Grains of sand, stars in the sky

Disclaimer - I promise not to make every post overtly Christian. My faith is so important to me, but at the same time I don't want this blog to be considered inaccessible to nonbelievers. That said, the inspiration for this post came from when I read the Bible this morning.

I am reading through Genesis and got through this passage this morning: 

I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore.

What would you rather have? Offspring as numerous as the stars in the sky or as numerous as the grains of sand on the earth? Which is a bigger number? This is a classic exercise in the difficulty in describing big numbers. We just aren't equipped to fathom the difference between big and huge and absurdly huge and holy Batman that's a big number huge. 

So which is bigger? Surprisingly, there are more stars out there than grains of sand on this earth. Proof? Carl Sagan said it. :)

This blogger (http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/~gmackie/billions.html) estimates there are "2000 billion billion grains of sand". That's 2 x 10²¹ or 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 grains! A Yale astronomer (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/12/01/the-estimated-number-of-stars-in-the-universe-just-tripled/) estimates there are 300 million billion billion stars, or 3 x 10²³ or 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars. According to these estimates, there are one hundred and fifty stars per grain of sand on the earth. Yeah. I'll say it again.

There are one hundred and fifty stars PER grain of sand on earth. Mind = blown.

Going back to the Genesis quote, this means that it was entirely superfluous for the angel of the Lord to mention the number of sand grains. Come on! Either that or a ton of stars were made in the past several thousand years. In case you couldn't see my face as I constructed this post, that was sarcasm.

I'm going to now collect a bunch of sand, because apparently it is a rarer thing than stars. By a lot.

Science and Faith

Welcome to my blog! Thank you so much for visiting. I highly encourage you to send me questions and comments over this site. I'd like for this to be more like a conversation than a static interface filled with self-indulgent musings on our cosmos.

To begin, I'd like to focus on a question that I get fairly often: "as a science teacher, how do you manage your belief in Christ with your belief in science?" Many people see this as a dichotomy, a one-or-the-other thing where you can't possibly merge the two. Personally, I find no problem whatsoever and would argue that my belief in science enhances my religious faith.

I do believe that God exists and that, ultimately, He is the creator of our universe. At the same time, I believe firmly that there is no scientific or logical proof of God's existence. I go by faith and faith alone. I feel that most of the perceived conflict between religion and science occurs when people try to argue for a scientific proof for or against God. Why is there this need to apply scientific arguments to a completely non-scientific entity, religion? Science is conducted by taking observations through our 5 senses or through technology we have developed to enhance our 5 senses (telescopes that can see non-visible forms of light, microscopes, DNA analysis, etc.). How can we possibly use our senses to describe God? He is beyond sense perception. End of story.

Furthermore, there is perceived conflict when people interpret the Bible completely literally, despite the fact that much of the text is meant to be allegorical. Was there a flood that covered the earth that 2 animals of every kind survived by being on Noah's ark? Did this literally happen? Ultimately, I don't know, though there is no physical evidence to support this having happened, at least on a global scale. There are all sorts of problems for species surviving with only 2 pairs of genetic material. There are also problems such as how did Noah feed every species on the planet for over 200 days? How did they not eat each other or die from rampant disease in such a small place? Moreover, how did they live back then if there were no NHL games? I think it's problematic to try to explain stories such as this in a scientific context. I consider this to be a worthwhile tale, but I don't think it is worthwhile to argue the specifics of the story to be fundamentally, physically accurate. 

All of this does not go against God. The fact that we can't prove His existence does not mean he doesn't exist. If God clearly existed and appeared to us every day, we wouldn't have need for faith. The game would change completely; we would no longer have to be faithful, we would essentially be forced to accept this religion. If God wakes me up every morning, I would take Him for granted. I believe there is a purpose for God's mystery and for His logical elusiveness. Lately in my life, there have been many tiny coincidences which have given me a lifetime of reason to believe in His existence. The path I have taken has not always been filled with 100% belief, but my path has made me who I am and I wouldn't change it for anything. 

One last thought. I commented earlier that my experience with science has enhanced my religious faith. I see doing science as a way to gain small insight into God and into his creation. The majesty of our natural world only grows greater and greater with time. Having love for our amazing auroras, our splendid spiral galaxies, and our boundless black holes makes me teem with excitement and wonder. I thank God every day for giving me another 24 hours to explore His creation.