When I was a young physics student shaking off the atheism I’d been raised with, one argument hit me like a revelation: the fine-tuning of the universe for life. The fundamental parameters of our cosmos—the mass of the electron, the strength of gravity, the cosmological constant—are dialed in with such exquisite precision that the most reasonable explanation is intentional design.

Astrophysicist Luke Barnes, one of the leading experts on this topic, points out that the Standard Models of particle physics and cosmology involve 31 fundamental constants and initial conditions. These aren’t derived from deeper equations; they’re free parameters we measure but can’t predict. Imagine a universe-generating machine with 31 dials, each capable of being set across a vast range of values. In our universe, they’re all turned to exactly the right settings to permit complex chemistry, stars, planets, and life.

Here are just a few striking examples:

• The cosmological constant (Λ): This controls the universe’s expansion rate. If it were larger by even a tiny fraction—roughly one part in 10¹²⁰—the universe would have expanded too rapidly for galaxies to form. Too small, and it might have re-collapsed long ago.

• The strength of gravity relative to the other forces: A slight increase, and stars would burn out too quickly or collapse into black holes. A slight decrease, and no stars or heavy elements would form at all.

• The masses of the up and down quarks: Tweaking these by small factors (e.g., increasing the down quark mass by a factor of ~3) would leave us with a universe of nothing but hydrogen—or worse, a sterile neutron-dominated cosmos with no chemistry possible.

• The electromagnetic force and nuclear forces: Their delicate balance allows stable atoms, long-lived stars, and the fusion processes that create the elements essential for life.

Barnes and others have shown that even modest changes in these (and many of the other parameters) don’t produce exotic universes teeming with alternative forms of life. Instead, they yield dead, boring, or violently inhospitable places: no atoms, no stars, no chemistry—nothing that could support any conceivable complexity.

We can picture those 31 dials. Turn even one just a hair off, and our life-permitting universe vanishes.

So how do we explain this astonishing precision? There are three main possibilities:

1. Chance

2. Necessity

3. Design

Chance says the universe could have had any configuration, but it just happened to hit this one. According to calculations within our current physics, the odds of randomly landing in the life-permitting range for these parameters are staggeringly low—on the order of 1 in 10¹³⁶ or worse for the combined “little question” of fine-tuning under our known laws. Physicists despise coincidences this monumental. No serious scientist shrugs and says, “We just got insanely lucky.” It’s not an explanation; it’s an evasion.

Necessity claims the laws of physics require these exact values—there was never any other option. But this doesn’t hold up. Nothing in the equations of the Standard Model or general relativity dictates the specific numerical values of these constants. They’re plugged in by hand; the theories work perfectly well with different numbers. As physicist Richard Feynman famously noted about the fine-structure constant (one of the force couplings), it’s a “magic number” with no deeper explanation from the laws themselves. If necessity were true, we’d expect a theory that derives these values uniquely. We don’t have one. Changing the dials doesn’t break the logical consistency of the laws—it just breaks the possibility of life.

That leaves design. Some Mind or Agent intentionally set the knobs to create a universe capable of supporting life. It’s the most straightforward, non-coincidental explanation.

Atheists often push back hard against this. When I posted about fine-tuning on X recently, the replies poured in—including some classics.

One common objection: “Of course the universe is finely tuned—if it wasn’t, we wouldn’t be here to observe it.”

This is the anthropic principle as a supposed defeater. It sounds clever, but it’s just a truism, not an explanation. Christian philosopher William Lane Craig illustrates why with a vivid analogy: Imagine standing before a firing squad of 50–100 expert marksmen, all aiming straight at your heart. They fire simultaneously. You open your eyes and realize you’re completely unharmed. Would you shrug and say, “Well, if they hadn’t missed, I wouldn’t be here to notice”? Of course not. The extreme improbability cries out for an explanation—perhaps the marksmen missed on purpose. The same applies here: the fact that we can only observe a life-permitting universe doesn’t make its existence any less surprising or in need of accounting.

Another reply I’ve heard twice now (it must be making the rounds): “Posting God as the explanation is epistemologically expensive.” In other words, invoking a complex, unproven God burdens us with too many assumptions compared to “simpler” naturalistic alternatives.

Fair enough—but what are those simpler alternatives? A multiverse where an infinite number of universes bubble up with random parameters, so we inevitably find ourselves in one of the rare life-permitting ones? Or the universe magically popping into existence from nothing, already perfectly tuned?

The multiverse sounds scientific, but Craig has leveled strong objections. An actual infinite multiverse leads to bizarre paradoxes (like the Boltzmann brain problem, where random fluctuations would produce isolated observers more often than ordered universes). It often requires even greater fine-tuning of the multiverse-generating mechanism itself. And it lacks independent evidence—it’s speculative, not predictive in a testable way. Positing unobservable infinities to avoid design more like special pleading and less like parsimony.

As for universes “popping into existence from nothing” with the right parameters… that’s not simpler than design. It’s magic dressed up in quantum jargon. If you reject God for seeming too “magical,” you can’t consistently embrace something far more ad hoc.

In his debate with Craig, theoretical physicist Sean Carroll suggested that a universe with very different parameters might still support some wildly different form of life—something we can’t even imagine. It was an intriguing thought. But Barnes has shown the problem: small tweaks to the dials don’t yield complex, interesting alternative universes. They produce sterile voids, featureless hydrogen soups, or rapid collapses where nothing enduring or complex can arise. Life of any kind—carbon-based, silicon-based, or exotic—requires stable complexity, and that narrow window is what’s astonishingly rare.

We’re left with the fine-tuning problem. Those who reject design keep searching for workarounds. But as a Christian, I’m not stuck. I see the universe as the work of a purposeful Creator—the same God in whom many of history’s greatest scientists believed. He crafted a cosmos with ends in mind, including (at minimum) a place where human beings could exist, where He could enter His creation in the person of Jesus Christ, and where an act of unimaginable love and sacrifice could reconcile us to Himself.

This explanation is not only elegant and parsimonious; it resonates deeply with the wonder I feel when I study physics. It’s why I left behind the atheism of my youth and devoted my life to following Jesus. The fine-tuning isn’t just interesting data to me, it’s a cosmic signpost pointing to the One who set the dials with care.

If you’re exploring these ideas and not yet convinced, I encourage you to dig deeper. Start with Luke Barnes’ papers on ADS and his excellent book with Geraint Lewis, A Fortunate Universe. The evidence is there, waiting to challenge your assumptions the way it once challenged mine.

If you enjoyed this piece on the fine-tuning of the universe, I have some great news to share.

I was honored to be interviewed for The Story of Everything, a stunning new documentary that explores the biggest questions in science: Where did the universe come from? Why is it so precisely calibrated for life? And what does the evidence from cosmology, physics, and biology really point to?

The film takes viewers on a cinematic journey through the cosmos and the intricacies of life, revealing the consistent signature of intentional design woven throughout nature—from the fundamental constants that make stars and galaxies possible to the elegant complexity inside every living cell. It features leading voices in science and philosophy, including Stephen C. Meyer, John Lennox, and others, and makes a compelling case that the universe isn’t an accident.

I appear in the film sharing my perspective as an astrophysicist—how the exquisite fine-tuning of the cosmos convinced me that our universe was crafted with purpose, and ultimately led me from atheism to faith in Christ.

The Story of Everything opens in theaters nationwide on April 30, 2026, with showings through May 6. It’s the kind of film that will hopefully inspire thoughtful conversations about science, origins, and meaning—perfect for believers and skeptics alike.

You can find tickets and more information at thestoryofeverything.film or at Fathom Entertainment.

If you made it this far—thank you—and liked my article, do me a favor and hit the like button below. This helps me understand which topics resonate with my readers, and it boosts my writing. There’s also a share button if you want to send it to a friend who’d enjoy the science-and-faith conversation. If you’re a free subscriber who would like to support my work, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription.

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I’m a huge fan of Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary. When I first picked up the book, I couldn’t decide whether to devour it in a single binge or stretch the experience out as long as possible. It’s exactly my kind of novel: nuts-and-bolts hard science fiction packed with detailed (and mostly accurate) science, an urgent high-stakes plot, a slightly goofy and deeply relatable protagonist, and an unexpected but profoundly moving friendship.

So when I sat down to watch the movie adaptation, I wasn’t sure what to expect. What I got was… interesting. Not at all what I anticipated.

Where the book is a straightforward first-person narrative, the film leans interpretive, artistic, tonal, and almost poetic. It’s not quite the pure tone poem of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (which I love beyond all reason), but it echoes 2001: A Space Odyssey—that groundbreaking sci-fi arthouse classic that tells a vast, complex story largely through visuals and music. If I hadn’t read the book first, I’m not sure I would have caught everything unfolding on screen. The movie is visually stunning, superbly acted, and features wall-to-wall music that I sometimes found intrusive in the theater. I’m looking forward to a second viewing at home, where I can fine-tune the balance between score and dialogue.

Warning: mild spoilers ahead.

The story centers on Dr. Ryland Grace, a biologist turned middle-school teacher, recruited by the enigmatic and powerful Eva Stratt (played with quiet intensity by Sandra Hüller). The Sun is dying, infected by an Astrophage parasite, and half of Earth’s population will be wiped out in a matter of decades unless a solution is found. The stakes could not be higher.

The film opens much like the book: Grace awakens from induced coma aboard the Hail Mary, an interstellar spacecraft hurtling toward the Tau Ceti star system. He has no memory of who he is or why he’s there. Through a clever, low-tech experiment, he realizes he’s in an environment with 50% more gravity than Earth. The narrative unfolds in two braided threads—Grace piecing together his mission in the present, and flashbacks revealing how he ended up on this one-way suicide trip.

He learns he’s racing to Tau Ceti, the only nearby star not yet fully consumed by Astrophage. His task: discover why, find a cure, and send it back to Earth. There were other crew members, but they didn’t survive the long sleep. Grace is alone—until he isn’t.

The movie’s three central characters—Grace, Stratt, and the alien Rocky—carry the emotional weight of the story. In the book, Stratt is cold, calculating, and almost villainous in her single-minded drive to save humanity, a kind of reverse-Thanos with godlike authority and a sharp tongue. The film softens her edges. Hüller brings a layer of melancholy and quiet regret that makes her more human without diluting her power. She does what must be done, but it clearly costs her.

One of the film’s most captivating scenes comes just before launch, when the team unwinds with karaoke. Stratt unexpectedly takes the mic and delivers a beautiful, haunting song. Later, when the full weight of her decisions is revealed, Hüller masterfully balances steely resolve with deep sorrow. Ethics classes will be debating Eva Stratt for years.

Then there’s Rocky.

The promotional materials make no secret of him, so I won’t either: Grace encounters an enormous alien vessel at Tau Ceti. What follows is one of the most delightful first-contact stories in recent memory. Rocky, the last survivor of a crew from the 40 Eridani system, is genuinely alien—a five-legged, spider-like rock creature with no face, who “sees” via echolocation and “speaks” in trilling musical notes. He’s an engineering genius whose skills perfectly complement Grace’s knowledge of biology and astrophysics.

The film (and Weir’s original story) handles Rocky with real respect. Unlike most sci-fi aliens who are basically humans with latex appliances glued to their faces, Rocky feels truly alien. Yet through ingenuity, patience, and humor, the two forge a deep friendship. They save each other’s lives. Rocky watches over Grace while he sleeps—a necessity for Eridian biology that Grace comes to find comforting. Their eventual parting carries genuine emotional weight, knowing the vast distances between their stars means they’ll never communicate again.

The resolution? You’ll have to experience it yourself—preferably by both reading the book and seeing the movie.

Visually, Project Hail Mary is a triumph. The practical sets and effects are breathtaking, with Rocky realized largely through puppetry rather than pure CGI—a choice that gives him tangible presence. Ryan Gosling delivers one of his strongest performances yet as Grace: funny, vulnerable, brilliant, flawed, and heroic in the most human way.

The movie has the crowd-pleasing energy of something like Top Gun: Maverick, but with a more contemplative, wonder-filled soul. It’s the kind of big-screen spectacle that reminds us why we go to theaters.

Documentary filmmaker Marcus Pittman stirred up discussion on social media by calling Project Hail Mary a Christian movie. He faced pushback—especially from some Christians—accustomed to overt “faith-based” fare that often prioritizes altar calls over artistic integrity. Pittman points to the symbolism: a man named Grace on a ship called Hail Mary, who sacrifices himself to save humanity; death-and-resurrection motifs; the two deceased crewmates echoing the thieves at Golgotha; the four canisters sent back to Earth with the power to save everyone like the four Gospels; even Rocky as “the Rock.”

Whether you read it as explicitly Christian or not, the film carries a powerful undercurrent of grace, sacrifice, and hope. The movie adds a quiet line from Stratt that I don’t remember reading in the book: when asked if she believes in God, she replies softly, “It’s better than the alternative.” In a massive blockbuster, that moment lands with surprising resonance. I still get chills when I think about it.

I relate to Pittman’s frustration with much of modern Christian entertainment. Too often it trades the difficult substance of faith for an easy veneer. As Tolkien scholar Ralph C. Wood observed, the best art can be “all the more deeply Christian for not being overtly Christian.” Tolkien himself refused to turn his epic into mere allegory, preserving the integrity of both story and witness.

That’s how seeds get planted. Growing up atheist in secular Canada, my only real exposure to Christian themes came through Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. They awakened in me a hunger for the spiritual that overt preaching never could have reached at the time. Good stories weave truth into the world subtly, beautifully, and memorably.

Project Hail Mary does exactly that. It’s a gorgeous, well-acted, scientifically grounded adventure with heart, humor, and a quiet but profound spiritual dimension. Whether you’re in it for the hard sci-fi, the unlikely friendship, the stunning visuals, or the deeper themes, it delivers.

Go see it on the big screen while you can. Then read (or reread) the book. Slowly, if you can. You won’t regret prolonging the experience.

If you made it this far—thank you!—and liked my article, do me a favor and hit the like button below. This helps me understand which topics resonate with my readers, and it boosts my writing. There’s also a share button if you want to send it to a friend who’d enjoy the science-and-faith conversation. If you’re a free subscriber who would like to support my work, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription.

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As an astrophysicist who’s spent years digging into the physics of the universe, I keep running into the same stubborn fact: the more I’ve learned, the harder it’s been to believe all of this is an accident. In fact, this is why I dropped my lifelong atheism in university and never looked back.

So, let’s talk about what I consider to be the five most compelling science-based reasons to believe in God.

1. Teleology — A fancy word for “the universe looks designed.” When I was an undergrad studying data for the Big Bang, everything I needed to answer my specific question—what was the chemistry of the very early universe before stars started cooking up heavier elements?—was conveniently in place. Too conveniently. A foolproof way to fingerprint every element and compound? Check. A smooth, powerful light source to backlight the most distant reaches? Check. An expanding universe that lets us rewind cosmic history just by looking at different wavelengths? Check. A transparent atmosphere so we can actually do the observations from the ground? Check. Laws of nature that don’t randomly change with time or place? Check. The list goes on. I literally could not have done the work unless dozens of these parameters lined up just right. It felt less like luck and more like an engraved invitation to explore the careful work of a transcendent Intelligence.
   

2. Beauty — The universe is flat-out stunning, and almost everyone agrees. In all my years I’ve met exactly one person who didn’t get excited over astronomical images, and that person was just a joyless oddball. We lose ourselves in shots of the Orion Molecular Cloud. We swoon over images of the Whirlpool Galaxy. Ancient people looked up at a sky thick with thousands of stars and decided it must be the home of the gods. But none of that beauty is required for our survival. It doesn’t give us any obvious evolutionary edge. It doesn’t even make us better people (well… maybe a little). Yet the cosmos is luxuriously, extravagantly, eye-poppingly beautiful. Even the math underlying the workings of the universe is beautiful. The only explanation that makes sense to me is that it’s the handiwork of a God who is even more luxuriously, extravagantly, eye-poppingly beautiful.
   

3. Fine-tuning — The fundamental constants and initial conditions of the universe—the strength of gravity, the electromagnetic force, the expansion rate right after the Big Bang—are dialed in to an absurdly narrow “Goldilocks” range. Nudge any of them even a tiny fraction and you don’t get atoms, stars, galaxies, or even a single living cell. The precision is so extreme that calling it “lucky” feels like a ridiculous cop-out. To me it looks intentional.
   

4. Enormity — Buckle up—this one gets weird. According to thermodynamics and quantum mechanics, it is overwhelmingly more probable that you are a single brain that just fluctuated into existence a second ago, complete with fake memories of this conversation, than that the entire 93-billion-light-year observable universe (with its galaxies, planets, and 10^30 living creatures on Earth alone) actually exists. That’s the Boltzmann Brain paradox. It’s not strictly impossible for the real universe to be here… but the odds are so lopsided that the most rational way to believe the universe we see is real (instead of your lonely brain hallucinating everything) is to say a God willed it into existence and keeps sustaining it.

5. Existence — Even a Boltzmann Brain needs an explanation. How would it begin to exist? How does anything begin to exist? The only things that don’t require an outside cause are (a) nothing, or (b) something that’s eternally self-existing. The Kalam Cosmological Argument puts it simply: everything else— that is, anything that begins to exist—has a cause. The universe began to exist, therefore it has a cause. That cause can’t be the universe itself, so it has to be something beyond, and something with agency (the ability to affect change) and will (the ability to consciously choose to affect change). And you can’t solve the problem by kicking the can down an infinite road of causes; eventually you need something eternal and self-existing. Sounds like God to me.

And there you have it, my top-5 science-based reasons for belief in God. These arguments don’t “prove” God exists in some scientific theory sense, but personally I’m convinced by any one of them—and the combined weight of all of them is impossible to ignore. These are the reasons I went from atheism to belief in God as a physics student, and why I continue to be confident in my beliefs.

If you made it this far—thank you!—and liked this article, do me a favor and hit the like button below. This helps me understand which topics resonate with my readers and it boosts my writing. There’s also a share button if you want to send it to a friend who’d enjoy the science-and-faith conversation. If you’re a free subscriber who would like to support my work, you can upgrade to a paid subscription.

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Most of us wrestle with uncertainty in one way or another. As a scientist, I’m driven to unravel as much as possible about the material world—it brings real comfort to (think we) know we’ve pieced together at least some of the universe’s workings. Yet I prefer at least some sense of mystery. A little unknown keeps discovery exciting. Without it, what’s left to chase?

But when it comes to my Christian faith, uncertainty feels different—less tolerable. From the comments and questions that flood my social media, I’m not alone. Believers and skeptics alike often crave ironclad answers about God.

We can know a great deal about God—through His Word, the patterns of history, proper science, prayer, personal experience, and more. Yet, despite our efforts, we eventually slam into a wall. He’s the Creator of everything: a cosmos bursting with hundreds of billions of galaxies and at least one planet overflowing with intricate life. He is the source of existence itself. His thoughts and ways tower so far above ours that some mystery is inevitable.

I’m (mostly) at peace with God’s mysterious side when life feels steady. But in dark times—like right now—I’m more like Job. I want explanations. I want to know exactly what He’s doing.

As some of you know, I’ve fought cancer multiple times over the past 15 years. I was considered disease-free since 2019—until this January, when my cancer markers suddenly spiked and a subsequent CT scan showed a large tumor pressing on one of my adrenal glands.

Sigh.

Back in the ring—for the fourth time.

I’m exhausted by it. Over a recent birthday lunch with a devoted sister in Christ—a friend who’s walked with me since before that first diagnosis in 2011—she admitted she’s wondering the same thing: What is God up to?

Unlike my earlier battles, I don’t sense His presence right now. In fact, I’ve rarely felt this alone.

Why is God allowing this—again? The question doesn’t consume me, but it surfaces, especially late at night. I have a young daughter, and my mind is always on her—her future, her heart, and in my most weary moments, whether she’ll still have a mom to raise and love her.

Why does God permit this kind of suffering—and far worse?

I don’t know. I may never know.

If ever there was a moment to embrace uncertainty, this is it.

Christians, in general, need to grow comfortable with not understanding everything about God. Scripture itself points us there.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. —Isaiah 55:8-9

He gives us enough in Scripture—about Himself, about our condition—to trust Him deeply. The rest—whether we like it or not—requires faith.

Job learned this the hard way, only after God revealed the vastness of His power and wisdom.

Then Job replied to the Lord:
‘I know that you can do all things;
no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
You asked, “Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?”
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know.’” —Job 42:2-3

In that moment of awe and humility, Job laid down his demand for full understanding and embraced trust in God’s sovereign ways. This same posture of humble reliance echoes through Scripture centuries later, as Solomon offers us the practical key to living by faith when answers remain out of reach:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. —Proverbs 3:5-6

How do we trust in the Lord this way? Again, scripture guides us: true peace comes when we approach Him like little children approach a perfect, loving Father—trusting His will, even when everything feels wrong.

People were bringing little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.’ And he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on them and blessed them. —Mark 10:13-16

Comfort with uncertainty comes most naturally when we rest in the One who holds the universe—and our fragile lives—in the palm of His hand. Admittedly, I struggle with this, and it may be partly the reason God allows my trials to continue.

If you’re walking through your own uncertainty right now—whether it’s health, loss, doubt, or something else—you’re not alone. I’d love to hear from you in the comments: What helps you trust when answers don’t come? Or if you just need to share, you’re welcome to do so.

I’m writing this on Saturday. By the time you read it on Wednesday, I’ll be one day post-surgery and (hopefully) recovering in the hospital. Thank you for reading, for praying, for being here. Your support means more than words can say.

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And—get this—best-selling author, Lee Strobel, has agreed to write the foreword to The Heavens Declare! I’m still pinching myself.

Introduction

I’m known online for my apologetics work. Being raised atheist and coming to Christian faith through science as an adult made me an object of interest for many people. Science is supposed to destroy faith, not produce it! I’m living testimony that that’s not true. For the last twenty years, I’ve leveraged my story and scientific experience to help Christians maintain their faith in the face of seeming scientific obstacles.

I was poised to write what I hoped would be a definitive book about scientific apologetics—until a time of seemingly unending trials upended everything. Battles with cancer, lingering depression from the loss of my first daughter, family struggles, political and cultural chaos, and the profound disorientation of the world’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic left me burned out and exhausted. What once felt urgent and inspiring now seemed like a dry intellectual exercise. I put that book aside and, for several years, focused simply on survival—regaining my health, figuring out what happens after questioning so many “givens” in life, and learning to lean on God day by day.

In the midst of that darkness, a friend gave me Ruth Chou Simons’ devotional Beholding and Becoming. Drawing from 2 Corinthians 3:18—“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another”—the book contends that we become what we behold. Ruth’s entries encourage “everyday worship” alongside her gorgeous watercolor artwork, which captures God’s beautiful handiwork in nature. I found it refreshing, inspiring. Reading it, I wondered: Could I do something similar? Instead of presenting my own art, could I present God’s living artwork—the universe itself, as captured vividly by technological marvels like the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope? And thus the idea for this devotional was born.

God first called to me through His wondrous universe at the age of nine, long before I learned to recognize His voice. His cosmos is vast beyond imagination: hundreds of billions of galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions to trillions of stars, stretching across space that has been expanding since its explosive beginning billions of years ago. Yet amid this staggering scale, I finally realized something deeply personal is unfolding. The same heavens that reveal the laws of nature also speak the truth about the character of their Creator.

I know this not as abstract theology, but as lived experience. As an astrophysicist, I’ve spent years immersed in data, equations, and observations of the heavens. The more I studied the universe—its elegant order, its finely tuned constants, its origin in a singular beginning—the more I sensed an underlying intelligence and purpose. What began as intellectual curiosity became a pathway to awe, and eventually to worship. I will never look at a nebula, a distant galaxy, or the faint glow of the cosmic microwave background without thinking of the God who spoke it all into existence.

In those years of faith, I have been tested in ways I never anticipated. In seasons of profound loss and suffering, the heavens became more than objects of study; they became reminders of a sovereign God who holds not only the universe, but the broken pieces of His children’s lives, in His loving hands.

This devotional is born from that journey. Across thirty reflections, I explore celestial wonders—from the shimmering auroras that dance in Earth’s magnetosphere, to the ancient light of creation still washing over us today, to the scarred yet purposeful Moon, the majestic rings of Saturn born from brokenness, the graceful galaxies evoking God’s extravagance, and beyond. Each entry weaves modern astronomy, Scripture, and occasional forays into fictional realms with relatable human concerns.

The heavens declare more than bare scientific facts; they point to a sovereign, creative, redemptive God. The aurora transforms solar fury into beauty through Earth’s protective shield, reminding us of divine provision during trials. The cosmic microwave background envelops us like an eternal baptism, echoing God’s first words and His ongoing work of renewal. The Moon, barren yet vital in stabilizing life on Earth, mirrors our own calling to reflect Christ’s light into the world despite our fallen state. Saturn’s rings, forged from destruction, echo Romans 8:28—God working all things for good for those who love Him.

These are not mere analogies. They are invitations to see the natural world as a testament to God’s glory (Psalm 19:1), His power (Habakkuk 3), His immanence (Psalm 139), and His redemptive love. In an age when many of us feel disconnected from natural wonder—overwhelmed by screens, noise, anxiety, or despair—this book aims to rekindle it. All you have to do is look through these pages—or, better yet, look up. The stars are still there, speaking God’s promises.

My hope is that as you read these entries and gaze at the incredible images, you’ll journal your reflections and pray the accompanying Scriptures. Through this simple practice of beholding, may you experience the same quiet astonishment I felt when I first saw God in His creation. The universe is not indifferent. It is purposeful, ordered, and autographed by a God who knows you by name. He who stretched out the heavens like a curtain (Isaiah 40:22) invites you to know Him more deeply through the very creation He called good.

I hope these pages stir your heart to joy, trust, and worship—the kind that endures even when the night feels long. The God of planets and moons, stars and nebulae, black holes and galaxies, is the God who draws near.

Let the heavens declare His glory.

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On February 10, 2026, a mass murderer went on a rampage in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., killing nine people—including five children and a teacher’s aide at his former secondary school, his mother, his half-brother, and finally himself. He wounded 27 others.

It was one of the worst massacres in Canadian history.

I haven’t eaten or slept much in the weeks since then. I break down weeping at the slightest provocation.

I don’t know anyone personally in Tumbler Ridge. I grew up in Prince George, the unofficial capital of northern B.C.—a midsize city about 100 miles from Tumbler Ridge, as the crow flies. There’s a shared culture in northern B.C.—rough, tough, and self-reliant—that’s distinct from the rest of the province. It’s home to me. So when I heard about the horrific event in Tumbler Ridge, it felt personal and devastating.

The photos of the victims are all over social media. People from that region seem to prefer Facebook, so I had to resurrect an old account to get the most up-to-date news.

The image on Facebook that tore my heart out was of Maya Gebala, a 12-year-old girl who was struck in the head and neck by three bullets and yet, by some miracle, survived. Airlifted to B.C. Children’s Hospital in Vancouver, she remains in critical condition, fighting for her life against all odds.

Her parents share images on Facebook of a vibrant, healthy, beautiful young girl. Videos show her canoeing with friends, donning silly Halloween costumes, riding horses, singing nervously but courageously in front of a crowd. She played hockey, she volunteered for local charities. By some accounts, she bravely tried to lock the door of the library where she and other children were hiding during the deadly rampage. Now she lies in a hospital bed, looking for all the world like a heartbreaking adolescent Sleeping Beauty, while Canada waits for her to awaken.

My husband urges me to stop following her story so closely—he tells me to keep caring, but with detachment. Concerned, he senses I’m losing myself in this tragedy, trapped in an empathetic gravity well that threatens to become inescapable. But I can’t stop.

I check the Facebook pages of Maya’s parents multiple times daily, my heart momentarily stopping every time I see there’s an update. Sometimes the news is good—she made it through the first night after doctors warned she almost certainly wouldn’t survive. She started moving and taking breaths on her own. At one point, she opened her right eye and could respond by moving her hand. Other times, the news is concerning—she recently underwent emergency surgery to relieve immense pressure in her head.

As of today, Maya has survived for 13 days and has surpassed every expectation given to her parents by her doctors. She has, at minimum, tens of thousands of people praying for her, sending her positive thoughts and energy, and her mother believes this is a contributing factor to her survival. Whether she ultimately survives and goes on to rehabilitation, it’s clear that her life—and that of her family—is forever changed.

Maya’s story has attracted the attention of countless people around the world, but in an existential way she’s become Canada’s Child, an emblem of tragedy uniting a beleaguered country. In a surprising but welcome gesture, both Canada’s Prime Minister, Mark Carney, and the opposition leader, Pierre Poilievre, arrived in Tumbler Ridge last week to offer condolences and support for the residents, even holding hands at one point during a vigil.

A GoFundMe set up to support Maya’s long-term recovery has raised almost $500,000 from thousands of donors. Hockey players across Canada are donning her name on their jerseys and sticks—her name was even featured on the UFC octagon. Her parents are calling her a warrior, and given her fight for life so far, it’s hard to deny that.

When I read through the comments on each Facebook post, I see echoes of my own struggle with Maya’s story. One woman commented, “For my own mental health, I need Maya to recover.” Others have mentioned sleepless nights and compulsive checking for updates. I admit, if I wake up in the middle of the night, I feel a strong compulsion to check for any developments, fretting if there’s no word. My first uninterrupted night of sleep came only after her mother posted a video of Maya opening her right eye and squeezing her hand.

Why are so many people—why am I—so deeply invested in this story?

Part of it is relatability—I have daughters. I’m from that region of B.C. We’re a hockey family. But it’s more than that.

I can’t answer for everyone, but for many of us it’s the utter incongruity of evil and innocence combined with the nature of social media. Social media with real-time high-resolution photos and videos makes stories like this feel like they’re happening right in front of us. For deeply empathetic people like me, this makes it almost impossible to detach. The questions torment us relentlessly: How does something like this happen? How does someone choose to do this to children?

It’s the incongruity of a sweet, healthy, vibrant young girl and the figure lying in artificial slumber in a hospital bed, clinging to life.

The incongruity of a younger sister mustering all the courage she has to approach a hospital bed, to tentatively hold the hand of a sibling who, two weeks ago, was the picture of youthful normalcy—her innocence providing no buffer, her short years providing almost no context for what she’s seeing.

The incongruity of two parents who adore their children, who work hard to provide a good life for their family, whose world has been forever turned upside down by a madman.

It makes no sense.

I can’t make it make sense.

I don’t want it to make sense—I want to live in a world where it doesn’t happen.

But I don’t—none of us does. That is my struggle. “For my mental well-being, I need Maya to recover,” says the commenter, speaking for so many of us. Those words echo in my head, because I know my mental well-being relies too much on a constructed view of the world that is incongruous with reality—a reality the Bible thoroughly explicates. The truth is, I have not fully accepted the depravity of this world. A sweet little girl with bullets in her head and neck is shattering what remains of my illusions. How will I pick up the pieces?

The overwhelming majority of comments on posts about Maya are—thankfully—kind, supportive, and positive. There are lots of prayers. Occasionally someone uses the sentiments of well-wishers to make a point: “Why are you praying to a God who didn’t stop this from happening?” they reply. While I certainly question the timing and placement of such responses, it’s not an unreasonable thing to ask.

Why doesn’t God stop evil people from harming the innocent?

I’ve wrestled with this question ever since I accepted Jesus into my life. To someone from outside the faith, it may seem absurd to trust, and even praise, God in the midst of horror. He had the power to stop this rampage, so why didn’t he? There is no easy answer to this question.

I’ve speculated about solutions to the problem of evil before, but the only response that gives me any comfort is that it will come to an end someday. The Apostle Paul tells us that the suffering of this world pales in comparison with the glory of the next (Romans 8:18). I must admit, his sentiment feels a bit academic right now; but I also consider Paul wrote this after his own intense suffering and while in a Roman prison. I choose to accept it as true. If it’s not, then I wouldn’t see any reason to trust God or to have any hope whatsoever. But God’s promise that this is temporary is the hope I cling to.

I began following credible accounts of near-death experiences after my first daughter died. A friend gave me the book Heaven Is for Real, and it was the only thing that gave me comfort in those weeks following Ellinor’s passing. I’ve listened to countless testimonies since then, and they continue to give me comfort—not just the comfort of knowing Ellinor is in the arms of her Heavenly Father, but of knowing God’s realm of love, peace, and joy is offered to every one of us.

Sometimes people respond angrily to that. Maybe it feels to them more like delusion than hope. But how else should I carry on? I could be angry about senseless violence and tragedies and turn my back on God, but what good would that do? In fact, it would make it all so much worse. These tragedies would no longer be evil, but just events that happen in a universe that doesn’t care about the innocent or anyone else. The truth is, I am sometimes angry with God. I’ve yelled at him, as the psalmists sometimes did—and then I accept that there’s no answer to the problem of evil that will fully satisfy us. If there was, I think we would already live in a realm in which evil doesn’t exist.

I will continue to pray for Maya and her family. I will continue to praise God as the perfect Father, who loves Maya and her family with an intensity we can never fathom. I may not understand his plan, but I’m trying to accept it. He did, after all, give that which was most precious to him, his uniquely begotten Son, Jesus Christ, so that we could be with him for eternity. That is enough.

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Friends,

I want to share something personal with you. Over the past several years, life has brought me more hardship than I ever imagined I could bear. Some of you know parts of my story—multiple rounds of cancer, loss of a child, family crises—but the truth is that the weight of it all has finally left me exhausted in body, mind, and spirit.

Recently, I returned home from an apologetics conference where, despite near-exhaustion, I was able to deliver what I’d promised. But as soon as I walked through the door, I realized I had reached the end of my strength. What should have felt like a meaningful opportunity instead left me depleted in body, mind, and spirit. It was the final signal that I need to rest.

As much as I love writing here, I’ve reached a point where I need to temporarily step back—to take a sabbatical. I simply don’t have the energy or creativity to write essays. To honor both you and myself, I am pausing paid subscriptions during this time. For those who have paid annually for subscriptions, your access to paid features will continue during the pause and your subscription will resume from where it left off when I return.

This is by no means goodbye. For now, I’m focusing my remaining energy on completing my astronomy-themed devotional, and when the time is right, I will return here with renewed strength and fresh insights to share. Until then, I need space to rest, to heal, and to recover joy in the calling God has given me for the last 20 years. I hope you will remain subscribed, ready to to hear from me when I return.

Thank you for your grace, your prayers, and your support. Your presence here has meant more to me than you know.

With gratitude,
Sarah

Sunday Superposition is usually an end-of-the-week collection of spiritual themes and stuff I find interesting. I’m in the midst of several time-sensitive projects and multiple crises, all of which are consuming my every waking (and attempting to be sleeping) moments. For this month, I hope you’ll pardon and enjoy this reposted Sunday Superposition from 18 months ago. It’s one of my favorites. Also, I’d appreciate prayers to get me through the next few weeks.

The end of independence

The spiritual theme this week is surrendering one's will.

There was a line of dialogue from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice that always confused me. Miss Bingley, appalled at Elizabeth’s willingness to walk alone for miles through muddy fields to see her ailing sister, remarked that it showed “an abominable sort of conceited independence.”

When I read this book, I was no longer at the peak of my ultra-independent Objectivist days, but I was still stuck on the slopes of that mountain. Why would someone find independence abominable or conceited? Wasn’t independence the ideal? Shouldn’t we all strive for the utmost independence?

I think the scene was meant to highlight Elizabeth’s unvarnished rural appeal in contrast to Miss Bingley’s urban snobbery. But my reaction to the line hinted at a deep-seated problem that would dog me for much of my adult life.

I am by nature a stubborn and independent person. I had few friends growing up and spent a lot of time doing my own thing. It’s not that I was unable to attract friends, I just found other people inscrutable and unreliable. I had learned early, through impatience and disappointment, to do things for myself. I hated relying on other people.

The result of all that was a sense of ultra-independence that made something as dry and barren as the Objectivist philosophy momentarily appealing.

It didn’t occur to me in those days before I had come to Christ that not only is it impractical to be ultra-independent, but awfully lonely. I don’t know of a single example of a successful person who was “abominably independent.” Even the most competent and reclusive figures in history—people like Isaac Newton—had small circles of colleagues and friends who helped them do their work and make life worth living.

When I finally came to Jesus, I had already climbed (or more accurately, stumbled) down to the foothills of Mount Independence. I was willing to allow Him to have sovereignty over some parts of my life, but not all. Not because I loved those parts, but because I thought I could manage them better than He could. Oh, yes, there is such a thing as an abominable sort of conceited independence.

But reality intruded on this delusion, as reality often does.

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In 2018, evolutionary biologist and outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins tweeted a surprising cautionary note about the decline of Christianity in Europe, quoting Hilaire Belloc: “Always keep a-hold of nurse / For fear of finding something worse.” He linked to an article in The Guardian on a survey revealing that most young Europeans are non-religious and warned against rejoicing at the “death throes” of the “relatively benign Christian religion.” This is almost shocking coming from someone who once described indoctrinating children into Christianity as a form of child abuse.1

Now, another prominent atheist, philosopher and educator Peter Boghossian, is grappling with a similar realization. In a recent Substack post, he reflects on a debate with Gavin Haynes and Hugo Martin, where he confronts the fallout of a post-Christian West. He writes:

Coming off the heels of New Atheism, this is the situation in which we find ourselves. Traditional meaning-conferring structures have collapsed, and the consequences have been devastating. We’ve done (perhaps irreparable) damage to our institutions, we’ve mutilated the genitals of children on an industrial scale, our trust in systems has collapsed, we’ve become highly susceptible to a wide range of absolute fictions, social cohesion has eroded, we’ve calcified our polarization, and we’ve all experienced a dearth of kindness.

Not all of this, of course, is directly attributable to the collapse of Christianity, but it would be dishonest to say a significant portion of the madness we’ve experienced was not a direct consequence.

Boghossian’s words capture a sobering truth: the utopian, reason-driven world the New Atheists envisioned hasn’t materialized. Instead, we’re left with fractured institutions, eroded trust, and a society vulnerable to chaos. But his solution—or lack thereof—reveals a deeper struggle. He believes Christianity’s claims are false, and therefore encouraging belief in them, even for societal good, is demeaning. But, he asks, is that worse than a descent into societal madness?

I agree it’s demeaning to encourage belief in lies. If I didn’t accept the truth of Christianity’s claims, I’d feel humiliated pretending otherwise, even if I thought it were for the greater good. But clinging to a lie, however well-intentioned, rarely leads to anything good. Boghossian’s dilemma resonates with me—not because I share his disbelief, but because I once stood where he does, wrestling with the limits of atheism.

In my twenties, raised atheist in a post-Christian Canada, I embraced Objectivism, Ayn Rand’s philosophy of rational selfishness. It promised personal strength and independence, but when I began to think seriously about its premises, it crumbled under life’s big questions: What’s the purpose of existence? Where do we come from? What happens after death? It offered no coherent answers. Then, studying history, I was stunned to learn Christianity was the foundation of much of what I valued: human rights, the rule of law, prosperity, even modern science. Unlike Boghossian, this didn’t lead me to agonize over dignity versus pretense. Instead, it inspired me to wonder if Christianity might be worth taking seriously. That question launched a years-long journey from contemptuous atheism to devoted Christian faith, detailed in my testimony.

Boghossian’s quandary has a straightforward resolution: No one needs to feign belief to embrace Christianity, because Christianity’s claims hold up under scrutiny. This is why his oversight surprised me. A lot of Boghossian’s struggle to understand belief hinges on the improbability of Christian claims. In his debate, Boghossian speaks bluntly about miracles, like Jesus walking on water, assuming they’re “almost definitely false.” He once thought believers were just play-acting for community, citing a dinner with philosopher Daniel Dennett, who claimed entire groups, like Pentecostals, pretend to believe in miracles. Though he remains skeptical, Boghossian now acknowledges that some belief could be genuine, but the reality of miracles is perhaps irrelevant if belief in them is part of what prevents societal collapse.

By the way, the mutual Atheist-Christian tug-o-war over genuine belief and disbelief fascinates me. Some Christians assume atheists secretly believe but are rebelling against God. Meanwhile, atheists like Boghossian and Dennett seem convinced Christians are pretending, clinging to faith for a sense of belonging. Both sides miss the mark. I’ve known atheists sincere in their disbelief, just as Boghossian’s angst over societal decay shows his sincerity. But he and Dennett underestimate the transformative power of genuine faith. Christians don’t just seek community; many have been radically changed by belief in Jesus Christ, many even dying for their convictions.

As an atheist, I joined sci-fi clubs for camaraderie, drawn to the worlds of Star Wars and Star Trek, which inspired my career as a space scientist. Those communities mattered to me, but they didn’t reshape my values or demand any kind of sacrifice. I’d never die for Mr. Spock or profess belief in the miracle of transporters. Christianity, though, isn’t a social club built on fiction. Its impact on society—establishment of vital institutions, protection of the vulnerable, commitment to truth, social cohesion, and kindness as a virtue—stems from something far deeper, something real.

What convinced me, as a former atheist? Evidence, reason, and science. My journey to faith, rooted in my work as an astrophysicist, began with compelling arguments:

• The teleological argument: The universe’s logic and intelligibility suggest a purposeful intelligent design, not random chance.

• The Kalam Cosmological Argument: Combined with the inference of a personal cause, it points to the Abrahamic God.

• Objective morality: God offers the most coherent basis for justice, morality, and ethics.

• Fine-tuning: The universe’s precise conditions for life defy probabilistic odds.

• The ontological argument: The concept of a greatest possible being implies its existence.

• Life and consciousness: Their improbable emergence challenges materialist explanations.

• Near-death experiences: Credible accounts suggest a reality beyond the physical.

• Jesus’ life and impact: Historical evidence and His global influence over 2,000 years are unmatched.

• Genesis 1’s alignment with science: Its dozens of testable creation steps, from the universe’s origin to life’s progression, match modern cosmology and biology in precise order—odds of this being chance are incomprehensibly low.

Science bolsters this further. In my article on thermodynamics, I explain how statistical mechanics allows for extraordinary events we call miracles—like the parting of the Red Sea—within natural laws, though they’re so improbable they require divine intervention. Statistical mechanics and even quantum mechanics permit all but what I call “boundary miracles,” like the creation of the universe, the creation of life and consciousness, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. These miracles, though they transcend physical laws, are still not a problem. Science may never be able to expand its domain to include whatever is outside the universe, but God, from his position outside the universe, can easily cross the divide between the supernatural and the natural.

Consider another miracle, one you can witness daily simply by turning to the first page of your Bible: Genesis 1’s remarkable precision. It outlines the universe’s formation, from the Big Bang to life’s development, in several testable steps, each aligning with modern science’s findings. The probability of this sequence being correct by chance is astronomically low. This isn’t guesswork; it’s divine inspiration, a living miracle we can verify today. If, in my worst moments, I’m ever tempted to question whether God is really there, all I have to do is recall the miracle of Genesis and my faith is reaffirmed.

Boghossian’s debate raises a deeper question. If the death of Christianity is fueling the decline, why not explore its truth? He understandably fears believing “false” claims, but the evidence ought to at least invite scrutiny. Christians don’t pretend for the benefits to themselves or to society; most of them genuinely believe. A society rooted in this faith, not as a cultural relic or a useful fiction, but as a conviction, reaps what even Dawkins and Boghossian lament losing. So, why not investigate the claims? The stakes—personal and societal—are too high to ignore.

If you liked this article, do me a favor and hit the like button below—it helps me know what resonates with readers and it boosts my writing. There’s also a share button if you want to send it to a friend who’d enjoy the science-and-faith conversation. If you’re a free subscriber who would like to support my ministry, you can upgrade to a paid subscription (which comes with some perks!).

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One of the things I find distressing is the number of people who have ever lived estimated at about 100 billion. It's hard to feel significant if you are part of a group that big. It's a little like being one of Elon Musk's many kids.

I’ve occasionally wondered what it would be like to be part of a larger family. Growing up with just one sibling—a brother I’m very close to—I never felt I needed more. Still, I sometimes wondered what it would be like to have two or three siblings. It might be nice. But thirteen? Most with different mothers? That doesn’t sound appealing. After my parents divorced and remarried other people, I was quietly haunted by the thought they might have more children. That would’ve meant their attention and resources would be diverted from me and my brother. Lack of attention was by far my greatest concern—I would’ve felt less important to my parents with more siblings competing for their limited time and care.

According to the Bible, we don’t have just one, two, or even thirteen siblings—we potentially have billions, almost all with different earthly parents. Though we share the same Heavenly Father and one Brother, Jesus Christ, it’s hard not to feel that God’s attention and resources are stretched thin with so many children. How can we possibly matter in a family that large? Can you even call such a vast group a “family”? Sadly, this seems to echo the feelings many Christians have about being isolated from God and their struggle to cultivate a personal relationship with Him.

I suspect this concern existed even in Old Testament times, when one’s sense of population was perhaps in the hundreds of thousands, not billions. Why else would passages like this appear?

“He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name.” —Psalm 147:4

This verse in Psalm 147 follows the claim that God “heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” and precedes the assurance that God is “mighty in power; his understanding has no limit.” If you’ve ever seen a night sky unpolluted by urban lights, the stars seem to number in the hundreds of thousands, though the actual number of visible stars from any point on Earth is about three thousand. Modern people are aware there are an estimated 100 to 400 billion stars in the Milky Way alone and up to 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe. That makes Psalm 147:4 feel like an “Easter egg” for future readers, those who know the more accurate number of stars is vastly greater than what we can see at night. The point is, if an eternal God, not limited by time or understanding, can know all those stars individually and can deliberately create 100 billion souls, then time and resources are no issue.

Note that Psalm 147:4 doesn’t say God merely counts the stars but that He determines their number and calls each by name. This verse connects to the brokenhearted, implying that God, who deliberately creates and names perhaps one septillion stars (that's a 1 followed by 24 zeros), also determines the number of souls. One hundred billion is a tiny fraction of one septillion—God therefore has no trouble calling each of us by name.

The naming part is significant. One of the first tasks God gave Adam was to name all the animals. Why? Naming established Adam’s earthly dominion over them. More than that, it showed Adam’s role as caretaker, requiring a deep understanding of each creature. Naming in scripture signifies:

• Authority

• Deep understanding

• Personal, caring relationship

These are also hallmarks of the parent-child relationship, and it’s why parents get to name their children. So, when Psalm 147 says God calls the stars by name and pairs this with healing the brokenhearted, it means God not only has authority over His creation—including us—but also deeply understands and cares for us. This idea echoes in the New Testament, too.

In John 10:3, we’re told God “calls his own sheep by name and leads them out” of the gate. He knows each of us personally. This is reinforced in Matthew 10:30 and Luke 12:7: “And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.” No detail is too small or numerous for God’s notice. Though God cares for all His creation, scripture emphasizes that we are more valuable than anything else on Earth. Matthew 10:30 is bookended by the claim that sparrows, though of little worth in human terms, are not outside God’s care—and we are worth more than many sparrows. This intimate knowledge is beautifully captured in Psalm 139:13-14:

“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

Or consider Isaiah 49:16:

“See, I [God] have engraved you on the palms of my hands.”

Even in a sea of billions, God doesn't just notice us, He designs and remembers us with that level of detail.

Knowing scripture and the math of astronomy well, I can look at an image like the one below and grasp how God, who created and named every star, can know and love each of His children intimately.

Yet, I think many Christians, especially those who have been wounded by parental neglect, struggle to imagine a God who, despite being outside time and without limits, personally loves and attends to each of the 100 billion souls He created. This feels more like a heart issue than a head issue. I can answer questions like JT’s with scripture, math, and science, but addressing the heart is harder.

Some of you reading this may feel like ordinary people or nobodies, unworthy of God’s notice. But as C.S. Lewis reflected in The Weight of Glory, “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.” I truly believe that. With so many people on Earth, it’s easy to feel overlooked; but scripture’s assurances help bridge the gap between knowing God’s capacity and feeling His care. In our digital age, think about how AI systems can process billions of personalized queries in seconds—yet that’s a faint shadow of God’s timeless, limitless attention.

I hope the knowledge that God is fully capable of knowing and caring for each of the 100 billion souls He deliberately created offers at least the possibility of finding peace for those who worry about God’s capacity to love. If that head-knowledge resonates even a little, perhaps try this: Sit under a starry sky and say God’s name to Him and trust that He’s already calling yours back.

Related:

It’s good to feel small

Sunday Superposition #36: God knows your name

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Thanks for being a jerk

Twenty-eight years ago, I came home from work to find my fiancé had vanished. A colleague had driven me home, and he’d just pulled away when I realized I’d left my purse—and keys—in his car. I knocked on the door of my apartment, but Peter, who should’ve been home, never came to the door. Something didn’t feel right.

I was living in Vancouver, Canada, shacked up with someone who was spectacularly wrong for me. We’d met online. He moved to Canada from Australia to be with me and said he wanted to marry me. He was an entertainer and a compulsive liar. To this day, I don’t have a clear idea of why I was with him.

I stood outside the door of my basement apartment, looking through its small window for any signs of life. By that time, my work colleague, realizing he had my keys, returned to give them to me. Entering the apartment, I could immediately tell Peter was gone—like, gone gone. It had that palpable sort of emptiness. I ran to the bedroom. His dresser was emptied of clothes, his toiletries were gone. There was no note explaining where he’d gone or why. Nothing. Signs of a hastily washed load of laundry were all that remained.

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My daughter and I watch a lot of animated movies. She’s an aspiring animator, and we watch them as much for reference as for entertainment. Most are good, some are great, and every now and then, we find ourselves saying, “This is a perfect film.” These rare movies are flawless in every way: storytelling, characters, dialogue, setting, animation, soundscape, and music. You’re not just entertained, you feel changed by them. When we started compiling a list of Perfect Animated Movies, I noticed they all share one thing beyond those creative qualities: an overarching biblical theme. I’m not saying the filmmakers were necessarily driven by Christianity, but that these films are shaped by universal truths rooted in the Bible.

I’ve mentioned before that my two passions besides science and Christianity are movies and food. I can talk endlessly about both. So, I’m kicking off a series about these Perfect Animated Movies and their biblical themes, starting with Pixar’s WALL-E (2008), a poignant sci-fi gem that follows a lonely robot tasked with cleaning a trash-choked Earth. (Warning: spoilers ahead if you haven’t seen the movie.) On the surface, WALL-E seems like a charming environmental tale, but it’s far deeper. It’s a profound story about love, purpose, and our need for connection, and it’s filled with striking biblical parallels.

The hero, WALL-E, is the last functioning trash-bot on an abandoned and lifeless Earth, diligently arranging endless garbage into towering mountains. Somehow, for reasons blessedly unexplained, WALL-E is not only sentient, but a romantic. He loves the trappings of humankind and collects discarded treasures like lightbulbs, kitchen gadgets, Rubik’s Cubes, and Zippo lighters. His prized possession is a VHS of Hello, Dolly!, which he watches obsessively. In a heart-wrenching early scene, WALL-E gazes wistfully as the tender love song “It Only Takes a Moment” plays, the characters holding hands. Using only his expressive eyes, clever camera angles, and the soundtrack, the film conveys his aching need for that kind of love.

That ache is amplified because WALL-E is alone on Earth, a fact unexplained at first. From a storytelling perspective, there’s something compelling about the last being on Earth. WALL-E reminds me of I Am Legend’s Robert Neville, but without the horror. Like Neville, WALL-E’s only companion is a pet—a resilient cockroach. And like Neville, he’s desperate to connect with his own kind. Meanwhile, whether driven by programming, desperation, or a need for purpose, WALL-E diligently carries out his monotonous task, compacting garbage day after day.

Then two miracles happen. First, WALL-E finds a sprout amidst the trash and decay—organic life on a seemingly lifeless Earth. Genesis 1:11 comes to mind: ‘And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.”’ Life re-begins on Earth with plant life, just as it began in Genesis. WALL-E tenderly scoops the plant with some soil, places it in a boot, and adds it to his collection. Second, a rocketship descends, depositing a sleek, feminine probe named EVE. How long it’s been since WALL-E has seen another sentient being is unclear, but it feels like an eternity. He observes, cautious but captivated.

Once the rocketship leaves, EVE charmingly engages in play, revealing she’s a kindred spirit. WALL-E works hard but loves movies and collecting; EVE has a mission but delights in play. WALL-E watches, rapt, as she soars and pirouettes in the air. He’s fascinated, curious, and desperate for connection, yet fearful—EVE, though small and playful, can fiercely defend herself. Still, his courage is apparent as he approaches her, bringing her to his home to share his collection. She’s curious and amused, but when he timidly tries to hold her hand, she rebuffs him. The love story develops slowly throughout the movie, with EVE initially focused on her mission to find signs of life, brushing off WALL-E’s advances.

When WALL-E shows EVE the plant, it triggers her programming: she stores it inside herself, shuts down, and displays a flashing green symbol indicating she carries life. This is where WALL-E’s devotion shines through. He stays with the inert EVE, protecting her during storms and still trying to hold her hand.

When the rocketship returns to collect her, WALL-E desperately clings to its exterior, riding it into space to a luxury space cruise ship called the Axiom. The ship houses humanity’s descendants, exiled from a wasteland Earth centuries ago with a promise to return once it was cleaned and fit for life. WALL-E was part of that failed cleanup effort; EVE’s mission is to deliver the plant to the captain, triggering the ship’s return.

With minimal dialogue, WALL-E weaves a tender love story between WALL-E and EVE with gentle commentary on human purpose and the perils of material excess. The Axiom’s humans are the blobby descendants of those who fled Earth, each generation growing more accustomed to a luxurious life without purpose. With seeming limitless resources and attended to by an army of service robots, they’ve stopped walking, cooking, and talking face-to-face. They rely on floating chairs, consuming liquid food and communicating via screens—even when they’re next to each other. Released just a year after the iPhone debuted and five years before DoorDash, the film feels prescient. These humans, obese and with short, vestigial limbs, resemble helpless babies. Yet the movie treats them tenderly, with a hint of melancholy, not mockery. The subtle message: this is what happens when people succumb to ease and comfort.

The Axiom’s captain, McCrea, is also confined to a floating chair. He’s a conscientious man, but his position on the Axiom is largely ceremonial—he’s like the host of an endless vacation. When he learns of life on Earth, he’s fascinated. He calls up videos of what life was like in Earth’s past (featuring real-life actors, an interesting choice by Pixar’s animators), discovering that Earth was once green and beautiful and that life had meaning. He realizes they must return. But the villain of the movie, Auto, the ship’s autopilot, sabotages this. Auto, programmed by Earth’s last president to abandon the return plan, wants to keep the Axiom in space indefinitely. When EVE tries to deliver the plant to McCrea to trigger the return, Auto and his robots interfere. But McCrea, infused with a sense of purpose, and the dutiful WALL-E and EVE, fight to get the plant to the ship’s holo-detector.

WALL-E’s presence on the Axiom triggers change. While chasing EVE, who is subdued by Auto’s forces, WALL-E bumps into humans on their floating chairs, turning off their screens. This causes a woman to notice the ship’s spectacular view for the first time and connect face-to-face with the man beside her. WALL-E also inadvertently frees malfunctioning robots from a robot sanatorium, earning their loyalty and help. (I suspect this is subtle commentary about breaking the spell of conformity and the value of imperfect beings.) Through WALL-E’s dogged determination, principled devotion, and love for EVE, the plant reaches the holo-detector, and the Axiom returns to Earth. But in the process WALL-E is fatally wounded—nearly crushed, his circuits fried by an electric jolt from Auto, and his battery depleted.

Back on Earth, the humans disembark from the Axiom, disappointed by the barren landscape. McCrea laments, “Where’s all the blue skies and green fields?” Yet they’re determined to revive Earth. Once he overcomes his disappointment, McCrea plants the sprout brought by WALL-E and EVE, excitedly telling a child, “This is called farming! You kids are gonna grow all kinds of plants!”

EVE rushes to WALL-E’s collection, replacing his fried circuit board and crushed parts. But the resurrected WALL-E has lost his memory. Heartbroken, EVE gives him a farewell “kiss,” sparking an electrical surge that restores his memories. They reunite as “It Only Takes a Moment” from Hello, Dolly! plays, a song that has underscored key moments of the movie.

The juxtaposition of old-fashioned songs like “It Only Takes a Moment” and “La Vie En Rose” with WALL-E’s sci-fi imagery was a creative stroke of genius. It speaks to our timeless need for human connection, no matter how advanced we become. These songs, tender and nostalgic, contrast with the sterile Axiom and desolate Earth, reminding us that we will never transcend our need for love and purpose.

When I first watched WALL-E, I misread it as quasi-socialist propaganda against capitalism. This was just two years after my baptism into Christianity, and I still viewed the world mostly through a political lens. Years later, more mature in my faith, I saw it differently. The wreckage on Earth isn’t an indictment of capitalism but of using material wealth as a substitute for the joy of human love, connection, and purpose through difficulty.

That maturity in my faith also allowed me to recognize the profound biblical parallels in WALL-E. Life begins with vegetation sprouting on Earth. WALL-E, the lonely male on Earth, echoes Genesis 2:18: ‘The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”’ The Hebrew word translated as “helper” literally means ally. EVE, his ally in the struggle to return humans to Earth, arrives, and they share a new purpose. Humans overcome the temptation of ease and comfort to rebuild Earth through the sweat of their brows, becoming gardeners like Adam and Eve. The end credits, set to Peter Gabriel’s “Down to Earth,” soulfully depict this renewal through art styles mimicking history—from Stone Age cave paintings to Impressionism to 8-bit computer graphics—showing humanity’s subsequent journey to make Earth inhabitable again.

The heart of WALL-E as a Perfect Animated Movie lies in its biblical themes of love and purpose. Even Freud, who Peter Kreeft once described as someone who “occasionally comes up with nuggets of wisdom sandwiched between mountains of nonsense,” noted that humans need two things make life worth living: love and work. This universal message in WALL-E resonates all the more because the movie forsakes preachiness for truths woven organically into a relatable love story. As Tolkien scholar Ralph Wood notes in The Gospel According to Tolkien, stories infused with deep messages are most powerful when subtly delivered. And by eliciting deep emotions. WALL-E delivers its truths through a startlingly human robot love story and humanity’s rediscovery of purpose. The movie’s stunning visuals, genuine (mostly wordless) emotion, and gentle commentary elevate it from entertainment to an animated masterpiece.

I hope you enjoyed this first entry in my series on Perfect Animated Movies. If it’s been a while since you’ve watched WALL-E, does this inspire you to watch it again? Can you guess what my other Perfect Animated Moviefs might be? Feel free to comment, and to tell me what yours are.

Related:

Finding light in a dark galaxy far, far away

Freedom, films, and faith

Art through adversity

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Sunday Superposition is a premium perk for paid subscribers, an end-of-the-month collection of spiritual themes and links to stuff I find interesting. This week’s reflection is inspired by an entry from my astronomy-themed devotional.

God knows your name

He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” —Genesis 15:5

In Genesis 15, God promises Abraham (then called Abram) He will bless him and make his descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky. In Genesis 22:17, God then expands this promise to descendants “as numerous…as the sand on the seashore.” That’s a lot of descendants. The stars in the night sky must have seemed great in number to ancient people, yet surely not countless as the grains of sand on a seashore. The Bible sometimes uses hyperbole to make a point, so I’m not concerned about literally reconciling God’s promise to Abraham with reality, but on understanding what God reveals with this comparison.

For most of human history, people had no concept of our Galaxy’s vastness or the existence of other galaxies. They only knew what their eyes showed them, which was stunning enough before electric lights dimmed the night sky for many of us. If you’ve lived most of your life in a city or suburb, like I have, you might feel awestruck the first time you see the stars from a remote, dark place. It’s hard to describe to someone who hasn’t experienced it: an endless sea of stars suspended in the cosmos, their countless lights twinkling as they complete their cosmic journeys through space, subtly stirred by Earth’s restless atmosphere. The last time I witnessed this, I laid on the ground for hours, captivated by the sight.

When I ask my astronomy students how many stars they think are visible from a single point on Earth with the naked eye, they often guess hundreds of thousands. It certainly feels that way. But in reality, we can only see about 2,000–5,000 stars, depending on conditions. The ancients knew the count was somewhere in this range, yet those few thousand stars inspired many to believe they were gazing at the realm of gods.

But God had revealed something important to the ancient Israelites in Genesis 1: the heavens were not the home of gods but His own creation. Their awe for the night sky thus became awe for the One who made it. If God alone could craft such a spectacle, He is truly great—and sovereign over all.

We modern people know something the ancients didn’t: the universe stretches far beyond our neighborhood of stars and includes many more galaxies besides our own. By estimating the number of stars in a typical galaxy and the number of galaxies in the observable universe, we arrive at a staggering figure for the true number of stars in the heavens—10 billion trillion—a number far closer to the grains of sand on a seashore than the few thousand stars visible in an ancient sky. I believe this was an “Easter egg”—a hidden treat—for modern, scientifically-literate readers of the Bible, who can truly grasp the comparison’s depth. It also expands the scope of God’s sovereignty, encompassing billions of trillions of stars, not counting what may lie beyond the observable universe.

Read more

The notion that science and Christianity are inherently at odds is a persistent myth, one that seems to linger in the cultural ether. Once loudly proclaimed by New Atheists like Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins, this idea has lost much of its original fervor, as these figures have faded from prominence. Yet their influence endures. Hitchens famously claimed, “…the attitude of religion to science…is always necessarily problematic and very often necessarily hostile,” insisting that “religion poisons everything.” Harris reinforced this view, asserting, “The conflict between religion and science is inherent and (very nearly) zero-sum. The success of science often comes at the expense of religious dogma; the maintenance of religious dogma always comes at the expense of science.” These ideas have seeped into mainstream thought, shaping the perspectives of countless people, many of whom may not even be aware of the source.

This narrative has had far-reaching consequences, not only for non-believers but also for Christians. Some abandoned their faith, while others rejected modern science. Still others embraced science but confined it to a separate sphere from religion (“Science tells you how the heavens go; religion tells you how to go to heaven.”). This artificial divide obscures the profound, mutually supportive relationship between reason and Christian faith that has shaped the modern world.

In truth, modern science owes its origins to Christianity—a fact that dismantles the New Atheist narrative. This article will first explore the historical synergy between Christianity and science, showing how Christian principles provided the foundation for modern science. Then, we’ll delve into the lives of three remarkable scientists—Johannes Kepler, Michael Faraday, and James Prescott Joule—whose Christian beliefs directly fueled their groundbreaking discoveries in physics. These are not just stories of Christian faith fostering virtues like diligence or humility, though such qualities are important. They are stories of Christian convictions driving scientific breakthroughs. Why does this matter? As Sam Harris aptly put it, “…either a person has good reasons for what he believes, or he does not. When a person has good reasons, his beliefs contribute to our growing understanding of the world.” Challenge accepted, Sam.

Part 1: The Christian origins of modern science

The idea that science and religion are inherently opposed gained traction in the 19th century with figures like Thomas Huxley, Darwin’s “bulldog,” who claimed science triumphs over “extinguished theologians” like strangled snakes beside Hercules’ cradle. In the 21st century, New Atheists amplified this, portraying religion as a barrier to progress. Yet, as historian Edward Grant observes, “Modern science [indisputably] arose in seventeenth century Europe and nowhere else.” If Christianity is a “science-defeater,” how could this be, when 17th-century Europe was the heart of the Christian world?

When I point this out to critics, I often get weak rebuttals, like “Science arose in spite of Christianity,” or “Scientists were Christian in name only.” But these claims crumble under scrutiny. Sociologist Rodney Stark analyzed the beliefs of 52 key figures of the Scientific Revolution, and found that 50 were Christian—a staggering 96%—with 60% being devoutly so. Far from being nominal, these scientists saw their work as an extension of their faith, a point illustrated by the three exemplars we’ll discuss later.

To grasp why science emerged in Christian Europe, we must first define science. Is it just a collection of facts? French mathematician Henri Poincaré wrote, “Science is built up of facts, as a house is built of stones. But science is no more an accumulation of facts than a heap of stones is a house.” Science is not merely a collection of facts or explanations but a system of knowledge held together by a particular worldview—a philosophy of science. Its core elements include:

• The search for truth about the natural world.

• Adherence to the scientific method.

• Following all available evidence.

• Faith—yes, faith—in natural laws.

This last point is crucial. Never, ever, ever let anyone tell you faith has no place in science. Science requires trust that the universe operates according to consistent, discoverable laws, a trust rooted in a specific theological framework. To understand why only Christian Europe provided the conditions for modern science, let’s trace the historical context.

A brief history of science

Humans have been on an upward intellectual and technological trajectory since prehistoric humans built the first tools and traced celestial events on cave walls thousands of years ago. Ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians calculated astronomical patterns and built marvels like the pyramids. In the 7th century B.C., Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus proposed naturalistic explanations, earning the title “father of science.” Pythagoras advanced mathematics, Plato and Aristotle established inductive and deductive logic, and Aristarchus proposed a heliocentric universe. Other cultures also excelled: Babylonians invented trigonometry and cartography; Romans engineered aqueducts and concrete; the Chinese developed paper, the compass, and gunpowder; and during the Islamic Golden Age, Arabs advanced algebra, medicine, and astronomy. History is cram-packed with advanced civilizations asking the great questions about life and building technological wonders. Yet none of these brilliant societies invented modern science. Why?

The answer lies in their philosophical worldviews. The Greeks viewed the material world as crude and they disdained manual labor. This precluded experimentation, a cornerstone of modern science. They also separated mathematics from physical reality, and held a cyclical view of time, hindering science as a predictive endeavor. Aristotle’s untested claim that heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects persisted for centuries because to the Greeks, reason trumped experiment. Pantheistic or animistic cultures saw nature as an illusion or sacred, filled with capricious gods, all of which discouraged systematic study. Science requires a specific set of ideals and assumptions about nature, which these cultures lacked in totality. To paraphrase Pearcey and Thaxton in The Soul of Science, you have to believe in the possibility of science before you can have science.

Christianity provided the missing pieces. From the Middle Ages to the 17th century, Christian Europe laid the groundwork for the Scientific Revolution. Some of you might be wondering, “What about the Dark Ages?” The concept of a dark, repressive era in the Middle Ages of European history is mostly a fiction. It was invented by a 14th-century Italian scholar named Petrarch who, bitter about the fall of Rome, blamed Christianity. The myth was amplified by Enlightenment figures like Voltaire and Rousseau, who claimed that the defeat of Church oppression led to the Renaissance and Enlightenment. But in reality, the Middle Ages were far from a period of backwardness— they were a time of vibrant intellectual growth.

Atheist historian Tim O’Neill credits much of this revised understanding of the Middle Ages to French physicist Pierre Duhem, who uncovered references to medieval scholars in the works of giants like Newton, Bernoulli, and Galileo. Reading these texts, Duhem realized the “Dark Ages” as a scientific wasteland was pure fiction. These scholars were busy laying the groundwork for future discoveries.

The Middle Ages produced some remarkable advancements. Universities in Paris, Bologna, and Oxford emerged as hubs of learning, often under Church patronage. Proto-scientific ideas took shape, with scholars like Albertus Magnus exploring natural phenomena. The rule of law gained traction, Church reforms addressed corruption, and cultural life thrived with Gothic cathedrals, Chaucer’s tales, and the birth of polyphonic music. Monastic scribes preserved Greek texts, ensuring Aristotle and Euclid survived for future generations. This time period also saw the birth of tourism, as pilgrimages to holy sites, such as Jerusalem, Rome, and Santiago de Compostela, drew thousands of Christians seeking spiritual fulfillment

The printing press, invented in the 15th century, was pivotal for the rise of modern science. The first book it mass-produced was the Bible, which, when coupled with the Protestant Reformation, led to a seismic shift with widespread literacy. Luther’s emphasis on a direct relationship with God required individuals to read the Bible themselves, necessitating translations into vernacular languages. This transformed literacy from a privilege of the wealthy and priestly to a norm for ordinary people. By the mid-17th century, coffeehouses in London sprang up as “penny universities,” where everyday people, who now had access to the accumulated wisdom of mankind, could debate and even publish scientific works.

Why didn’t other advanced societies—Greeks, Babylonians, Romans, Chinese, Arabs—invent modern science? It certainly wasn’t for lack of intelligence or technology. But their worldviews lacked the complete set of ideals that Christianity provided:

• Nature is real: Unlike pantheistic illusions, God created a distinct, studyable world.

• Nature is good: Unlike Greek disdain for the material, Christians see creation as good, with dignity in labor, exemplified by Jesus the carpenter.

• Nature is a creation: Not divine, open to investigation, unlike pagan sacredness.

• Nature is ordered: God’s trustworthy laws ensure dependability, unlike capricious pagan gods.

• Nature is precise: God’s exact craftsmanship encourages precise measurements.

• Nature is knowable: Human minds, made in God’s image, can understand creation, as physicist Werner Heisenberg noted: “[The world] can be understood by Man, because Man was created as the spiritual image of God.”

• Nature must be tested: Voluntarism, emphasizing God’s freedom, spurred experimentation, unlike Aristotle’s reliance on reason alone.

• Nature glorifies God: Studying nature is worship, as Newton biographer Mitch Stokes observed, for the 17th-century scientist, “To be constantly engaged in studying and probing into God’s actions was true worship.”

• Time is linear: Augustine’s biblical insight that time is linear and finite—marked by non-repeating events like God’s creation of the universe, Jesus’ life, and the end times—supports predictive science, unlike cyclical pagan views.

These ideals, unique in their totality to Christianity, combined with Greek logic and mathematics to ignite the Scientific Revolution. Plato’s mysticism, emphasizing ideal Forms and mathematics, and Aristotle’s realism, promoting empiricism and logic, were incorporated into Christianity through Neoplatonism (via Augustine) and Scholasticism (via Thomas Aquinas). Tensions, like Galileo’s conflict with the Church over Aristotle’s geocentric model, far from hindering science, actually drove progress, as crises often do. The interplay of Greek philosophy and Christian theology was the catalyst for modern science, emerging in 17th-century Europe and nowhere else.

Part 2: Faith in Science, Science in Faith

Some critics concede at this point that Christianity gave rise to modern science but insist that faith should remain separate. They envision science as a cold, passionless pursuit embodied by the stoic scientist in a lab coat, devoid of emotion or metaphysical belief.

Christopher Hitchens articulated this view, stating, “Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason.” Evolutionary biologist, Stephen Jay Gould, who seemed less outright hostile to religion than Hitchens, came up with the concessionary concept of NOMA—non-overlapping magisteria—to keep science and religion in their respective lanes.

But the domains of science and Christianity do overlap. Science assumes the world is real, our senses are reliable, our capacity to reason is reliable, and that the natural laws are constant. We can’t prove any of this is true, and there are different religions that reject or preclude some of these assumptions. They’re a form of faith that was originally rooted in Christian ideals and assumptions about a rational, law-giving God who created a real world fit to be studied by its inhabitants. But there’s more to science than that. As physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi noted, science relies on “hard, crude methods”—but it also needs metaphysical leaps, and these have sometimes been provided by Christian ideas about God.

Let’s take a look at three outstanding scientists whose specific Christian beliefs about God directly informed their revolutionary discoveries in physics. These men were motivated by faith to work diligently, honestly, and humbly, virtues that should inspire everyone, especially those in the sciences. But their significance goes beyond their work ethic. Their specific beliefs about God shaped their scientific breakthroughs. What follows is physics-o-centric, because that’s my field of interest, but it holds universal relevance for understanding the faith-science nexus.

These examples reflect my ministry’s motto: faith in science; science in faith. “Faith in science” means trusting that science is a way to honor and know God, but it also means faith informing science, at times driving its discoveries. These stories reveal how, contrary to New Atheist assertions, Christian theology has propelled scientific progress. Ironically, we can rely on Sam Harris’s own words to gauge whether these scientists held valid beliefs: “…either a person has good reasons for what he believes, or he does not. When a person has good reasons, his beliefs contribute to our growing understanding of the world.” These scientists had good reasons, rooted in their faith, and their work transformed our world.

Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) – God’s precision and planetary motion

The first scientist is Johannes Kepler, a pious Christian whose faith in God’s precision revolutionized our understanding of the cosmos. Born on December 27, 1571, in Weil der Stadt, Germany, Kepler grew up in a turbulent world marked by religious and political strife. His dysfunctional family—his mercenary father abandoned them, and his mother was later accused of witchcraft—compounded his difficulties. Frail from childhood, with smallpox scars and poor eyesight, Kepler’s physical limitations contrasted with his intellectual power. A scholarship to the University of Tübingen introduced him to mathematics and astronomy, where he embraced Copernicus’s heliocentric model, a radical departure from the long-held Aristotelian Earth-centered view.

Kepler dreamed of becoming a Lutheran theologian, seeing theology as the ultimate path to know God. However, a theological disagreement over the Eucharist—specifically, his reluctance to fully endorse the Lutheran doctrine of ubiquity—barred him from the clergy. His fallback was astronomy, which he pursued as a divine calling to uncover God’s rational order in the heavens. His life was marked by hardship: his first wife, Barbara, and several of their children died, and he faced religious persecution during the Thirty Years’ War, forcing him to flee multiple times. Yet his faith remained unshaken, sustaining him through grief and exile.

Kepler’s Christian beliefs were central to his work. A devout Lutheran, he believed in God’s infinite wisdom and precision in creation. He wrote, “The wisdom of the Lord is infinite as are also His glory and His power. Ye heavens, sing His praises; sun, moon, and planets, glorify Him in your ineffable language! Praise Him, celestial harmonies, and all ye who can comprehend them! And thou, my soul, praise thy Creator! It is by Him and in Him that all exist.” He saw astronomy as a way to discover God’s mathematical harmony, declaring, “The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order and harmony which has been imposed on it by God and which He revealed to us in the language of mathematics.” His conviction that God’s creation was exact is what drove his scientific rigor.

In 1600, Kepler created an unlikely alliance with Tycho Brahe, a Danish astronomer renowned for precise observations of the positions of planets in the sky. These two men could not possibly have been more opposite. Where Kepler was reserved and introspective, Tycho was flamboyant and gregarious. The relationship was forged by mutual need—Kepler needed Tycho’s ultra-precise planetary data and Tycho needed Kepler’s mathematical prowess. Tycho’s data, accurate to within a tiny fraction of a degree, revealed minute discrepancies between the predicted and observed positions of Mars in Copernicus’s heliocentric model. The problem? Copernicus’ model assumed circular orbits, a relic from Greek idealism about circles as divine shapes. Most scientists would have dismissed these small discrepancies as negligible, but Kepler’s faith in God’s precision wouldn’t allow him to ignore them. He believed the heavens reflected God’s exact craftsmanship, not an approximation.

For nearly a decade, Kepler labored, testing thousands of calculations by hand. His faith-driven persistence led to a radical epiphany: planetary orbits were not circular, elliptical, with the Sun at one focus. God’s perfection was not reflected in the use of perfect circles for orbits, but the mathematical precision with which he crafted the universe. This insight produced Kepler’s three laws of planetary motion, published between 1609 and 1619:

• First Law: Planets move in elliptical orbits with the Sun at one focus, challenging the Greek obsession with circles.

• Second Law: A line from a planet to the Sun sweeps out equal areas in equal times, meaning planets speed up when closer to the Sun.

• Third Law: The square of a planet’s orbital period is proportional to the cube of its average distance from the Sun (P² = a³).

These laws turbo-boosted the overturning of Aristotelian cosmology and Greek dogma that was already underway. By grounding his theories in precise data and mathematical rigor, Kepler helped dismantle centuries-old assumptions about the cosmos. He saw this work as both a consolation and a form of worship: “If there is anything that can bind the heavenly mind of man to this dreary exile of our earthly home and can reconcile us with our fate so that one can enjoy living, then it is verily the enjoyment of the mathematical sciences and astronomy.”

Kepler’s laws directly inspired Isaac Newton, another devout Christian, to formulate the law of universal gravitation in 1687, closing out the Scientific Revolution. Without Kepler’s belief in God’s precision, this leap very likely would have been delayed.

Michael Faraday (1791–1867) – God’s unity and electromagnetism

The second scientist is Michael Faraday, a humble genius whose faith-driven discoveries electrified the world. Born in 1791 to a poor London family, Faraday had minimal formal education, attending only basic schooling before being apprenticed as a bookbinder at age 14. Self-educated, he devoured scientific texts, particularly on chemistry and electricity. His tenacity landed him a job as a lab assistant to chemist Humphry Davy at the Royal Institution, where his intuitive genius for visualizing phenomena made him an exceptional experimentalist. Despite lacking advanced mathematics, Faraday’s insights were so profound that Albert Einstein kept his picture on his study wall.

Faraday faced class prejudice in Britain’s elitist scientific circles, where his working-class roots and lack of credentials were mocked. He and his wife, Sarah Barnard, endured personal losses: they had no children, a source of sorrow in a family-oriented era, and Sarah suffered chronic health issues, requiring Faraday’s care. His faith, rooted in the Sandemanian Church—a small Protestant sect emphasizing simplicity, humility, community, and direct faith—sustained him. When asked, toward the end of his life, what he thought his occupation in heaven might be, Faraday replied, “I shall be with Christ, and that is enough.”

The Sandemanian Church shaped Faraday’s worldview. Unlike mainstream denominations, it rejected hierarchical clergy and worldly honors, seeing the universe as God’s unified, orderly creation. Faraday believed electricity, magnetism, and other forces were interconnected expressions of a single divine force, reflecting God’s harmonious design.

In 1820, Hans Christian Ørsted showed that an electric current could deflect a magnetic needle, hinting at a link between electricity and magnetism. Faraday’s Sandemanian belief in the unity of God’s creation led him to hypothesize that electricity and magnetism were two aspects of a divine system. His faith fueled relentless experimentation. In 1821, he discovered electromagnetic rotation, where a current-carrying wire rotated around a magnet, laying the groundwork for electric motors. In 1831, after months of trial and error, he induced an electric current by moving a magnet through a coil of wire, proving magnetism could generate electricity. This discovery of electromagnetic induction became the basis for electric generators and transformers.

Faraday’s vision extended further. In the 1830s, he proposed “lines of force”—electromagnetic fields—that transmitted effects through space, unifying electricity, magnetism, and later light, through James Clerk Maxwell’s equations in the 1860s. Maxwell’s laws, second only to Einstein’s general relativity field equations in their elegance and beauty, owe their origin to Faraday’s theological insight.

Faraday’s discoveries gave rise to the field of electromagnetism, enabling technologies like motors, generators, and telecommunications, and eventually influencing Einstein’s relativity. His Sandemanian humility led him to decline a knighthood, quite remarkable considering the class prejudice he once faced. Faraday was later honored by having the unit of capacitance, the farad, named after him.

James Prescott Joule (1818–1889) – God’s sovereignty and thermodynamics

The final scientist is James Prescott Joule, whose faith in God’s sovereignty transformed our understanding of energy. Born in 1818 in Salford, England, into a wealthy brewing family, Joule was frail, limiting his formal education. Homeschooled and tutored by chemist John Dalton, he developed a passion for precise measurements, conducting experiments in a home laboratory. When his father, Benjamin, because ill, Joule postponed a full-time scientific career to manage the family brewery, taking on significant responsibilities from 1833 until the brewery was sold in 1854. Shy but brilliant, Joule married Amelia Grimes in 1847, and they had three children. Tragically, Amelia died in 1854, leaving Joule a single parent. Financial struggles followed as the brewery declined, yet his faith sustained him.

A devout Anglican, Joule believed God alone had the power to create or destroy, implying that energy, as God’s creation, must be conserved and transformed, not annihilated. He wrote, “It is evident that an acquaintance with natural laws means no less an acquaintance with the mind of God therein expressed. To engage in science, far from being contrary, is compatible with our seeking after God.” This conviction drove his study of heat, work, and energy as interconnected manifestations of God’s immutable laws.

In the 1830s, scientists debated whether heat was a substance (caloric theory) or a form of motion. Joule’s belief that only God could destroy led him to hypothesize that energy—whether heat, work, or motion—could neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed. This challenged the caloric theory, which treated heat as a destructible fluid.

Joule’s experiments were meticulous. In the 1840s, he designed a paddle-wheel apparatus, where falling weights turned a paddle in water, generating heat. By measuring the temperature rise, he calculated the mechanical equivalent of heat by 1845, showing that a specific amount of work (1 joule = 4.184 calories) produced one calorie of heat. This proved energy conservation, articulated as the first law of thermodynamics: the total energy of an isolated system is constant (ΔU = Q - W).

His faith in God’s unchanging laws fueled years of refining experiments, despite initial rejection. As a brewer’s son without a university degree, Joule faced skepticism from scientific elites. The Royal Society dismissed his early papers, but his Anglican diligence, seeing science as revealing divine truth, kept him going. Collaboration with William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) in the 1850s secured recognition, cementing the first law’s place in physics.

The first law unified mechanics, heat, and other energy forms, revolutionizing physics. It underpinned thermodynamics, improved steam engines, and inspired concepts like entropy. Joule’s work enabled modern energy systems—power plants, engines—and advanced our understanding of the universe’s energy balance. The unit of energy, the joule, honors his legacy.

A call to action

The lives and legacies of Kepler, Faraday, and Joule illustrate how faith-driven discoveries reshaped our understanding of the universe. Kepler, guided by his Lutheran belief in God’s perfection, formulated the laws of planetary motion, inspiring Newton’s law of universal gravitation. Faraday, rooted in his Sandemanian faith in God’s unified order, inspired electromagnetism, enabling technologies that power our world. Joule, driven by his Anglican conviction that only God has the power to destroy, established the first law of thermodynamics, revolutionizing physics and engineering.

These were not minor contributions but major breakthroughs that stand in stark contrast to Hitchens’ claim that “religion poisons everything.” Far from poisoning science, these faith-driven discoveries enriched it, providing foundational principles that underpin our modern world. Kepler’s contemporaries ignored small discrepancies; Faraday’s peers accepted fragmented force models; Joule’s rivals clung to outdated caloric theories. Without their specific Christian beliefs, these breakthroughs would likely have been significantly delayed, given the historical trajectory of scientific thought.

Sam Harris’s assertion that “the maintenance of religious dogma always comes at the expense of science” is not only wrong, but breathtakingly stupid. Was he unaware that 96% of the Scientific Revolution’s architects were Christian, most of them devoutly so? Was he oblivious to how Kepler, Faraday, and Joule’s convictions led to paradigm-shifting advances? Modern science is clearly rooted in Christian ideals and assumptions—nature’s reality, goodness, order, precision, and knowability. These assumptions, combined with Greek logic, made science possible in 17th-century Christian Europe and nowhere else.

Hitchens was equally mistaken when he claimed, “Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith.” The principles of science rest on trust in natural laws, a form of faith rooted in Christian theology. To paraphrase Heisenberg, we can understand the natural world because its Creator intended it. This trust enabled Kepler to seek God’s precision, Faraday to uncover God’s unity, and Joule to reveal God’s indestructible energy.

This history is a call to reject the false dichotomy between faith and science. Christians should embrace science as a way to know God’s mind. Non-Christians should reconsider the narrative that religion stifles progress. The history of science, from the Bible’s role in promoting literacy to the Scientific Revolution’s devout pioneers, shows Christianity as a scientific catalyst, not a barrier.

So, here’s your call to action: the next time someone claims that Christianity opposes science or poisons everything, share the stories of Kepler, Faraday, and Joule. Explain how their beliefs—in God’s precision, unity, and sovereignty—led to breakthroughs that shaped our world. Challenge them with this question: “How can that be possible if Christianity is at odds with science?” Invite them to explore the history of science, where faith and reason traverse nature hand in hand, revealing God’s glory in His creation. For Christians, embrace science as a blessing of your faith, a way to worship and know God.

Related:

• There is no modern science without Christianity

• Top 10 believing scientists, part 1

• Top 10 believing scientists, part 2

Note to would-be critics in the comments: If you don’t agree with my points and you want to talk about it, let’s chat. If you have questions, ask away. But there’s a good chance I’ve already addressed your questions and criticisms here—please read it before you engage.

If you liked this article, do me a favor and hit the like button below—it helps me know what resonates with readers and it boosts my writing. There’s also a share button if you want to send it to a friend who’d enjoy the science-and-faith conversation. If you’re a free subscriber who would like to support my ministry, you can upgrade to a paid subscription (which comes with some perks!).

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This wasn’t the first time people got excited about the possibility of not being alone. In 1877, Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiapparelli, while observing Mars, sketched features he labeled ‘canali,’ the Italian word for channels. Mistranslated into English as "canals," the term fueled speculation about the Martian engineers who built them. Though no evidence supported this, the excitement persisted well into the 20th century, inspiring works like H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds and C.S. Lewis’ Out of the Silent Planet.

Since 1967, periodic news reports have claimed discoveries of habitable Earth-like planets or evidence of microbial life elsewhere in the Solar System. Whether substantiated or not, these reports raise questions about whether extraterrestrial life conflicts with the Christian view of creation.

Let’s pause for a thought experiment. If you were presented with undeniable evidence of extraterrestrials, how would it affect your beliefs? Does your worldview already lean toward the likelihood of extraterrestrial intelligences (ETIs)? Or would it challenge your belief that life is exclusive to Earth?

For Christians, a key question is whether life—especially intelligent life—is unique to Earth. When I emerged from the atheism I was raised with and began to study theology, I started with the ancient and medieval Jewish Torah scholars. I was surprised to learn they believed the universe was created with the potential for life built into it, not just on Earth but throughout. This aligns with the scientific evidence showing the universe is exquisitely fine-tuned for life. From both the biblical and the scientific perspective, I’d be surprised if we didn’t eventually find evidence of basic life forms elsewhere.

The religiously significant question is not whether we’ll find some microbes on another body in the universe, but whether we’ll find intelligent or conscious life elsewhere. The biblical view suggests these would be deliberate acts of God, not natural outcomes of universal processes. In The Science of God, physicist and theologian Gerald Schroeder notes that Genesis uses two distinct Hebrew verbs: “created” (bara) and “made” (asah). Bara (created) denotes an instantaneous act of bringing something into existence from nothing, and is used only three times in Genesis: for the creation of the universe on day one, for the creation of animal (intelligent) life on day five, and for God breathing a soul into Adam’s body on day six. These are biblically miraculous events for which science currently has no explanation. For other events, including the appearance of plant life on day three, asah (made) is used, implying the restructuring of existing material. Non-intelligent life, like hypothetical bacteria on Mars or an asteroid, would fall under “made.” Intelligent, conscious life would be “created.”

Would the discovery of conscious beings elsewhere undermine the biblical view of creation? It would only if Genesis claimed Adam’s creation was a singular, unrepeatable event. Yet, nothing in scripture, to my knowledge, suggests this. The Bible focuses its narrative solely on life on Earth and its relationship with the Creator. This leaves open the possibility of other conscious beings with whom God has a relationship. C.S. Lewis, the renowned Christian apologist, explored this in The Space Trilogy, depicting humans encountering unfallen alien beings on other planets who enjoy direct communion with God.

Rev. Dr. Joel D. Heck1, summarizing Lewis’ views in his essay, “Religion and Rocketry,” notes:

In Paul’s letter to the Romans (8:19–23), Lewis argued, God hints that the longing for redemption is cosmic, and therefore not limited to this world. Perhaps redemption has happened for all those who need it, has happened through Christ’s redemption, and has somehow been extended to other creatures. But we really don’t know. And to speculate about other creatures in other worlds takes us into the imaginative narrative that comprises Lewis’s [Space] Trilogy, especially Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra. One paragraph of the essay in particular, beginning with the words “It is interesting to wonder…,” imagines the scenario that Lewis spells out in Out of the Silent Planet. We find Lewis speculating that the vast distances in the universe are “God’s quarantine precautions,” designed to prevent the rest of the universe from being contaminated by the corruption of our world.

This perspective suggests a humbling possibility: the 39,900,000,000,000 kilometers to our nearest stellar neighbor (Proxima Centauri) might be God’s way of shielding other worlds from the equivalent of spiritual human measles. While unsettling, it’s a plausible explanation for the vastness of space.

Lewis’ imaginative framework opens the door to various possibilities for ETIs and their relationship with God, including:

• They’re unfallen and need no savior.

• They’re fallen and offered redemption through Jesus Christ, as we are.

• They’re fallen and offered a different path to redemption.

• They’re fallen and not offered redemption.

A challenge for the materialist view that humans lack a spiritual component is explaining why 90% of humanity across history has exhibited a sense of or deep longing for the spiritual. Secular explanations often dismiss this as an evolutionary byproduct. So let’s use this to turn the tables. What if we discovered ETIs, communicated with them, and found they’re as spiritually inclined as humans? Would this undermine materialism? It seems so, given the immense improbability of two distinct species in separate corners of the universe independently developing the same “evolutionary tic.”

The existence of extraterrestrial life, intelligent or otherwise, doesn’t inherently conflict with the biblical worldview. Instead, it invites us to ponder the possibilities of God’s relationship with other life while challenging the materialist perspective on spirituality.

This article is an expanded and edited version of an article from my old blog.

Related: Earth-like planet kills God dead (my old blog)

Note to would-be critics in the comments: If you don’t agree with my points and you want to talk about it, let’s chat. If you have questions, ask away. But there’s a good chance I’ve already addressed your questions and criticisms here—please read it before you engage.

If you liked this article, do me a favor and hit the like button below—it helps me know what resonates with readers and it boosts my writing. There’s also a share button if you want to send it to a friend who’d enjoy the science-and-faith conversation. If you’re a free subscriber who would like to support my ministry, you can upgrade to a paid subscription (which comes with some perks!).

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Does God want us to believe in him based on blind faith/no evidence? Would you say he gives us evidence that he exists that is available to everybody? Or does he expect people to believe for no reason? Because the latter would seem ridiculous.

A common critique from atheists is that Christian faith equates to believing in God without evidence—a kind of blind leap into the void. But is that accurate? Does anyone truly believe anything for no reason? People always have reasons, even if others deem them insufficient. Atheists often argue that Christians believe in God because of their upbringing, a fear of death, or a desire for comfort, and that such belief persists despite evidence to the contrary. However, this oversimplifies the Christian perspective and ignores the evidence many believers point to as foundational to their faith.

So, what does God want from us?

Speaking on God’s behalf can be risky, but thankfully scripture does that for me. The Bible strongly suggests God does not expect belief based on blind faith. Romans 1:20 states, “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” This verse implies that the created world itself serves as evidence of God’s existence, accessible to all.

My family’s story illustrates this. My grandparents were devout Catholics who raised their children in the faith. Yet, in the rebellious 1960s, my parents and nearly all their siblings rejected religion, casting it aside with other societal norms. Curious, my aunt once asked my grandmother why she believed in God. My grandmother opened her arms, gesturing to the world around them. It was a simple but profound invocation of Romans 1:20—the natural world as evidence of a purposeful intelligent design.

Far from offering no evidence, the universe itself testifies to God’s existence. Its order, complexity, and the seemingly timeless laws of physics—such as gravity and thermodynamics—point to a purposeful design. Psalm 19:1 reinforces this: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” The very existence of something rather than nothing demands explanation, as nothingness requires no cause, while existence cries out for one. This concept, known as general revelation, holds that God’s existence is evident to all through creation.

My own journey to faith reflects this. As an undergraduate physics student who was losing faith in atheism, I was struck by the universe’s lawfulness. The consistency of physical laws across time and space, the universe’s openness to scientific scrutiny—especially from Earth—seemed almost miraculous. Why should the cosmos be so comprehensible? This realization propelled me past agnosticism to theism. Without reading a Bible, attending church, or being evangelized, I saw God’s fingerprints in the universe, as if He had written “Here I am!” across the heavens.

Scripture consistently shows God revealing Himself through evidence, not demanding blind faith. In the Old Testament, God’s presence is unmistakable: the plagues against Pharaoh (Exodus 7–12), the voice in the burning bush (Exodus 3:1–6), and manna from heaven for the Israelites (Exodus 16). When Job questioned God, God didn’t demand blind belief. Instead, He offered a vivid description of His creative power (Job 38–41), pointing to the universe as evidence of His trustworthiness. Even neighboring tribes, who often rejected God, witnessed His works through Israel’s experiences.

In the New Testament, God’s revelation becomes even more direct through Jesus. Jesus didn’t simply ask for belief; He provided evidence through miracles—healing the sick (John 9:1–7), feeding thousands (Matthew 14:13–21), and raising the dead (John 11:38–44). His teachings carried an authority that left listeners astonished (Matthew 7:28–29). The resurrection, the cornerstone of Christian faith, was not a distant event. Jesus appeared to His disciples, letting them see and touch His wounds, eat with Him, and converse over days (John 20:19–29; Acts 1:3). This transformed the disciples from fearful followers into bold proclaimers of the gospel, many fearlessly dying as martyrs.

The Bible itself, the most widely distributed book in history, provides further evidence. It contains historically verifiable details—names, dates, and places, many corroborated by archaeology, such as the existence of Pontius Pilate (Luke 3:1) or the Pool of Bethesda (John 5:2). The apostle Paul, commissioned by Jesus Himself, urged discernment, not blind acceptance: “Test everything; hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). This call to reason suggests faith should be grounded in evidence.

My ministry focuses on natural evidence for God, which I find abundant. The Genesis 1 account of creation, with its ordered progression, aligns with a purposeful design. Beyond this, a near-universal sense of morality—however imperfectly applied—seems written onto human hearts (Romans 2:14–15). Millions of credible near-death experiences suggest glimpses of a supernatural realm, challenging purely materialistic explanations. The pervasive human belief in the supernatural across cultures and eras is not easily dismissed as an evolutionary quirk; it’s much more plausible that this intuition reflects a genuine spiritual reality.

So, no, I don’t believe God asks for belief without evidence, nor against it, as some critics claim. The universe, scripture, historical testimony, and human experience provide ample signs of His existence. Yet, evidence alone does not compel faith. At some point, the signs pointing to God—His creation, His works, His Son—must be sufficient. The question remains: what do we do with this evidence? That choice, God leaves to us.

Related: Holding on to a God I can’t see

Sorta related: One of my hobbies is cartooning—I’ve been at it since I learned to do caricatures when I was in high school. The original plan for Schrödinger’s Poodle was as a webcomic, but it has since morphed into this newsletter. I still plan to launch the webcomic sometime down the road, but for now I’m incorporating more of my cartoons and illustrations into weekly articles. Some of my previous cartoons are here:

The Concern Parabola
Absurdist Tips on Life (my fave)
How to Commit Heresy Using Physics
Boltzmann Brains
A Nietzsche Causal Loop Diagram (my second fave)

Note to would-be critics in the comments: If you don’t agree with my points and you want to talk about it, let’s chat. If you have questions, ask away. But there’s a good chance I’ve already addressed your questions and criticisms here. Please read that first before you engage.

If you liked this article, do me a favor and hit the like button below—it helps me know what resonates with readers and it boosts my writing. There’s also a share button if you want to send it to a friend who’d enjoy the science-and-faith conversation. If you’re a free subscriber who’d like to support my ministry, consider upgrading to a paid subscription (which comes with some perks).

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Sunday Superposition is a premium perk for paid subscribers, an end-of-the-month collection of spiritual themes and links to stuff I find interesting. This week I’m featuring an entry from a book I’m writing inspired by the faith of some of the great Christian scientists.

Deep Philosophy Turns the Mind to Faith

It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion; for while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate, and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity. –Francis Bacon

The Path to Doubt

When I started my hobby of gathering quotes from scientists of faith, I was thrilled to stumble upon what seemed like a modern echo of Bacon’s words, attributed to Werner Heisenberg: “The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.” This metaphor was perfect, but there was a problem: there is no record of Heisenberg actually saying it. Despite its apocryphal nature, I still share the Heisenberg quote because it translates Bacon’s Elizabethan eloquence into relatable terms.

The lesson from both versions is clear: The worst thing that can happen to a person is to gain a little knowledge. If you were to plot confidence against knowledge on a graph, it would look like something like this:

Confidence soars with those first gulps, peaks, then wanes as one realizes how much more there is to learn. The period of overarching confidence often occurs during the teen years, and it is a risky phase when atheism can take root.

Raised in an atheist household, I took my first gulps of science as an adolescent and quickly became convinced that religion was merely an intellectual and emotional crutch. My confidence hit its peak when I grappled with the concept of relativity—the notion that no state is absolute—and used it to argue away the existence of heaven and hell. When my then-atheist father praised my argument, my confidence soared. At the age of 15, I believed I had single-handedly dismantled religion.

But my reign as religion’s supposed vanquisher was short-lived. When I became a serious student of physics at university, my journey took a turn from certainty to doubt. The more I learned, the more I was humbled into recognizing how little I truly knew. Before me stretched not just the vast expanse of all that was known in science, but the shadowy realm of all that was unknown. Beyond that loomed an even more daunting place—the hidden realm of the unknowable. This revelation did not immediately lead me to God, but it turned the once firm philosophical ground beneath my feet into sand.

The Cosmic Time Machine

Between my sophomore and junior years, I landed a physics research internship at the University of California – San Diego, where I finally began to behold the chain of causes confederate, as Bacon so poetically put it.

My mentors were testing one of the predictions of the big bang model—the grand paradigm of all of physics. This model tells us that the universe burst into existence from an unknown state, rapidly expanding from a point of unimaginable heat and density, akin to a cosmic furnace like the Sun’s core. In just minutes, this fiery expansion forged nearly all the light elements we see today: hydrogen, deuterium, helium, and lithium. The heavy elements vital for life came later, crafted in the hearts of stars or in the violent aftermath of stellar explosions and collisions. As stars live and die, they transform the universe’s chemistry, converting hydrogen into heavier elements and dispersing them back into space. We were testing a prediction of the big bang model about the precise abundance of these light elements in the universe’s infancy, a time before stars had their say. To do this, we needed to peer into the chemistry of the early universe.

Here is where God gives us a divine gift through the laws of nature—the finite speed of light. Light zips through space at an astonishing 300,000 kilometers per second, but it is this very limitation that grants us a window into the past. Because light takes time to travel from its source to our eyes, we see celestial objects not as they are now, but as they were when the light began its journey. When you gaze at the Moon, you are seeing it as it was half a second ago. Spot Mars in the night sky, and you are looking back twelve minutes. In darker skies, you might catch the Orion Nebula, a faint fuzzy patch in the sword of Orion, revealing how it looked when the Western Roman Empire was crumbling and Christianity was beginning its rapid spread across Europe.

For those ambitious enough to peer millions of years into the past, just look towards Andromeda. On winter nights, this galaxy appears as a faint, ghostly glow through our Milky Way’s stars. Each time you see it, you are witnessing light that set off on its journey when Homo habilis was hunting mammoths on a frozen Earth.

This property of light is not just a scientific boon; it is a divine invitation. If light traveled instantly, unraveling the universe’s history would be nearly impossible. But with its finite speed, we have our very own cosmic time machine, allowing us to explore the universe’s story from almost its very beginning.

Our cosmic time machine has just one control: distance. To peer back through time, you must gaze further into the cosmos. My research team’s mission was to glimpse the chemistry of the nascent universe, examining the primordial gas clouds that birthed today’s stars and galaxies. These clouds had to be distant enough that their light had embarked on its journey before Earth even formed. We needed exceptionally bright light sources, positioned even deeper in space, to illuminate these clouds, allowing us to detect their elemental signatures. These sources needed to be not only powerful but also pure in their emission, free from their own chemical fingerprints. Enter quasars—massive, erupting black holes in galaxies far, far away. My role was to sift through the light from thousands of these cosmic beacons, hunting for traces of the simplest elements in the ancient clouds they lit up.

The Revelation of God in the Cosmos

As a student, I was used to navigating through well-trodden knowledge, exploring the time-honored theories of Newton, Bernoulli, and Pascal—now the bedrock of practical science. But as a budding researcher, I found myself at the bleeding edge of discovery. We were looking back billions of years, into the very infancy of the universe, with no certainty of what we would uncover. Would our findings uphold the big bang model or shatter it, opening new mysteries?

Read more

A Note to Christian Parents and Pastors

In my almost 20 years of Christian ministry, I’ve encountered an alarming number of Christian parents and clergy who don’t believe active engagement and apologetics is important for helping children hold onto their faith. If you’re reading this article, and especially if you’re subscribed to my Substack, that’s likely not you. But if you’re not sure, or you know someone who thinks this way, well, I want to introduce you to a special type of atheist that deserves your attention.

These atheists were raised in Christian families, and walked away from their faith almost as soon as they left their homes. Many of them are quite bitter about it. In speaking with these atheists, I noticed certain patterns popping up again and again. Things their parents said or didn’t say, things their Sunday School teachers told them, things their families modeled for them, issues their pastors didn’t address. These adult-child interactions were so spiritually detrimental it was as though these parents and pastors were consulting a manual on how to turn Christian children into atheist adults. If such a manual existed, it would read something like this.

Top Ten Tips for Turning Christian Children into Atheist Adults—Version 1

1. When your children ask difficult questions—especially questions you don’t know how to answer—just tell them God works in mysterious ways and leave it at that.

2. Resist the urge to ever say “I don’t know; let’s look into that” to your children.

3. If your children persist in asking difficult questions, make them feel bad about not having enough faith.

4. If your children express doubts about Christianity, don’t discuss the reasons for their doubts. Just make them feel guilty about it.

5. Avoid teaching or talking about science to your children. Tell them science is a tool of the enemy.

6. Avoid talking about reasoned philosophical arguments for claims in the Bible. Ignore the Apostle Paul’s admonition to test everything. Teach your children that all philosophy is vain and deceptive.

7. If you study the Bible as a family, make sure it’s as boring and confusing as possible.

8. Don’t consult outside sources for help in preparing your children for life as adult Christians. Avoid apologetics like the plague.

9. Focus on sin and God’s justice, but not on God’s love and forgiveness. Make sure your children feel like they have to work to earn salvation and God’s love. Bonus points if they feel like they have to work to earn your love.

10. Make Christian life seem as onerous and joyless as possible to your children. If it doesn’t feel miserable and empty, they’re doing it wrong.

Top Ten Tips for Turning Christian Children into Atheist Adults—Version 2

1. Don’t make a regular family activity out of reading and discussing the Bible.

2. Don’t encourage or teach your children how to study the Bible on their own.

3. Don’t discuss the basics of Christianity with your children. Assume they picked these up through osmosis.

4. Assume that a superficial understanding of the Bible is the only thing children need to be prepared for life in a world desperate to turn them away from their faith.

5. Assume that youth groups, vacation Bible school, and mission trips alone will prepare your children for the relentless challenges to faith they’ll face in the world.

6. If your children express doubts about Christianity, just say “that’s okay” and don’t discuss the reasons for them. Everyone doubts; they’ll get over it.

7. Don’t encourage your children to pray for boring things like faith, wisdom, and discernment.

8. Focus on God’s perfect love and forgiveness, but not on sin and God’s perfect justice. Make sure your children know Jesus was just a really nice teacher who tolerated everyone.

9. Live like you’re a secular family Monday through Saturday. Acting Christian is like those uncomfortable church pants in your closet—for Sundays only.

10. Demonstrate to your children that you don’t take the Bible too seriously. Model for your children the idea that having faith in God and Jesus Christ means making no sacrifices, no difficult decisions, and no real efforts to defend their faith.

Phew.

Obviously, the goal is not to make atheists out of your Christian children, but rather to strengthen their faith and make them impervious to attack. But you won’t do this by under-preparing your children in their faith and overprotecting them from exposure to the strategies and tactics of their spiritual enemies.

I don’t have to tell most of you how critical it is that Christian children learn to articulate the core tenets of Christianity. Yet it’s surprising how many self-described “former Christians” lack a clear understanding of them. Would this knowledge have kept every single one of them from leaving the faith as adults? Probably not, but they would have at least understood what they were abandoning. Don’t overlook this essential aspect of raising Christian children into faith-filled adults.

And while teaching the basics of Christianity is essential, I believe it’s not enough. Not in this technological, scientific, and information-driven age. With all forms of media and peers constantly challenging their faith and numerous temptations surrounding them, I believe apologetics is a crucial supplement to equip children to understand and defend their beliefs. It may not prevent every single child from leaving his or her faith as an adult, but it will prevent many—and it will force the ones who do to be honest about why they’re leaving.

Many Christian parents and youth pastors, however, hesitate to teach apologetics or address challenging topics because they lack the confidence to do so. I get that. No one can be an expert in every topic. However, this hesitation can develop into a fear that rejects apologetics as unnecessary or even harmful. In some cases, otherwise caring adults may unintentionally guilt children for questioning or doubting, or they may avoid these issues altogether, hoping for the best.

Are these good strategies?

If you’re not sure, think of it this way. Many of you have children on sports teams. You wouldn’t tolerate a coach who failed to prepare your children for competition. If a coach never made your children learn and practice the skills they needed to win, you would find a new coach. If a coach avoided games against tough teams because he was afraid your children would be discouraged, you would complain that your children weren’t being prepared for the big game at the end of the season. But how many of you are letting this happen to your children spiritually?

Whether in preparation for athletics, adult life, or the spiritual struggles they will face throughout their lives, children must be made ready for adversity. Christian parents and clergy are failing their children as badly as the worst possible coaches when they leave young Christians defenseless for the religious battles they will eventually face.

If you’re already involved in apologetics, you’re aware of the challenges ahead and are motivated to help your children. If you want to get involved but lack confidence or aren’t sure where to start, the good news is that you don’t have to have all the answers. There are many excellent resources out there, many caring and knowledgeable Christians who have designed material to equip you and your children. I list many of them below. I’m personally writing some books that address the most difficult scientific questions, and will let you know when they’re available.

As the Bible tells us, the war has already been won, all we have to do is claim the victory. Christian apologetics is designed to help you coach your children to do just that.

Apologetics Resources

• All books by J. Warner Wallace, including his best-selling Cold-Case Christianity. Jim, a retired cold-case homicide detective, is a personal friend of mine, and I’m a huge fan of his logical, investigative approach to Christianity. He’s just released a best-selling graphic novel, which I’ll be reviewing soon.

• William Lane Craig’s Reasonable Faith ministry. Craig, who has two PhDs, is one of the top Christian philosophers in the world. He’s such a formidable philosopher and debater that Richard Dawkins has refused to publicly debate him. He’s written numerous books, he answers hundreds of difficult questions on his treasure-trove of a website, and his many lectures and debates with atheists are on YouTube.

• The Science of God by Gerald Schroeder. This was the first apologetics-style book I read as a new theist, and it convinced me to start reading the Bible. A life-changing book for anyone who’s interested in the intersection of science and the Bible.

• All books by John Lennox, a mathematician and brilliant Christian apologist (with three PhDs), along with his many lectures, debates, and Q&As on YouTube. He’s one of my all-time favorite apologists for his composed yet extremely sharp style of addressing topics and answering questions. Check out some of his videos on YouTube. You won’t be disappointed.

• Mama Bear Apologetics by Hillary Morgan Ferrer. Ferrer equips Christian parents to teach kids how to discern truth from cultural lies using the “ROAR” method. With humor and practical strategies, she promotes critical thinking and biblical convictions to raise confident, faith-filled children.

• The Soul of Science by Nancy Pearcey and Charles Thaxton. One of my favorite books for the way it concisely builds the case that modern science has its roots in Christian ideals and assumptions. No Christian parent or pastor will ever be afraid of science once they know that it’s built on the foundation of faith in God and Jesus Christ.

• Frank Turek’s CrossExamined.org ministry. Turek, famous for his book, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, started his ministry in 2006, just like me. He’s focused on addressing skepticism and defending Christianity, particularly among youth. He’s got an engaging, approachable style, but pulls no punches with his answers—his Q&As with seekers and atheists on YouTube are legendary.

Some of my favorite apologetics YouTube channels:

• Whaddo You Meme?? hosted by Jon McCray. Provides thoughtful Christian commentary on culture, responding to anti-Christian memes, videos, and popular culture events with a focus on apologetics (mostly non-scientific, but still extremely important topics). The channel aims to help viewers understand how Christianity makes sense of life, fostering spiritual growth and engagement with the Gospel through well-researched content.

• Daily Dose of Wisdom hosted by Brandon McGuire. Focuses on Christian apologetics, offering daily content to equip believers and engage skeptics with thoughtful discussions on faith, science, and culture. The channel fosters open conversations, addressing objections to Christianity while promoting a message of love and wisdom rooted in biblical teachings.

• Inspiring Philosophy hosted by Michael Jones. Explores Christian apologetics, philosophy, and theology through well-researched, visually engaging videos addressing topics like the existence of God, biblical reliability, and responses to skepticism. The channel aims to provide intellectual and accessible content to strengthen faith and encourage critical thinking among believers and seekers alike.

• Capturing Christianity hosted by Cameron Bertuzzi. Dedicated to Christian apologetics, featuring discussions, debates, and interviews with scholars to defend the truth of Christianity and address skeptical objections. The channel aims to equip believers with intellectual tools and foster respectful dialogue with those exploring faith or holding differing views. I appreciate Bertuzzi’s willingness to delve into topics many apologists shy away from, like the spiritual realm, Christian persecution, and Islam.

• Pints with Aquinas hosted by Matt Fradd. Explores Catholic theology, philosophy, and apologetics through engaging discussions, interviews, and reflections, often inspired by the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas. The channel aims to deepen viewers' faith and understanding of Christianity while addressing contemporary issues with clarity, humor, and intellectual rigor. While I’m not Catholic, I appreciate Fradd’s content and style. His Tolkien-themed interview with Ben Reinhard is one of my faves.

And there are many more. I’m sure I’ve inadvertently left off some great stuff. If you’re into apologetics and I haven’t listed your favorite resources here, please mention them in the comments.

Related:

Top 10 reasons I’ll never go back to atheism

Top three bogus questions atheists like to ask Christians

Liked this article? Share it with a friend who’d enjoy the science-and-faith conversation. If you’re a free subscriber who would like to support my work, you can upgrade to a paid subscription (which comes with some perks).

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A year ago, I wrote about how I’d come to love Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, a movie I initially despised for its unrelenting grimness. Its gritty tone clashed with my deep affection for the hopeful, swashbuckling spirit of the original Star Wars trilogy. Yet, something shifted in me after I watched Rogue One a second time—I now consider it one of the great Star Wars movies.

My husband and I are watching the Disney+ series Andor, a prequel to Rogue One, despite a friend’s warning to steer clear. He knows I don’t like entertainment with overly dark themes. But I watched it anyway, and instead of resisting the series’ bleakness, I’ve decided to lean into it.

Andor and Rogue One have taught me to appreciate the purpose of “overly dark” storytelling, even in the fantastical Star Wars universe. The original trilogy, which I adore beyond reason, never fully showed the cost of rebelling against an evil empire. Yes, we witnessed the destruction of Alderaan in A New Hope, a planet obliterated in seconds by the Death Star. But after Obi-Wan Kenobi’s brief moment of grief, the story swept forward, focusing on Luke Skywalker’s journey and his father’s redemption. That focus was intentional and it’s what made the original trilogy great, but it left the Empire’s true evil somewhat abstract—a backdrop of stormtroopers, starships, and Darth Vader’s theatrical villainy.

Andor and Rogue One peel back that curtain, revealing the Empire’s cruelty in a visceral, ground-level way. Andor immerses us in a galaxy of oppressive bureaucracy, where ordinary people are crushed under the weight of surveillance, exploitation, and despair. The show’s protagonist, Cassian Andor, navigates a world where hope feels like a luxury, and rebellion seems futile. The Empire’s evil isn’t just in planet-destroying super-weapons; it’s in the quiet, soul-crushing machinery of control—faceless officers, prison labor camps, and communities stripped of dignity. This dreariness is horrifying, and it makes the Rebellion’s existence almost miraculous. As Andor and Rogue One show, resisting evil exacts a profound personal and societal toll. Few are willing to pay it until the pain of enduring evil outweighs the fear of fighting back. This, I’ve realized, is one reason evil persists, both in fiction and in our world.

Cassian Andor himself embodies this struggle in a deeply human way. Traumatized by a childhood marked by loss and shaped by a life of scraping by in the Empire’s margins, he’s no idealized hero. He’s flawed—cynical, morally compromised, and haunted by his past. Yet, through Andor and Rogue One, we see him slowly awaken to a cause greater than himself, culminating in his ultimate sacrifice to secure the Death Star plans. His journey mirrors how God, throughout the Bible, chooses imperfect people for divine purposes. From Moses, a murderer with a speech impediment, to David, an adulterer and king, God transforms broken vessels into instruments of His will. Cassian’s flawed yet redemptive arc reminds me that God doesn’t require perfection—just willingness to act for the good, trusting the outcome to Him.

If Rogue One and Andor were dark for darkness’s sake, I wouldn’t bother with them. But their stories unfold with the original trilogy’s triumph in view. We know the Death Stars are destroyed, the Empire falls, and Darth Vader finds redemption. This context transforms their grimness into something redemptive. The sacrifices in Rogue One—where every major character gives their life for the Rebellion—are not in vain. The despair in Andor is the darkness before the dawn, a prelude to the joy of victory. These characters don’t know the outcome, but we do, and that knowledge imbues their struggles with profound meaning.

This dynamic resonates deeply with my Christian faith. The book of Hebrews speaks of a “great cloud of witnesses” who are watching as Christians endure hardship for a promised joy they couldn’t yet see:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. —Hebrews 12:1-2

Like the rebels in Rogue One and Andor, Christians live in a world shadowed by evil—not merely political or social, but spiritual. The apostle Paul describes this struggle vividly:

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. —Ephesians 6:12

Yet, we’re not just characters in this story; we’re also its audience, privy to the ending. We know Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross defeated death. We know His resurrection and ascension secured victory over evil. The book of Revelation assures us that Christ will return to make all things new. The empire of darkness is already defeated, even if its shadows linger. Our role is to play our parts—however small—until the final act unfolds.

Rogue One and Andor have become more than entertainment for me. They mirror the Christian life, illuminating both the cost of resisting evil and the joy of knowing the battle is won. They remind me that even in a world of pain, our sacrifices, like those of Cassian Andor or Jyn Erso, are not meaningless. They are part of a larger story, one that ends in glory. And that makes the darkness of this new, grittier Star Wars not just bearable, but beautiful.

Related: Star Wars keeps reminding me that creation is good

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Einstein’s general theory of relativity is another modern mathematical marvel describing the world. We don’t struggle to find words for it. In fact, plain sense explanations abound for general relativity: spacetime is like a flexible fabric! a black hole is a literal hole in space! and so on. These images, while not the whole story, give us a mental foothold, something to cling to. Quantum mechanics, though? It’s like trying to hold onto mist. It resists every attempt to be tamed into relatable terms.

Consider the Schrödinger equation, a cornerstone of quantum mechanics. It elegantly charts (in mathematical terms) how a quantum system’s state (its wavefunction) changes with time. But when we try to translate this into human language, we end up saying things like: “A quantum system can exist in multiple states at once until it’s observed.” What does that mean? In plainer words it means something can be two completely different things at once. To picture this, imagine a poodle in a box whose fate hinges on an unobserved quantum event. Until someone looks in the box, that poodle is both alive and dead—a bizarre superposition of possibilities. Only when observed does the wavefunction of the poodle-quantum system “collapse” and the poodle’s reality snaps into one state: alive or dead, but not both.1

Such mind-twisting scenarios are not necessarily what the math of the Schrödinger equation says; it’s what a particular interpretation of the math suggests. Here, the Copenhagen Interpretation—one Erwin Schrödinger himself found unsettling—casts its strange spell. I find other interpretations no less strange.

An interpretation of quantum physics is a human attempt to wrestle its ethereal math into a box we can comprehend, to clothe the unknown in meaning. There are at least a dozen interpretations of quantum physics, none of which are (to me, anyway) relatable in human terms.

No one can quite pin down what the math of quantum physics means. Until recently, I took kind of a free-spirited, hippy stance: Maybe it’s, like, all of them and none of them, man. Nobody really understands quantum physics, so what difference does it make? But then physicist and science communicator Sabine Hossenfelder offered a revelation that shifted my perspective:

We have no good words to describe the maths of quantum physics. Because we need to talk about it somehow, we have come up with phrases like “in two places at once” or “takes all paths at the same time,” or “action at a distance.”

These are all over the popular science literature because it's the best we can do without maths. And I think that they fulfill a purpose in making an abstract topic a little more comprehensible. But they shouldn't be mistaken for a description of reality.

I think that this is to be expected, that as we discover theories about nature which are further removed from our everyday experience, that words literally fail us and maths is what remains.

This is why I don't understand when people say that we don't understand what a particle is or what gravity is because we “only” have a mathematical description. What do they expect? I think having a mathematical description is what it means to understand something. [emphasis added]

This is profound, next-level stuff.

To unravel this, let’s turn to two Renaissance scientists who glimpsed the divine in their work. Galileo’s gift to humanity was to weave mathematics into physics, which led to the unveiling of the physical world’s hidden mathematical order. It wasn’t a given that math would apply to the real world, and yet, miraculously, it did. It was so miraculous that Galileo proclaimed mathematics as the alphabet God used to write the laws of the universe.

Galileo’s contemporary, Johannes Kepler, saw his scientific work as “thinking God’s thoughts after Him.” His breakthrough came when he surrendered his vision of perfect circles for planetary orbits and embraced ellipses—because only ellipses matched the data perfectly. God, it seemed, wrote the laws of nature with stranger, more perplexing mathematics than anyone had dared to dream.

Now, let’s weave these threads together to solve the mystery of quantum mechanics.

Hundreds of years after Galileo and Kepler, we discover the quantum world—a realm so alien to our senses that human words falter and we are “reduced” to mathematical descriptions. Does this lack of words mean we understand less about the world? I’m beginning to doubt that.

It seems the deeper we drill past the strata of the everyday world, the more we unearth the precious minerals of pure knowledge from the ore of human experience. The deeper we go, the more we move past understanding our world on a human level and the more purely we see it in God's terms. Of course this deeper realm seems alien to us—it has to:

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. ...” – Isaiah 55:8-9

Perhaps God offers us a twofold gift with quantum physics. Its mathematics empowers us to understand practical things, all the way from collapsing stars to computers and smartphones. Yet it also draws back the curtain on the physical world, revealing its divine source. Quantum physics may well be the purest harmony of the universe we can discern: we hear God’s beautiful and mysterious music, but the lyrics are beyond our comprehension.

I’ll admit, the hippy in me is transforming into a mystic. I now suspect quantum physics resists human relatability because it’s not meant to be fully grasped in human terms. It’s God’s invitation to witness His hidden handiwork, a fleeting glimpse of the divine machinery beneath reality’s surface.

With this realization, we haven’t so much solved the mystery of quantum physics as glimpsed its divine source.

I see interpretations of quantum physics much like analogies of the Holy Trinity. No one has fully explained the mystery of how one God can be three Persons, so we try to craft relatable analogies. Each falls short, usually committing some form of heresy in the process. While the nature of science precludes the concept of heresy (scientists are supposed to question everything) our attempts to make sense of quantum physics inevitably lead to unsettling absurdities. Maybe we have to accept that there are things beyond our ability to grasp in human terms. Personally, I’m just fine with that.

Related: How to commit heresy using physics (yes, it can be done).

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