No, I’m not referring to the song by Stevie Wonder (as much as I like the instrumental version). But, instead, I refer to the prevalent bias against true religion. When we see religion as moral and ethical obedience to God–given law that is beneficial to us and to others, I’m not sure how we justify anything else. Except, of course, in order to avoid our responsibility and laugh in the face of our inevitable accountability.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

And we do the latter in everything we do in this scientific age. The art work in this post, Flammarion (Photo credit: Wikipedia), shows a medieval missionary delving into heaven through the firmament to see the workings of God. I think that our sciences expand the firmament to the extent that we shut out the possibility that the immaterial has place in our thoughts and contemplations. This “expansion” is seen not merely in our astrophysics but in our neuroscience and in all the other scientific disciplines. This is a mistake.

Calvin, in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, says:

With regard to inanimate objects again we must hold that though each is possessed of its peculiar properties, yet all of them exert their force only in so far as directed by the immediate hand of God. Hence they are merely instruments, into which God constantly infuses what energy he sees meet, and turns and converts to any purpose at his pleasure. No created object makes a more wonderful or glorious display than the sun. …No pious man, therefore, will make the sun either the necessary or principal cause of those things which existed before the creation of the sun, but only the instrument which God employs, because he so pleases; though he can lay it aside, and act equally well by himself: Again, when we read, that at the prayer of Joshua the sun was stayed in its course; that as a favor to Hezekiah, its shadow receded ten degrees; by these miracles God declared that the sun does not daily rise and set by a blind instinct of nature, but is governed by Him in its course, that he may renew the remembrance of his paternal favor toward us…

So, our Principle of Least Action, applied to quantum fields (if they turn out to be fields, except in approximation, as a result of the coming paradigm shift), is falsified by these “superstitious beliefs” put forth by scripture and exposited by John Calvin. Our entire mode of living, apart from reverential awe due to God, is falsified. Call scripture superstition if you must, but God is simply accommodating our finiteness as he calls us to into account before it’s too late for you or for me.