All Giza Pyramids in one shot. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have posted many articles on my views of a Rational Universe and a Rational God.  I have revealed on articles such as Autism and the Lack of Spirituality the reasons why I am convinced that the universe is rational.  Science is the proof that the universe is rational since it uses the rational patterns found in math to model and predict the behavior of the physical world.  Science could not exist if the universe was not rational.

Strangely enough science, more specifically astronomy, had its beginnings in religion when man strove to understand the world around him.  He noticed that the world was constantly changing but one thing that did not seem to change were the positions of the stars in the night heavens.  There were a few stars that seemed to slowly move, which he called the wanderers (our planets), but otherwise stares seemed to represent constancy, an absolute that could be relied upon to always be the same.  Ancient civilizations made up mythical stories about their Gods related to groups of these seemingly fixed stars we now call constellations.  He also noticed that the shadow of the sun seemed to follow very precise patterns that coincided with seasonal changes related to the planting of crops for civilizations that were agricultural and stayed in one place.  The Mayans and Incas in central and south America were prime examples of such civilizations.

Later philosophy developed in more advanced civilizations to explain what life was about.  And the naturally sciences evolved as part of this.  Some of the most famous among such philosophers was Plato, Aristotle, and Archimedes.  We still use Archimedes principle to calculate buoyancy.   Geometric patterns fascinated Arabs inspiring them to develop geometry and geometric theorems.  Many ancient ruins and relics such as the great pyramids in Giza, Egypt, and the ancient Greek ruins such as the Parthenon in Athens, Greece and Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England required a great deal of understanding of science, mechanics, and engineering to build these huge structures thousands of years ago.  Much of their knowledge of how they built these enormous structures has been lost but the results of their genus is apparent today.  Again religion was the impetuous for developing the science and engineering for building these amazing structure out of stone meant to last forever still stand thousands of years later.  How many modern structures made today can we say will last as long?

Modern science as it exists today is probably less than 200 years old.  Yet reflect upon the billions of seeming miracles it has managed to produce to improve our quality of life as well as destroy it.  Modern science has touched every aspect of life from the foods we eat to the cars we drive to the houses we live and so on.  There is little in life that has not been altered, enhanced, or manufactured that does not involve a great deal of science.  We advertise products to incorporate the latest scientific knowledge ranging from cosmetics to medical devices and medication.  Science has deciphered the genome and much of the genetic code and now understands its expressions.  Man has cloned animals and spliced genes and engineered both plants and animals to express certain properties, not all beneficial to man or nature.  The creation of entire complex living organisms engineered by man is not far away.

Things once considered the exclusive rights of God are now being done by man.  This could not happen unless the physical universe was rational.  The math, science, and engineering that went into each of these inventions could not have happened if the physical world could not mathematically be modeled.  This is overwhelming proof beyond dispute of the power of science, and its great understanding of our physical and very rational world.

Though science has it roots in religion most religious people consider it separate from it and there are fundamentalists who consider science in many instances violating God’s will.  But pure science is about revealing the truth of the physical world.  If God it truly omnipotent and omniscient then it would seem that if man revealed many of the Creator’s secrets then it was his intentions all along to allow man to make such discoveries otherwise he would not have endowed man with such powerful intellect.  To say that this was shortsighted of God is to admit that he is not omniscient.  Note that omniscience contains the work ‘science‘ as its root word.  This is no coincidence because science means knowledge and omniscience means the knowledge of all there is to know.  So the Creator must have known  man’s capability to discover the workings of the created physical world.  Given enough time science may approach omniscience of the physical world.  Does this imply that science will ultimately discover if there is a God or not?  This is a question that fascinates me as an agnostic.  At present this is more of a philosophical question because I know I will not live long enough to find out.  Science obviously has a long ways to go before it approaches omniscience of the physical world.

But one thing I am convinced of is that the physical world is rational and discoverable by man through science and that if there is a Creator then that Creator meant that man should use his over-sized brain and intellect to reveal its many truths and hopefully be wise enough to put most it to overtly good use.  But man gives limited signs of being very wise in the use and treatment of the physical world he tries to control.  Obviously intellect does not necessarily  instill wisdom.