The God and Science Discussions pt1

Impressive title, no?

ok. Some ground rules.

1. Notice at the top of my sidebar there is a Kind Blog icon. If you are not up to speed on this click on it and read it. I apply this to my comments as well.
2. I will delete comments. I will never censor a person's opinion but I will censor the way you decide to express it. If I delete your comment I will email you explaining why and invite you to express your opinion again in a more respectful way.
3. If you read an offensive or rude comment please do not respond to it. I will be checking my comments frequently and the comment will be removed. I expect all discussion to be respectful and not to give time or energy to people who are too lazy to express themselves well.
4. These are open discussions. Meaning open to anyone of any faith or non-faith to talk openly with the intent of a good conversation and a hope of understanding each other better. Respectfully worded questions are encouraged and anyone is free to answer them.
   
5. This is not a debate. It is a discussion. There are plenty of places to debate this stuff. If you feel the need to prove your point the correct one, I can point you to those websites. This is not one of those websites.
6. If you don't like these rules. That's fine. You can go say mean things about me on your own blog.

I grew up going to church every Sunday. We said grace before every meal, made all of our sacraments, went to religious school from grades 1-12. My Faith Community is one of those quiet, personal communities. Faith was private and not discussed much. But, still you knew it was there. The rituals and rites never felt empty.

My father is a bio-chemist/bio-geneticist/something new that I can't remember. He is well respected in his field and has been a part of some discoveries and developments that touch every one of our lives on a daily basis. He has always loved the hands on aspect of his work and never cared for the academia or the frankly corporate side of the science world. He never felt the need to go beyond his B.S. in biology.

My mother is a teacher. She was head of the Science Department at my rigorous college-prep high school. She has her M.A.T. in Physics. Her students always loved her fun, passionate classes and her love of the subject.

As a child, I was brought out to explore my world through hiking, canoing, and camping. There was never any piece of nature that was too small to explain and point out, from different types of rocks, to sediment patterns, from nesting habits, to the parts of a flower. Nothing was ever judged disgusting or frightening. We caught snakes and held spiders. We'd spread out our blankets in the middle of the night to watch meteor showers or got out the telescope to see astrological special events like Haley's Comet. (We still email each other when we see that something is coming around.) Questions were always answered. Never shushed or belittled.

We regularly went to museums and watched episode after episode of Nova and other documentaries. Our development was filled with our world and my parents instilled a strong sense of respect and guardianship. We were taught to never disturb a habitat, always view ourselves as a guest, and never, ever anthropomorphize.

Although they never came out and said it, it was given that we were thanking God for his creation by taking the time to appreciate it. It never occurred to me that our exploration was somehow explaining away God. Of course the night sky was full of God's majesty as was the tiny colorations of the Libellulidae family of dragonfly . I was honestly shocked when I got to college and realized there was some weird culture war between science and religion. It just didn't make sense to me. It still doesn't. I still don't really understand the animosity.

I understand the twitching and itching over biomedical ethics. I do get that. Trust me. I had plenty of reservations when we did IVF. We ended up with 19 frozen embryos. We had promised each other and God we would give life a chance to however many embryos we created. Well, 21 kids?! And the connection to these embryos is inexplicable. One of the hallmarks of an IVF baby book is a picture of Junior as a 3+ cell embryo. And when they are transferred you start loving and hoping and wishing everything you've got on the wee little fellers. You give them nicknames and cheer them on. Then you look at the resulting children and their faces flash before your eyes when you think of those embryos. (Well, I know not everybody's, but for lots of us.) I was so attached to mine that when I got the call from the lab that the batch they were thawing was arresting, I demanded they transfer them immediately because it broke my heart and I wanted them to be snug and warm and...with me.

So when the time came to make our decision, we sat down and talked to a priest friend who specializes in medical ethics. After discussions with him we decided that 6 embryos we had that were already in the 6+ cell stage had to be given a chance. But, we didn't have to worry about the 13 that were still in the 2pn stage. The nuclei, and therefor the DNA, had never merged so the identity of the potential person never formed. Splitting hairs? You betcha. (It turns out to not have mattered because none of the embryos every resulted in another child.)

But, to think that science cut out God was never even something I considered. I mean, God is so much bigger. Science, for me, was looking at the glory and love of God through the world he gave me to live in and explore.

By the time I was a senior in high school, my dad had stopped going to church with us. I didn't know why and since I had the teenage radar of hypocrisy finely tuned, I asked him. His answer was a long time ago, but I understood it as this. "I don't find God at church. I spend more time in awe of God and his creation when I'm in the lab than I do for 1 hour on a Sunday." He said every time he broke down a protein or examined a genetic code he couldn't believe the precision and beauty of the way it was all put together down to the minutest level. Sure you can look at a landscape of the Rocky Mountains and say it beautiful. But it is layer after layer after layer of perfect symbiosis and intricate detail right down to the microorganisms breaking down the leaves of the forest. And I believe that though he wouldn't phrase it this way, he worships God everyday at his work.