Science is not the enemy of faith. Science that accurately describes our universe always affirms God’s creation. Remember, it is the truth that sets us free. Science, by its nature, is descriptive. Religion, philosophy, and spirituality are prescriptive. Science describes the universe we live in. Religion, and similar thought systems, prescribes how we should live in our universe.

I love science. Last week I shared some faith affirming facts regarding The Perfect Sun. One of the coolest things we constantly experience, but is unexplainable in our common experience, is gravity. Without gravity, there would be no galaxies, stars, or planets. The effect of gravity causes mass to clump together forming all that we see and experience. Without gravity it would be difficult to imagine how we would stand on a rapidly spinning sphere orbiting around our Sun orbiting around a massive black hole at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way.

Physics accurately describes the effects of gravity in most situations. When I dropped a bomb from a B-52, I knew where it would strike the ground because of the physics of gravity, and the effects of drag and wind.

We know what gravity does, but how does it work? It seems that gravity is not a force that attracts us like a magnet. Gravity does not pull us towards the center of the Earth. Gravity is better described as falling. The bomb is not pulled to the ground, it falls to the ground. We are in a constant state of falling—towards the center of the Earth. Einstein described a warping of space-time that is caused by mass—the more mass, the more gravity.

When an object is caught in the gravity of another body, the object is falling down the fall line through space-time—like the fall line when one is skiing.  When astronauts are weightless in space, they are falling at the same speed as their ship and all of the other stuff that seems to be floating—they are in freefall.

Think about throwing a baseball. The force of the throw causes the ball to go up, and as the force is dissipated, the ball falls to the ground.  Throw the ball harder, it goes further until it falls to the ground.  The harder you throw, the further the ball goes before it falls to the ground. If you throw the ball hard enough, it keeps falling, but never hits the ground.  When this happens, the ball is in orbit. The International Space Station is in freefall around the Earth.  Our moon is in freefall around the Earth. The Earth is in freefall around the Sun.

The word “gravity” is not in the Bible. I am not aware of any scripture that describe the laws of physics. Yet we experience gravity constantly, and without it we would not exist. Gravity is a wonder. It is a keystone in God’s creation. Science tries to describe how gravity works—how God’s creation works.

Gravity is cool; science is cool.