Home | The Religious Method for Studying God as Contrasted to the Scientific Method for Studying Matter |
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Much is made of the scientific method, observation, hypothesis, experiment, and theory. I would like to propose a religious method for studying God, just as the scientific method is used for studying material objects.
Actually the method itself is from Jesus, Luke 11:9, "Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you." This translation is from The Jerusalem Bible. To further paraphrase it for our purposes, ask for the religious knowlege you need and it will be given to you, perhaps through being given the will or at least the inpulse to carry out a reasonable search. Search knowing that God will assist you in your search, guiding you to the knowledge that you need to please God and avoid seperation from him. Finally, when you have found God that he will not reject you but with proper repentance and conversion will accept you. Or as Jesus more poetically put it, "knock and the door will be opened to you." Method Determined by the Object of StudyThe difference between this religioius method and the scientific method is related to what is being studied. We use microscopes to study the small, and telescopes to study the large. It is common sense to match the method of study to the object of study.It would be silly to ask a beaker of water to reveal it secrets, or think it will actively help you find them. But these expectations are very appropriate when you are trying to find an all powerful, all good, and all knowing God. On the other hand God may not choose to react exactly the same way each time you preform an experiment on him and in fact he is under no obligation to react at all to your experiment. God promises to help you find the truth, but that does not mean that you are allowed to define the means. The Path to the True PathWhat I have said above applies particularly to the individual's initial search for God. It is not ment to provide justification for those who want to create their own religion and deny the traditional sources of revelation. What Jesus is saying is that God will lead us to the true path, he is not saying that we can have our own path all the way to Heaven. After all Jesus does say the path is straight and narrow. He does not say the paths are straight and narrow.So God may and often does lead us by our own individual path to the true path, but if God has given us a true church, which he has, a true religion, which he has, and true scriptures, which he has, then once we have found them we must follow them. Just as we trusted him to help us in our search for truth, we must trust him as we attempt to obey the truth. Whether we are being led in our own individual way
This is the begining of the third of three essays on science and religion. The other two are on miracles and science and methodological materialism.
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