In the Image of God?

Crossed

Scott’s Statement
John Keats accused Isaac Newton of “unweaving the rainbow” by revealing that all colors are contained in white light, which separates when shone through a prism. To Keats, explaining a rainbow with physics takes the poetry out of it. I find that the sensual experience of a rainbow is not diminished by understanding; rather, additional layers of unseen beauty are revealed.

Similarly, some people’s sense of significance is undone by considering naturalistic explanations of our origins. The unfathomable scale of the universe makes them feel small by comparison. People might seek to mitigate that feeling by regarding themselves as part of “God’s plan.” To be willfully designed and loved by an eternal creator is more comforting than to understand oneself as a fleeting product of unguided natural processes. This is one emotional underpinning of faith. 

I look at it this way: Matter adopts forms allowed by nature — under conditions in the nascent universe, in the cores of large collapsing stars, and in supernovae. A minuscule wisp of these materials coalesced into a solar system containing a planet having life-enabling conditions. Biological evolution in this rare place led to the emergence of a brainy social species with a complex suite of survival-enhancing responses. These responses constitute our conscious, emotion-rich, human experience. 

It is human-centric to declare that this chain of events is unlikely, since we cannot know what is probable in a universe we don’t fully apprehend. The math that makes me unlikely is the same as that which makes me possible. I find the seeming unlikeliness and smallness of our existence exulting, not minimizing. In the vastness of all time and space, to emerge from the unguided behavior of matter and energy as thinking, experiencing, conscious human beings, is a fact of overwhelming grandness. 

Deciding that man is made in God’s image is actually creating him in ours. This anthropomorphism results in a conception of nature that glosses over the actual mysteries of the universe we are lucky enough to have the capacity to contemplate.

Bill’s Response
Scott and the Psalmist look at our vast universe, and our apparent insignificance within, and marvel at the wondrous mystery of life. Scott’s critique of Keats is in order. People of faith need not fear the revelations of science. Understanding doesn’t diminish, only deepens, our experience of life. But, like Keats, Scott sees only in part. Scott understands the science of the rainbow; he appreciates the sensuality. What Scott misses is God’s promise. Faith isn’t a fearful response to “the vastness of all time and space.”  Faith is the grateful response to the one who gave us such an exalted place in creation. Like the Psalmist, Scott looks at the mystery and celebrates life. But, like Keats, he doesn’t see the many layers of unseen beauty in God’s promise.

Bill’s Statement
“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” (Psalm 8:3-4)

Psalm 8 is a hymn of praise to God’s glory, which can be seen in all God’s magnificent works. The glory of the heavens, the moon, and the stars, is but a reflection of God’s majesty. All creation proclaims God’s glory, but nothing more than human beings, who are created in the very image of God.

In response to the psalmist’s question of why God is even mindful of us, we hear we are made “a little lower than God, and crowned with glory and honor.” I’m not sure we will find a higher view of humanity that captures the humility of our being part of the created order. We are glorified not for who we are, but for what God has done for us. We are glorious because God is glorious, and we are created in God’s image.

Christians, and others who sing the psalmist’s hymn of praise, share a belief in the sanctity of human life. Because God’s glory is reflected in our very existence, because we are created in God’ s image. Human life is more than a byproduct of the evolutionary process; human life is sacred.

Apart from God, we are but a mass of cells, genes, and water, which happened to come together in a meaningful way. Over the eons, we’ve learned to walk upright and lost our tails, bringing about beauty and destruction in the process. But, at the end of the day, all we have is life.  To paraphrase the words of Ernest Becker, “We live to keep our stomachs alive.” The psalmist’s faith offers us something more.

Created in God’s image, our lives have meaning and purpose, which transcend our mere existence. We live to show the glory of God!

Scott’s Response
I know Bill and many other Christians feel appreciation and awe for the universe and the fact that we exist and are conscious in it. Christians often express the feeling by lavishing descriptions like “glory” and “majesty” onto a supernatural father figure inherited from a particular tribe’s creation mythology. The desire to have a place to direct one’s existential joy is common among the faithful.  But we needn’t attach it to such a mythology. There is an equally gratifying and more intellectually sound way to reflect upon this universe: Be moved by its beauty, which blooms against bleakness, and by its cosmic compliance with a mathematical order, but then pause. Stand at the edge of what we are presently able to know and enjoy the mystery of the yet-to-be known. 

Agree Statement: Scott and Bill agree there is much of which to be in awe in the universe, and that beauty may be experienced through understanding as well as through the senses.

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