I’m one of those rare exceptions to the rule when it comes to science and God. The more I learn about creation through science, the closer I am drawn to our Creator. Throughout my life, whenever I have learned something really interesting about our universe, my response has been “OK God, that’s pretty cool.” While science offers up explanations about “how” things work, it doesn’t answer the “why” questions.
Music is a great example. Physics explains how music works by measuring the frequency of vibrations. Middle C on a piano has a frequency of 261.626 Hz. Math can also tell us how different notes combine together to form chords. But science can’t explain why we like music. It can’t explain why some music makes us feel happy, and other music makes us feel sad. Evolution can’t explain why we developed this appreciation for music and our drive to create music. Even songbirds make music, and science will tell us they developed this for attracting mates, but why do songbirds use combinations of notes that sound musical? Why not just a single note or two or three random notes? Why do dairy cows produce more milk if classical music is played?
I found a video on youtube that is part of a science series taken from the World Science Festival in 2009. This series is about “Notes and Neurons” and the scientists are discussing theories about our reaction to melody and rhythm, and whether it is hard-wired into our brains or part of our cultural experience. A musician named Bobby McFerrin shows how universal this appreciation for music is. Watch and listen to this clip, and hum along if you can.
Remember, this is a “science” festival, not a music festival. The audience is made up of other scientists and science enthusiasts, and yet they somehow intuitively know what that next note should be in the scale. I’m sure most of them don’t know what the pentatonic scale is by name, but they know the sounds of the notes. And as Bobby indicates, he does this all over the world with the same result. The implication is that our appreciation of music is hard-wired into our brains. But they don’t really explain why it is hard wired. If you want to hear the whole presentation you can go to http://www.worldsciencefestival.com/video/notes-neurons-full
“That’s pretty cool, God. Show me more.”
Jac
Thanks for this post Jac! When I was in highschool and my faith was weak I struggled a lot about how science and God could go together. Thankfully, God took me on a journey and over time I realized how it is impossible to have creation in all it's complexity without God and how the whole field of science would not exist without God revealing the mysteries of his creation to us. Now my response to new scientific discoveries is similar to yours "Wow, that's really awesome, show me more of what you made and how it works!" There were definitely some days in the lab where we figured something out about one little protein (out of the 30,000 estimated to be inside every cell) and thought we were great, but in the back of my mind I thought, "God, this is so complex, there is no way it could have happened randomly...thank you for showing us this little detail!"
ReplyDeleteHave you ever watched this video by Louie Giglio about the protein called laminin?
If not, it's worth the watch (and everyone reading this comment should watch it too!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e4zgJXPpI4
Ashley
Thanks Ashley. We have the Louie Giglio DVD (two of them actually) in our church library, if anyone wants to borrow them.
ReplyDeleteAlso the science lessons in the Truth Project have some interesting animations showing how complex life is at a cellular level - I can't imagine how anyone could think that something so complex and so tiny could have happened without a Grand Organizing Designer.
Jac