"What could define God [is thinking of God] as the embodiment of the laws of nature. However, this is not what most people would think of that God," [Stephen] Hawking told [Diane] Sawyer. "They made a human-like being with whom one can have a personal relationship. When you look at the vast size of the universe and how insignificant an accidental human life is in it, that seems most impossible."
When Sawyer asked if there was a way to reconcile religion and science, Hawking said, "There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works"
(June 7, 2010: http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Technology/stephen-hawking-religion-science-win/story?id=10830164).
Very few reject the benefits or technological innovations (the works) that have their base in objective, critical observation and non-fallacious reasoning. This is true of the religious and the nonreligious. This can be seen at my church where very quickly new technologies are adopted to facilitate services. Science, in this sense, is not seen as antithetical to religion. Where the religious disagree with Stephen Hawking is with his statement “They made [God] a human-like being with whom one can have a personal relationship. When you look at the vast size of the universe and how insignificant an accidental human life is in it, that seems most impossible." The religious strongly disagree that human life is “insignificant and accidental.” But they do so not primarily based on authority, but on firsthand experience. It is an inner conviction based on experience with a life dedicated to love and empathy which seems to gather a whole definitive body of attitudinal and perceptual characteristics. There is a strong conviction—one almost can say a good paranoia—that we are not alone. There is a God who loves us and has a personal interest in us. This is primarily based on firsthand experience and a straightforward look at honest conviction, not at church or scriptural authority. These have a weak and tenuous hold as compared to firsthand experience. The nonreligious seldom appreciate this. They assume religious people are dupes of authority and essentially its fools.
John Wesley wrote: “I Felt My Heart Strangely Warmed”
In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.
What would kill religion is to substitute firsthand perception and conviction with secondhand hearsay and authority. That has seldom happened without dire and tragic results.
Science and religion are alike in their regard for self-control and respect for nature. The disciplines of science (objectivity, integrity, truth, and beauty) are also the disciplines of love embodied in religion. Very little separates science and religion except mutual misunderstandings of the essentials (whenever the misunderstandings exist, and they frequently do not in a practical matter).
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Science and religion are alike in their regard for self-control and respect for nature. The disciplines of science (objectivity, integrity, truth, and beauty) are also the disciplines of love embodied in religion. Very little separates science and religion except mutual misunderstandings of the essentials (whenever the misunderstandings exist, and they frequently do not in a practical matter).
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