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In physics, we have to be operational. That means we don’t ask ‘What is the essence of time?’ because that’s what philosophers argue over coffee. We [physicists] simply ask ‘How do we measure it?’

This is a great quote that is at the core of why people misunderstand the teleology, or goal, of science. Science does not explain WHY, it only explains HOW. This distinction has largely been lost by modern thinkers. Many think because we know how something works that it implies we should or should not do something. This is wrong. Science does not tell us if something is good or bad. It just tells us how it works.

This distinction is the major split that happened in the time of Newton when he described gravity in simple mathematical terms. Before then, physics, or when it was called metaphysics, sought to understand the underlying MEANING of the world. Both why and how. But Newton simplified science to just a description of HOW something works – mechanically, mathematically. It took all moral and ethical principles out of the equation. Forces act on things. It’s unimportant why.

This simplified understanding, the understanding that was clearly known by all people who were pioneers of science, is why they could all still say they believe in science and God at the same time. In fact, most of the major scientific breakthroughs like genetics (the Catholic friar Gregory Mendel) and Newton and even the Big Bang by Fr. George Lemaitre, and countless others, could be firm believers in God and in science.

The Newtonian view is the belief time goes on even if nothing is there. That has been proven wrong. Time is a dimension of the stuff in the universe. Since light moves, well, at the speed of light – it experiences no time. It simply exists then is absorbed.

So, if you push the universe all the way back to when it was hotter and hotter, smaller and smaller until you reach the Big Bang – does it even make sense to ask what happened before that? This is the ultimate test of your new definition of time. If time is just a way of ordering events, asking what happened before the universe might be as nonsensical as asking what is north of the North Pole.

I find many people that claim they only believe in science actually have a very hard time believing the difficult realities that science actually tells us we must believe. As Feynman points out, the data we know about time tells us that there are messy, counter-intuitive truths in which our intuition about time is completely wrong. He suggests some things may not even be possible for us to conceive.

What’s interesting is that beliefs in heaven and God infer heavily that God likely exists outside of time. Many scoff at this saying that’s not possible, but here, even one of the foremost scientist of the century, tells us asking some questions like ‘What was before the universe’ might not even make sense. This isn’t meant to be proof of God – but to tell us that even the reality we understand today tells us that sometimes ‘intuitive’ lines of investigation may not even be asking valid questions.

A good scientist, like Feynman, is very open about the limitations of our knowledge in a way that I find armchair science believers with signs in their yard are not. Scientists understand more than others the entire realm of what we know is completely bound in fuzzy edges and darkness of what we still don’t know. Even ‘decided’ science is not immune from serious crisis as we see coming out of the Webb Telescope in 2025. This is not to say we should not trust science – it’s the best we have. Planes fly every day due to the physics and engineering based on it. But engineering does still fail us at times, and no real scientist would be so arrogant to ignore they are just one discovery away from learning what we believed could be wrong. In fact, scientists are most excited when they find something that isn’t jiving because it means they’re about to get what they get into the field for: to learn something new and exciting.

It’s why many science lovers, like myself, are drawn to it for a lifetime. I have watch our understanding of cosmology and the planets completely change in just 40 years. Things we thought were true about the planets have been proven false, true, and more often than not shocked us with things we never dreamed of.

So, I offer a suggestion. Do not be so self-assured, like a bad scientist, to discount something like God just because you don’t have concrete evidence of it. We’ve found time and again things hinted in signs have been true far more often than not. Give God a chance to convince you.