Effect Without Cause

We had some serious wind this morning.  The roar of it moving through the maples and pines totally drowned out all other sounds.  But of greater interest was our resident Sharp-shinned Hawk.  He was hovering above me face into the wind and without a steady beat of his wings held his place without being blown away.   As an old pilot who has had his share of being blown all over the sky I was amazed.  How could he do it?  By what configuration of his wings could he maintain position in that fierce wind?

My mind immediately went to Job 39, a magnificent poetic rebuke by God, where God asks Job question after question about nature.  In verse 26 God asked, “Does the hawk take flight by your wisdom and spread its wings towards the south?”  My hawk was heading west but the question was the same.  My wisdom was confounded.

There is so much that confounds me.  The list grows longer with the passing of years.  For so many things I have run out of logic and have surrendered to the truth that there is an eternity of things yet to learn.  Stephen Hawking, physicist and mathematician, has, after a lifetime of inquiry, stated there is effect without cause.  There was no beginning to the universe.  There was no first cause.  It just is.   I am fascinated because it seems to my feeble intellect that he finally has said what Christians have been saying about the creator God.  He had no beginning.  He just is.  And because He is, He intelligently designed us.

We have been accused of not being scientists but metaphysicians.  Now both Hawking and we are positioned by some kind of faith.  We are both in the same camp – ALMOST.

Written by Roger Bothwell on March 3, 2016

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