Do you suppose he even noticed?
From the Dashboard >
So first things first – I’m excited that next week is our SOFT OPENING of Dashboard Jesus Daily.
It is a brief, 5-minute dive into God’s word for anyone who signs up. Not a standard devotional that takes our experiences and finds lessons to apply, but one that begins in a passage, plumbs its depths, and then applies it to our lives. I really hope those who sign up will appreciate that distinction.
I debated over the easiest way to send this out and several of our college-aged subscribers said repeatedly that texting is the best way – that way they can click on it and listen as they walk across campus, or click on it and watch as they sit in the student commons. I think they’re right. Even if you’re in an office or driving a truck, the texting format seems the best way to make it easily accessible.
So, if you want to be in on the soft open next week, just text the word “Jesus” to 866-845-5029, then follow the prompts. Or go to this page and click sign up. Or, scan this QR code with your phone:
…and it will pop up a text that you can just send and follow instructions. Once we know all this is working properly, we’ll start aggressively publicizing and pushing for sign-ups. It’s all FREE TO YOU courtesy of our sponsors that I can’t wait to tell you about soon.
Now, let’s get to something that really makes me smile and that I think will encourage you.
Earlier this year, the celebrated astrophysicist and outspoken atheist Neil deGrasse Tyson was asked who the “most extraordinary scientific mind” was in all history. His answer was instantaneous, unequivocal…and ironic:
“Nobody comes close,” he said.
Obviously, I have no objections to Tyson’s choice. He makes an ironclad case as far as I’m concerned. Newton invented calculus, explained gravity, and gave us the laws of motion that still define modern physics. But there’s one additional detail about this incomparable intellect that Tyson didn’t mention: Isaac Newton believed in God. Do you think Tyson even noticed that?
Because Newton’s faith was far more than just a casual, culturally calculated belief. In fact, Newton wrote more about theology than he did about physics. He didn’t see faith and science as two competing realms but rather as all part of the same pursuit. Newton understood what Tyson and so many others miss – that theology gives science its meaning. Knowing that we live in a universe crafted by a magnificent, supernatural intelligence doesn’t diminish our curiosity about the natural world; it deepens it. It persuades us that such exploration has incredible purpose. It instructs that every law we uncover, every mystery we solve, is another tiny glimpse into the inexhaustible mind of the Creator.
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For Newton, the order and precision of the universe were evidence of divine craftsmanship. The more he studied the world, the more convinced he became that behind all that beauty and law was a Mind.
It’s ironic, then, that modern culture has worked so hard to separate faith from reason, as though believing in God requires you to check your brain at the door. The truth is, faith has always been a rational conclusion drawn from careful observation.
A new book from France has been stirring up this very conversation. Researchers Olivier Bonnassies and Michel-Yves Bolloré have published a bestseller in Europe called, God: The Science, The Evidence. The book’s premise is strikingly simple: the evidence pouring from scientific discoveries all points in the same direction: design, not chance. For years, both men studied the strongest available data across cosmology, physics, chemistry, and biology, asking the question, “what does this all point to?” Their conclusion was simple: the more we learn, the harder it becomes to explain without God.
Notice, that’s not blind faith. That’s clear reasoning. That’s not dismissing science. That’s trusting what it shows us. The universe has a beginning. Its laws are fine-tuned for life. Adjust even one constant – gravity, electromagnetism, the mass of a subatomic particle – and life collapses. The odds against such precision happening by chance are so astronomical that “luck” ceases to be a serious, credible explanation. Suddenly those who scoff at the fairy tales of theists find themselves telling those of their own.
After all, this is all instinctive. No one looks at a smartphone and assume it evolved out of a sand dune. We don’t walk into a gallery and think the colors arranged themselves into a painting. In every other area of life, complexity and purpose point to intelligence. But when it comes to the most intricate system of all – the universe itself – we’re told that the obvious answer is the one we must not consider.
That cognitive tension is beyond the breaking point these days. Bonnassies and Bolloré argue that materialism, the once prevailing idea that everything is just matter and chance, has become an irrational belief. It insists that we’re a cosmic accident, even as the evidence points the other way. “You can’t make mathematical proof about God,” Bonnassies says, “but like Sherlock Holmes, you can accumulate converging clues. And when those clues all point in the same direction, it becomes unreasonable to ignore them.”
That’s not superstition. That’s the logic of investigation – the very same logic that drove Newton, Kepler, Pascal, and Galileo, all of whom believed the universe was intelligible precisely because it was intentionally designed. They saw science as an attempt to understand the mind of the Creator.
Properly understood, faith isn’t the absence of reason. It’s the fulfillment of it. Christians don’t believe despite the evidence; we believe because of it. The heavens really do declare the glory of God, and the deeper we look into those heavens, the louder they seem to sing.