Some might not know, but last Christmas (2016) I got a 3d printer, and, though I have been using it a lot since then, I have recently started using more for creative things. I ran a small batch of Karate Institute of America logos for my karate school. Printed some small things for friends and I have loved every minute.
One of my more recent big projects was a hand drill all made with the 3d printer. It was a lot of fun. Every time I print something, I still sit there watching it for a little bit thinking how cool this is. Every print is something new and exciting to watch. Watching the printer make parts that, once assembled, will make a working and useful item, if even only mildly useful is a thing of beauty. A few simple lines of code, a bit of heated plastic, and time will produce a product that can be useful, fun, or a combination of both. This got me thinking, like so many things do, about everything else.You all know that God is kinda a big thing for me. He is in many aspects of my life, though I wish it were all of them. (I better work harder on that bit.) Plus my deep love of science, how things work and continue to work forever, and now my new found joy of printing things on my 3d printer got me thinking how the universe is very much like my printer.
On a giant cosmic scale, there are laws set in place that keep things the way they are supposed to work. Sure some of them sound like they are right out of a science fiction movie, Quantum Entanglement anyone? Still, they are working in a predetermined way. We are still learning many new things on how things work Macro-ly as well as Micro-ly. Yet with my belief in God, I think he is the Great Scientist, He set all of the things into motion and keeps it there by his own hand. He understands why things need to work they way they do and as we learn those things, we can understand how God does what he did.
God gave the universe a set of commands, a code if you will, that it must follow according to His will. And the universe followed his commands and stars took form. From there Solar systems and galaxies, and everything as it is now were set into place. Just like I do with my 3d printer. I make a model, it doesn't exist physically yet, but after telling my printer a very exact set of commands, plastic begins to ooze out of the nozzle, and is set onto a glass plate. The glass plate is warmed up to a certain temperature to ensure things stick well. And after a few hours an object appears that looks like what was in my mind, what I had commanded. The Universe had a very specific set of commands given to it, it took much longer, but it still built itself out of the building blocks it had and became what God had in mind, what He had commanded.
People sometimes say that God and science are incompatible, but that is the furthest from the truth. Science is the study of the methods, the commands, the code, that God used to set things to be how he wanted them to be. You could almost say God 3d printed the universe.
