Un cristiano cuántico

By Terrell Clemmons

The man to whom science proved religion

Dennis Garvin grew up the second of three sons born into a Norman Rockwell-infused environment in the Berkshire Mountains of upstate New York. After graduating as valedictorian of his class from the Citadel Military College in South Carolina, he went on to graduate with honors from the VCU School of Medicine in Virginia and served thirteen years in the U.S. Air Force. By the time he reached his mid-30s, he had achieved every one of his life goals. He had raised a family with children he loved. He was a successful doctor doing well in Roanoke, Virginia. And, to his delight, he had earned a good four-year degree that certified him as a smart kid. So why, after having accomplished so much, did he feel so empty?

It was not depression; his life was full and active. No, his existential weariness was like that of Alexander the Great, who looked over the vastness of his domain and wept because there were no more worlds to conquer. And when he looked inside himself, he saw a life in black and white. On the other hand, his then wife seemed to have access to a joy that he did not possess. He thought she had colour in her life. What was behind this?

Having been raised in a Unitarian Universalist home, Dennis was a staunch atheist. But, having adopted his mother’s liberal feminist ethic, which held tolerance to be a supreme virtue, he had no particular hostility toward Christianity. So, with an appearance of open-mindedness, the rational scientist in him became curious.

This was, philosophically speaking, new territory for him. But the time had come. As a lifelong devotee of Darwin, he had begun to realize that there were many cracks in Darwin’s theories, chiefly that of altruism, as he saw it. He could explain any human behavior except that, and he could not shake that uneasiness. Worse still, he had begun to realize that he had long parroted the phrase “science denies religion,” but had never questioned it. This was utterly and utterly embarrassing for a man who considered himself a scientist.

So he began to honestly re-examine his hypotheses. The main one he had accepted a priori  was atheism. Okay, he said, let’s say there is a God. How could he have done all that he did? Since the Bible, the book of Christianity, was the first thing he had discarded, that was where he turned in his search for answers.

A dangerous book

As he read on, he became increasingly astonished to discover that the Bible – the book he had dismissed as a stupid fairy tale – was probably one of the most accurate books on quantum physics he had ever come across. This was not quite what he had expected, and as a knowledgeable expert in modern physics, it began to turn his entire epistemological orientation on its head. Dennis had long been fascinated with the study of light, and he believed that the quantum physics of light accurately explained the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. This brought him to his knees.

There was also an evangelistic element at work during this time. His wife had introduced him to some people who were part of the Campus Crusade for Christ. Now Dennis had an arsenal of sharp verbal missiles designed to destroy belief in God or revealed religion in any form. He was not your run-of-the-mill, friendly atheist, but a predator, the kind of atheist no Christian parent wants their children to be friends with when they go off to college. He delighted in destroying the faith of poor, miserable souls, and with his scientific credentials and the academic degree to back them up, he was pretty good at it.

But the good people at Campus Crusade for Christ met his childish attacks like brave soldiers. He raised one objection.  “But what about Christ?” someone would say. He raised another.  “But what about Christ?”  He ranted and raved about Isis and Osiris and the mythological figure of Christ who is reborn every winter and how Christianity was just mythology writ large. They listened patiently. And then they came back with, “  Okay, but what about the God who loves you?”  Finally, he ran out of arguments. Science brought him to his knees. Through Campus Crusade, he became a new creature in Christ.

A violent man conquered by God

In the United States, it is extremely rare for someone to come to the Christian faith after the age of 35. And for someone to do so carrying the burden of science on their shoulders is almost impossible. But that is what happened to Dennis Garvin. All this happened almost thirty years ago, and since then, some things in his life have not changed all that much. He is still a family man, although two grandchildren have been added to the mix. He is still a doctor, although medicine on the mission field has been added to the schedule. And he is still a thoroughbred scientist who applies the concordant aspects of scientific knowledge to biblical concepts, and has begun writing and teaching to disseminate the findings.

There is one other thing that has not changed. The good doctor still loves a good argument. Never one to do anything halfway, the “smart boy” who has now fully graduated as a healthy intellectual Christian humbly compares himself to the apostle Paul, who had a confrontational style when he was Saul of Tarsus, and who then went on to preach the gospel in an equally confrontational tone. But, just as Paul went on to preach the faith he once sought to destroy, Dennis delights in destroying the faith he once preached, and aspires to be the kind of Christian that atheist professors and materialistic scientists do not want their students to know.

“I have a wipe-out mentality,” he says of them – not the run-of-the-mill atheists, for whom he feels a brotherly sympathy, but the wise guys who are profiteers and predators who consider themselves intellectually superior in order to destroy them. He certainly recognizes the command to love our enemies, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into playing nice with people who aren’t.

“I know these SOBs because I was one of them. And I know what makes them think. I have street credibility. And I can tell you, based on my credentials and my study, that anyone who retains a belief in atheism is an idiot . And they have the right to be idiots, but they should not dress themselves in intellectual property.”

“The great secret of atheists, the great fear of all atheists, is that they will be seen as intellectually stupid in front of their contemporaries. They don’t care if you pull down their pants in front of a bunch of religious Neanderthals or people they can label as such. But if you can go into their caves and, in front of their contemporaries, pull down their pants, you’ve done something. That’s what I want to do.”

It’s not about winning a fight. It’s about exposing and smothering a predator that’s coming to kill.

A violent man conquered by God

André Trocmé was a Huguenot pastor in the French mountain village of Le Chambon when Germany invaded France in 1940. When it came to war, Trocmé was a noncombatant pacifist. But when the Nazis demanded oaths of loyalty and complicity in the deportation of Jews, he openly defied them. “We have Jews and we will not hand them over,” he declared in an open letter to the Vichy minister sent to Le Chambon in 1942. A man who knew which war was worth dying for, he was often described as a violent vaincu par Dieu  – a violent conquered by God. “The curse on him who began with gentleness,” the pastor wrote in his diary, “will end in dismay and cowardice, and he will never set foot in the great liberating current of Christianity.”

Like Pastor Trocmé, Dr. Garvin is by profession a servant of healing. And like him, he knows which battle is worth firing a bullet into. That is why, for the sake of a generation subjugated by arrogant SOBs with big egos and pompous academic degrees, he stands ready and eager to enter the ring and do violence for the sake of truth.

Terrell Clemmons is a freelance writer and blogger who writes about apologetics and matters of faith.

Original Blog: http://bit.ly/2JPbdQz

Translated by Natalia Armando

Edited by Maria Andreina Cerrada