#nancy ellen abrams

I wasn’t sure what I was getting into with A God That Could Be Real. Spirituality books are hit or miss for me, more often than not miss. But not this one. Abrams did something I wasn’t expecting, and managed to put into words something I’d been thinking about the nature of deity for a very long time but could not express. 

A God That Could Be Real is a synthesis of science and spirituality. Discounting the god-like traits that are unnecessary and impossible given the knowns of our universe, Abrams posits that God exists because of us, as an emergent phenomenon that we are both part of and can be influenced by. This is a fascinating and thought-provoking book, no matter your spiritual leanings and beliefs. 

Photo credit: Karl Stapelfe/ESA/Hubble, NASA via NPR

In her new book, A God That Could Be Real, Nancy Ellen Abrams takes a fascinating approach to cosmology and mystery.

In her two-part blog post on NPR, she writes of our modern scientific observations that:

We've merely stated what God can't be. We haven't considered yet what God could be.

Today, Nancy Ellen Abrams wrote a guest post on NPR’s blog called “‘A God that Could be Real’ in the Scientific Universe.” In the post, she shares some material from her new book about how we can reconcile “God” with science with new developments in view. 

Photo © Warner Brothers 2014

She defends a concept of God as useful to our humanity but says the traditional concepts of an all-knowing, sovereign, creator deity have been proven false. Many of my friends believe similarly, and I’ve been thrown into inner upheaval more than a few times because of the amazing things we have recently been able to observe and discover. 

This time I’m not perturbed, but one of those disconcerting times was in college. After reading an article about entropy (also, entropic force) in which the author related entropy to the natural structure of creation as we know it: cells, bodies, plants, animals. The threat to my beliefs lay in the “explanation” for created structures; that they were more or less random and defined by natural law, not spoken into existence by a creator. (Interestingly, the author himself noted the “threat” to creationism in his article, which likely influenced my response more than his actual proofs.) 

I shared my concerns with a friend. He said, “Entropy?”

I said, “Yea.”

“Like the law that energy in closed systems will diffuse and matter will become less organized if more energy is not put into it?”

“Yea.”

“I think that the law of entropy totally lines up with the Bible. It’s death and decay. It’s dependence on an outside source of energy for life.”

Death and decay entered the world with sin and only then, according to scripture. A law of “death” that helps nature progress in many ways and even affects the structure of living things, sure. But entropy eventually destroys those things. The energy that holds those living things together as long as possible before they are consumed is as old as the universe. 

"All the trees of the field will clap their hands.” Isaiah 55:12

“He is risen, just as he said.” Matthew 28:6

In scripture, God’s story doesn’t with defeating the unbelievers, the doubters. It ends with him defeating death and malice.

As awesome as that is, it’s hard to imagine a new creation without the ruling force entropy at play. What’s even wrong with it? Is death really a bad thing?

Our current system of things relies on death to a great extent. I’ve wondered many times if God had a use for death before it was pronounced as a grave consequence of sin. But there is a moment in history where God confronted death, and was devastated. Jesus wept, as the famously short verse says, at the tomb of his dear friend even while he “could have saved him”–and did. 

Death is a particularly harmful force when it is acting against love. 

Not that love can be broken by death–most certainly not! But relationships can. The deep knowing and giving to another person in time and space. Death obliviates (sic, HP fans know) all human relationships, sooner or later.

I haven’t read her book, but I imagine love is important to Nancy Ellen Abrams. Perhaps it is the even the new god she envisions for us. 

I’ve asked God for explanations as I seek to reconcile science-based claims and Bible-based claims. Sometimes I can find Biblical truth (or read it closer to the way it was meant to be read) that leads me to think, “Oh, they’re saying the same thing,” like what happened with entropy. More often, I come up frustrated. 

But I come up equally frustrated when I look to science for an explanation of what love is. A rationale please? Survival of the species, societal structure, and primal instincts is all I usually get. Could that be all there is? Yes, but I feel that for now, we can gather too much contradicting evidence to easily accept this is true. 

One thing I do know from my own research (heh) is that love necessitates faith.

Faith, amongst other things, is taking someone at his word. It’s believing he loves you. It’s trusting her. Without it, relationships crumble. Having no faith in someone is pretty much an untimely death in that relationship. 

So while we’re down here learning myriad things about creation–things that probably point straight at Him but that our self-lording hearts gladly misconstrue–perhaps God is disguising proof that He exists for now.

...Hiding until we get the faith part of this whole love thing down, until we can learn the baby steps of trusting someone so awesome it’s almost horrific.