Early this morning, many were agog over the once in a lifetime event of the super blue blood moon.
Since time immemorial, men have looked up in the skies and have always been intrigues by two questions: Where did we and all this awesome beauty come from? Where is all of this leading to?
For modern science, through the power of human reason, everything that exists came from the Big Bang and that the universe will keep on expanding and will exist forever. As such, many scientists believe that God is not necessary to explain why things exist. Therefore, He does not exist. Many scientists today are either agnostics or downright atheists.
Science has essentially answered the two enduring questions of humanity as HOW questions. How did the universe come about? (through the Bid Bang) Where will it eventually go? (it will likely go on forever.)
But these answers do not address the WHY questions. With reason, man has been able to come up with knowledge and wisdom about our universe. But aside from reason, men have other faculties or capacities for acquiring knowledge and wisdom. We have out imagination and emotions. These affective faculties lead us to truth, knowledge and wisdom that reason may not be capable of. I love the quote, “The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.”
And it is often the heart and our feelings that enable us to answer the WHY in our lives. Scientists and technologist deal with the HOW questions. But it is the poets, artists and theologians who help wrestle with the WHY questions in our lives.
Somewhere down the road, these two approaches eventually meet up and converge. In the Big Bang theory, scientists posit a singularity where time and space, as we experience them, do not exist. That is eternity – the Eternal Now, the void that sacred writings talk about. And the Spirit of God was hovering over this void. The Spirit simply was, is and will be. The name that God gave for Himself in answer to the question of Moses. And then, God said, “Let there be light.” The Big Bang.
Why are we here? Because God willed it.
Where are we going to? We are going back to our Source.
We do not really need faith to believe in God. We know it in our deepest self that He is.
(Thanks to Dorin Panescu for allowing me to use his awesome photo.)