One of the pleasures of being a post-doc is to see the next generation of scientist enter graduate school, wrestle with classes and exams and research, and achieve their Ph.D. A part of this, which doesn’t always happen, is also the personal struggle. In high school, I was certain that they purpose of science was to understand God’s creation, and thus to bring us closer to the creation and the creator. In college, I became much more religious early on, attending higher services at Yale than I had in my New England rural protestant churches. However, mid-way through college I turned away from organized religion. Hell, I even wrote a novel called “Mitre” (which will NEVER see the light of day) which dealt with the struggle of an outcast family in 17th-century New England to find a new life while overcoming the body of the church to achieve a real connection to God.
For many, the struggle doesn’t exist. For many others, that struggle lasts a decade, or a lifetime. Confronting data in the lab, bringing to bear the full power, beauty, and excellence of the scientific method, can sometimes make you also confront what you encounter in your personal religious life. The opposite is also true, and in some cases the struggle leaves people unwilling to continue in science or in religion.
Belief is intensely personal, and an understanding of God and scripture is often arrived at with much pain, both to oneself and to the personal beliefs of those around them. Reconciling that with a life in science is not necessarily easy. In my case, I have chosen to forego the trappings of organized religion to seek a more personal closeness to the universe through a relationship with nature, both in its wild forms and in the laboratory. For others, they bring both aspects of religion and science to bear on the same problems. I have found that an acute mind, on which perhaps I don’t possess, is needed to bring the same intellectual rigor to spiritual matters and to scientific matters.
I have recently had the pleasure of reading through a several-part series on Global Climate Change, written by a friend and colleague of mine. He is a graduate student in physics, devoted to the odd particulars of elementary particles, his faith, his community, and his government. I would encourage anyone looking for a well-written piece on a topic of current importance, combining the best elements of science and religion, to look no further than his blog. Below are the links to the parts of his series:
http://christianphysicist.blogspot.com/2007/07/climate-change-and-truth-introduction.html
http://christianphysicist.blogspot.com/2007/08/climate-change-and-truth-christian.html
http://christianphysicist.blogspot.com/2007/08/climate-change-and-truth-science.html
http://christianphysicist.blogspot.com/2007/08/climate-change-and-truth-politics.html
http://christianphysicist.blogspot.com/2007/08/sound-science-demands-moral-response.html
You can find his blog at http://christianphysicist.blogspot.com/
