You cannot get closer to God without studying science

Taking a hard stance here.

When I was a kid I went to a Jesuit school, had a Jesuit education. In particular I was fascinated with genomics and biology and when I was 14 I wanted to be a surgeon.

Genetics I thought were the most beautiful thing I had ever encountered.

Endless code to wade through to describe matter that I could taste, touch, feel. It was revelatory, as a 17 year old. I remember the first time I felt like my whole spine lit up from this knowledge, what I know now is kundalini.

That moment of spine-tingling revelation wasn’t just biochemistry — it was my first brush with the divine, though I wouldn’t understand that for years. The four nucleotide bases of DNA — adenine, thymine, guanine, cytosine — read like sacred texts, spelling out not just biological instructions but cosmic ones. Here was the language of creation itself, written in molecules instead of Sanskrit or Latin.

When we questioned the priests about the conflicts of God and science, using popular talking points we heard: The Bible isn’t accurate. The Big Bang Theory. God lets people die. “How can some of these things be explained?,” we asked smugly. They never flinched. “To know God is to study science,” was always the answer, and went back to teaching chemistry or murmuring…