists have a meaning or purpose? Is there more to reality than just what we can see and observe? If there is a God who made everything, how and when did he do it? Where do you and I fit in the grand scheme of things? Do our lives have any meaning? Where does science fit in and what can it tell us about where we came from and how?

Perhaps the biggest of all the big questions is the question of whether or not there is such a thing as God. If there is, then that will have a huge influence on how we answer all the other big questions. If there is not, there will be a similar huge influence, except in a very different direction. The question of whether God exists or not is very much debated these days, and even more controversial is the related question of what kind of God this God is, if he in fact does exist. Though most people in the world profess to believe in God, there is a small but growing group that does not believe in a Divine Being of any sort. They believe that the only thing that exists is what we can observe and know with our various senses. They believe that any meaning in life is generated by human will and desire. They claim that their completely atheistic viewpoint is the only truly rational and verifiable position. They believe that the entire universe is the result of a grand cosmic accident, and that human life itself is merely the result of millions of years of evolutionary trial and error.

Over against this atheistic perspective is the theistic perspective, which is eloquently and simply stated in Genesis. God exists, Genesis tells us. God created everything, including humankind. And this God has a purpose and plan for his creation. But is there any reason, any rational cause, for our believing that this is true?

Almost 6 years ago it was announced that scientists had finally managed to create a map of the human genome, which is the genetic code of life. The human genome consists of all the DNA of our species. The text of this code is 3 billion letters long and is written in a four-letter code. To read each bit of this code at the rate of one bit per second would take thirty-one years. To print this code in regular font size on regular paper would result in a book the height of the Washington Monument. One of the two scientists most responsible for constructing this information was Francis Collins, who last year published a book about his belief in God entitled The Language of God.ⁱ Collins—one of the world’s preeminent scientists—believes that belief in God can be completely rational and that faith in God can be completely complementary to the principles of modern science. In this regard he is in the minority, as scientists go, but he makes a compelling case for the faith that you and I profess is true. Collins is not the first or the only person to make the case, but he certainly adds an important and credible voice to the debate between those who believe there is a God and those who don’t. In his book he reviews some of the major historic arguments for and against the existence of God, and I’d like to briefly look at them here.

Let’s consider 3 crucial arguments in the discussion about the existence of God. The first has to do with what is called the Moral Law. In every human society there is an unwritten code of moral conduct that simply exists in the collective consciousness. Some things are right and others are wrong. There is some disagreement over fine points, but in general, the Moral Law is highly consistent across cultures and across time. Purely atheistic science would lead us to believe that there really is no such thing as a higher Moral Law, that all morality is merely the result of the evolutionary process of natural selection. But certain aspects of the Moral Law, especially the altruistic aspect, wherein people are compelled to act against their own self-interest in deference to the needs of someone else, defy explanation by the theory of natural selection. The existence of a higher moral sense is evidence of a higher moral authority who stands outside the natural world and who gives meaning into the natural world. This is one piece of evidence for the existence of a Being who is outside the natural order, a being we can call God.

Let’s consider also what is called the Universal Longing for God. Every human culture records a desire in the human spirit for something higher and greater than everything else that can be seen and known by the natural senses. Human beings have a sense, a hope, a desire, for something outside ourselves and outside normal existence that is more powerful, more meaningful, and perhaps even more real, than what we normally experience. Purely atheistic science tells us that this wish is merely a human construct, something we have created for ourselves in order to give meaning to life. But, others point out that a universally experienced feeling and hope indicates that there is something real to be hoped for. Just as we have appetites and desires for food and security and even sexual relationships, all of which can be fulfilled in the real world, so we have a desire for a relationship with a Higher Being. It is illogical to assume that this one desire is purely fabricated while all the others are not. It is entirely logical, rather, to at least admit that the human desire for God indicates that there really is a God who is the subject of that desire.

Finally, let’s look at the process and theory of the beginnings of the universe. At the beginning of the last century, science assumed that there was no actual beginning to the universe and that there would never actually be an end to it either. And then, in 1929, through the work of Edwin Hubble, the idea came forth that the universe actually had a beginning point, what has come to be called the Big Bang. In what is now generally accepted scientific theory, about 14 billion years ago, the entire universe came into being in an instantaneous flash as one incredibly dense dot of matter exploded and expanded, giving rise to all the elements and physical properties and energies that comprise the universe. Science can tell us an awful lot about the nature of this physical world that was created in the Big Bang, but it cannot answer the one most crucial question of all: what was there before the Big Bang? Who or what made that tiny little dot of matter? Who or what made it explode? And why did it all happen in the first place? The most logical explanation for what was before the Big Bang is, simply put, God.

Along with these arguments for the existence of God, we must also look for a moment at the question of the origin of life, especially human life. When we look at the existence of the universe, we have to remember that existence itself is a highly improbable thing. Modern science tells us that in the initial Big Bang, tiny particles of matter and anti-matter collided together. For every billion particle pairs that collided and annihilated each other, one extra particle of matter existed, and from that one extra particle per billion, all matter was created. Was that an accident? Modern science tells us that the universe is expanding rapidly, but that if the rate of expansion were smaller by even one part in 100 thousand million million, or larger by even one part of similar size, the whole thing would have either collapsed in on itself or never been able to allow planets and stars to form. Was this an accident? Modern science tells us that the formation of the basic elements like hydrogen and helium was completely reliant on the nuclear forces that keep protons and neutrons together to form atoms, but that if these forces were even slightly different, the unique mix of elements that form the basic building blocks of life would never have existed. Was this an accident? Simply put, the existence of the universe and of life itself is so improbable as to be impossible, save for the possibility of an outside force that willed it and made it to be so.

Many people do not believe the science facts that I’ve just given you. They believe that Genesis tells us that God simply made everything about 6 thousand years ago. But Genesis is not a science book. It is a theology book. The authors of Genesis had no idea what modern science even is. What they did have, however, is a theological, spiritual understanding of the reality of the universe. Genesis answers the questions posed by the existence of a universal Moral Law in human beings, and the existence of the Universal Longing for the Divine. Genesis gives a plausible explanation for Who made the dot of matter that exploded into the Big Bang, and for why it was made to act in the precise way that it did so that the universe could be born and humanity could be born along with it. In that way, Genesis answers the questions that science can never answer. Nor should Genesis be forced to answer questions that it did not set out to answer.

What Genesis tells us, and what the Psalmist affirmed in the poetic language of the eighth psalm, is that there is a Being who is outside the natural world, who created the natural world, and who has a purpose for that world. The world as we know it is not ruled by capricious gods whose irrational decisions control everything we do. It is ruled by a God of love and grace, whom we have come to know most fully in the person of Jesus, the Christ. The world as we know it has value and meaning, and into its very structure God has built natural laws that determine much of what happens in the world. Because the world is rational and structured, science itself is made possible. God himself has given us the means whereby we can begin to understand the way he made all things. The natural world has clues within it as to the larger purpose that God designed for it. That purpose has to do with God’s desire to create free creatures like ourselves who can respond to his grace and love with our own grace and love, and in that relationship to experience profound joy and delight. The universe is not just a big pile of matter and energy; rather, it is a creation. You and I are part of that creation, creatures, as it were. As creatures made by the Creator, we can only find our meaning and purpose and understanding of reality within the context of the Creator himself. There is a God who is good, and God’s creation is good, too. Science helps us understand that creation, but it is only theology that can truly help us understand the Creator.

Well, I’ve just taken you through some very heavy theology. And we’ve barely scratched the surface when it comes to talking about the really big questions. What’s the bottom line? The bottom line is that I believe there need be no fundamental disagreement between faith and science, between the affirmations of Genesis and the principles of modern scientific thought. Both sides speak on different planes about different aspects of the universe, both seen and unseen. The existence and activity of God is the best possible answer to some questions that science simply cannot address. But that doesn’t mean that science is irrelevant. No, science is telling us much about the way God made the universe to work. Put together, both disciplines can help us find and create a better world, the kind of world that God had in mind in the first place. When the human genome was revealed to the world, it was said that we finally had a glimpse of the language of God. With all due respect to the science community, people of faith have been learning that language for a very long time.

Amen.

ⁱ Free Press, Simon and Schuster, New York, 2006.