By Dr. Bart Dahmer
Science Didn’t Lead Me Away from God. It Kept Lighting The Way.
There was nothing remarkable about the morning. At least that’s how it seemed at the time.
The coffee was hot, the house was quiet, and another workday waited just over the horizon. Before long, there would be meetings to attend, decisions to make, problems to solve, budgets to review, projects to advance, and people depending on me to help lead them well. In other words, it was a normal day. Over the years, I had experienced thousands of mornings just like it.
But before the day began in earnest, I did something I had learned to do many years earlier. I prayed. Not a long prayer. Not a particularly eloquent prayer. Just a simple conversation with God.
“Lord, thank You for a job I can’t do. Please help me do it well today.”
I have prayed some version of that prayer for much of my adult life. I prayed it during my years at FedEx while leading large global teams and helping guide significant technology initiatives. I prayed it when responsibilities grew larger than I ever expected they would. I prayed it when I found myself speaking at universities and conferences across the United States, Europe, and Asia. I prayed it when my teams and I worked on systems that would eventually be used by hundreds of millions of people. And I still pray it today as CEO of Innovo Publishing.
The funny thing is that many people assume those experiences, which I did not deserve and could not have done on my own, should have produced self-confidence. Instead, they produced humility. Not because the opportunities weren’t extraordinary—they were. Looking back, I see God’s hand all over them. What surprises me is the lesson those experiences repeatedly taught me.
-
- The more I learned, the more aware I became of how much I did not know.
-
- The more responsibility God entrusted to me, the more I realized I needed His help.
-
- The more I studied people, organizations, technology, and leadership, the more I found myself standing in awe of the Creator of everything.
That may sound strange in a culture that often portrays faith and learning as adversaries. We’re frequently told that science and faith occupy opposite ends of the same spectrum. According to this way of thinking, education and advanced learning gradually replace belief. Many believe that knowledge and understanding, by their very nature, push a perceived need for God farther into the background. Eventually, enough learning and understanding eliminates the need for faith in God altogether. I’ve never found that to be true. In fact, my experience has been almost exactly the opposite.
Throughout my academic and professional life, I have spent a great deal of time trying to understand how things work. My studies included industrial-organizational psychology, information systems, and human resources. My doctoral research focused on understanding why large technology implementations succeed or fail. That topic fascinated me because it quickly became obvious that technology itself was rarely the whole story. Most failed systems do not fail because the software doesn’t work. They fail because people are involved.
Human beings bring assumptions, needs, goals, fears, motivations, habits, relationships, strengths, weaknesses, and deeply held beliefs into every situation. A technically brilliant solution can still fail if the people expected to use it do not trust it, understand it, have time for it, or don’t find it materially useful in meeting their goals or needs. And if they don’t embrace it, the system fails. The deeper I studied technology, the more interested I became in people. And the deeper I studied people, the more amazed I became by the complexity of human beings.
Over the years, I also became fascinated by emerging technologies, including miniaturization and wearable devices. I loved seeing how engineers could compress astonishing capabilities into increasingly smaller packages. What appeared simple on the surface often concealed extraordinary layers of complexity beneath. The same thing was true in other areas of my career. Sometimes I had the opportunity to work on projects whose influence extended far beyond anything I initially imagined. Some innovations eventually found their way into exhibits displayed at the Smithsonian Institution. Others became part of systems used by millions of people who never knew the names of those who built, tested, deployed, or maintained them.
Experiences like those did not diminish my sense of wonder. They increased it. Every answer seemed to uncover deeper questions. Every discovery revealed additional layers. Every solution exposed new mysteries waiting beyond it.
The Map of Human Knowledge
Years ago, I began thinking about human knowledge as a map. Imagine all that humanity knows spread across a vast landscape. Generation after generation, we continue expanding that map. Medicine expands it. Technology expands it. Physics expands it. Biology expands it. Astronomy expands it. The map grows. But something else grows too—the boundary.
Even with AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) at our disposal and quantum computing exploring new frontiers, there is always a fuzzy edge where human understanding gives way to unanswered questions. Yes, humanity keeps pushing and expanding that map. But the fuzzy edge remains.
That observation never discouraged me. I found it exciting. Good science doesn’t eliminate mystery. It pushes mystery outward. Every breakthrough helps us understand something new while simultaneously revealing how much remains unexplored. Perhaps that’s one reason I have never felt threatened by scientific discovery. The God I worship is not threatened by truth. The God who created the human mind and imbued us with curiosity is not dishonored when curious people use it. The God who established the laws governing creation is not diminished when scientists discover those laws. If anything, discovery should increase gratitude.
As Psalm 111:2 reminds us, “Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them.” I’ve always loved that verse. Notice that God’s works are not merely admired. They are studied, investigated, explored, and examined. The Bible never portrays honest inquiry as an enemy of faith. Quite the opposite. Truth never fears investigation. Interesting, scripture describes God as “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”