Home > Opinion > Journey asks Dr Frank Stootman: How do you encounter God in your field of work?

Journey asks Dr Frank Stootman: How do you encounter God in your field of work?

AS A SCIENTIST I have always believed that the world we live in has form.

By this I mean that it has laws, symmetries, and admits to mathematical logic. These are there to be discovered and are not simply an invention by humankind.

Sure, we label them as well as manipulate what we have discovered, but the intrinsic form of the universe is something we can only discover, not create.

My question, as a physicist, has always been: why is this so?

Over many years the magnificence of the universe has continually inspired and affirmed to me the existence of God.

God has left his calling card wherever I look and despite many proposed alternatives to God, it seems to me more than ever the most reasonable and holistic explanation. I have chosen the word “holistic” with care, because life is more than things around me to be discovered and observed.

I am also a person and the existence of God – also a person – as revealed in the Bible adds holistic answers to my struggle to be a meaningful human on the personal level in this cosmos.

My encounter with God means a total answer to my inner passion both to understand the world as well as who I am.
Though unseen, God is there in the very nature of reality: externally and internally.

Dr Frank Stootman is Director of the L’Abri Fellowship, Adjunct Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Western Sydney and was a member of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
(SETI) Institute