If the experience of science teaches anything, it's that the world is very strange and surprising. The many revolutions in science have certainly shown that.
Interpretation
Science reveals the strange and unexpected nature of the world through its discoveries.
This quote by John Polkinghorne emphasizes the idea that scientific inquiry uncovers the peculiar and often surprising characteristics of our world. Throughout history, numerous scientific revolutions have transformed our understanding, challenging preconceived notions and highlighting the complexity and wonder of the universe.
In practice
During a science class, to encourage students to embrace curiosity about the oddities of nature.
The remarkable insights that science affords us into the intelligible workings of the world cry out for an explanation more profound than that which itself can provide. Religion, if it is to take seriously its claim that the world is the creation of god, must be humble enough to learn from science what that world is actually like. The dialogue between them can only be mutually enriching.
Quantum theory also tells us that the world is not _x000D_ simply objective; somehow it's something more subtle than that. In some _x000D_ sense it is veiled from us, but it has a structure that we can _x000D_ understand.
However, as the Eastern churches have always maintained, through Christ creation is intended eventually to share in the life of God, the life of divine nature.
Chance doesn't mean meaningless randomness, but historical contingency. This happens rather than that, and that's the way that novelty, new things, come about.
Science cannot tell theology how to construct a doctrine of creation, but you can't construct a doctrine of creation without taking account of the age of the universe and the evolutionary character of cosmic history.
Evolution, of course, is not something that simply applies to life here on earth; it applies to the whole universe.
Of course, we would love to know more about the exact moment of Big Bang, but interposing an outside intelligence does nothing to add to that knowledge, as we still know nothing about the creation of that intelligence.
Let us not fool ourselves into thinking we went to the Moon because we are pioneers, or discoverers, or adventurers. We went to the Moon because it was the militaristically expedient thing to do.
I wouldn't have thought that a wrong theory should lead us to understand better the ordinary quantum field theories or to have new insights about the quantum states of black holes.
To demonstrate experimentally that a microscopic organism actually is the cause of a disease and the agent of contagion, I know no other way, in the present state of Science, than to subject the microbe (the new and happy term introduced by M. SΓ©dillot) to the method of cultivation out of the body.
An alleged scientific discovery has no merit unless it can be explained to a barmaid.
You can't tie a rope around the ice sheet. You can't build a wall around the ice sheets.
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