The natural world exhibits a rational ordering—that is, it follows regular patterns, what we call the “laws of physics” or the “laws of nature”—and humans have the ability to comprehend the world and how it’s structured.
Regarding this, theoretical physicist and Anglican priest John Polkinghorne commented,
We are so familiar with the fact that we can understand the world that, most of the time, we take it for granted. It is what makes science possible. Yet it could have been otherwise. The universe might have been a disorderly chaos, rather than an orderly cosmos. Or it might have had a rationality that was inaccessible to us.
Polkinghorne raises important points. Why is it that the natural world is ordered? Why is it that the human mind is able to comprehend the natural world?
The world could have been different. Yet we find ourselves in a world that makes sense to us, that we’re able to grasp. We find ourselves in a world that’s conducive to scientific study and investigation. The natural world exhibits a universal consistency and patterns that allow us to make predictions and to progress in our knowledge. Our world has the key properties that make the success of the scientific enterprise possible. Why?
Theoretical physicist and cosmologist Paul Davies made an interesting observation after asking this question:
Over the years I have often asked my physicist colleagues why the laws of physics are what they are. The answers vary from “that’s not a scientific question” to “nobody knows.” The favorite reply is, “There is no reason they are what they are—they just are.” The idea that the laws exist reasonlessly is deeply anti-rational. After all, the very essence of a scientific explanation of some phenomenon is that the world is ordered logically and that there are reasons things are as they are. If one traces these reasons all the way down to the bedrock of reality—the laws of physics—only to find that reason then deserts us, it makes a mockery of science.
The frequent response to the way the world is logically ordered is “There’s no reason” or “That’s just the way it is.” Albert Einstein even described the universe’s comprehensibility as “the eternal mystery of the world.” Yet, as Davies points out, the notion that the natural world is orderly for no reason is “deeply anti-rational.” It’s not a satisfactory answer.
But the Judeo-Christian worldview has long offered a unique explanation for the way the world is.
The Judeo-Christian worldview recognizes and accounts for the fact that nature exhibits patterns and regularity (see Gen. 8:22; Jer. 33:20–21, 25–26). It explains that the universe was created by a rational God and therefore exhibits a rational ordering and structure. It reflects “the mind of the Maker,” as Dorothy Sayers put it.
The Judeo-Christian worldview accounts for nature’s intelligibility as well. It says that we’re able to comprehend the natural world because God made human beings in his image (Gen. 1:27). We’re rational beings made in the image of a rational God, able to make sense of the logical structuring of the universe. Johannes Kepler expressed this interconnectedness of the natural order, human reason, and the divine mind when he said, “God wanted us to recognize them [i.e., the laws of mathematics] by creating us after his own image so that we could share in his own thoughts.”
The Judeo-Christian worldview accounts for these essential qualities that make scientific endeavors possible. We attribute the logical ordering of nature to the fact that it’s the creation of a rational God, and we understand that the human capacity to reason and comprehend the natural world are the result of being made in the image of God. This is one of the reasons the Judeo-Christian framework led to the development of modern science.