Science has compiled pretty compelling evidence that at one point our physical universe did not exist. In fact, at one point, there was literally just one point. A point in which was condensed an unimaginable amount of energy. And then, for no as yet discernable reason, this point of energy went into an expansion resulting in a physical universe now measured in billions of light years. How did that happen? I am perfectly happy giving God the credit.
Scientists don't like to talk about God. It's a concept that cannot be proven. And science is all about proof. Having already suggested that you not let someone else's definition get in your way of experencing God, I am now going to suggest that you equally don't let someone else's lack of an answer get in your way of experiencing God. Let's just take what science thinks they do know and see how far that goes. Billions of light years actually. Because light goes on virtually endlessly, if not interrupted, science can literally see into the past and can see how creation has unfolded.
I have noted that sages caution us against believing we can ever truly understand God. Caution noted. Yet I think we are encouraged by God to understand as far as our limits will take us. In that sense, I see scientists as priests and prophets, and science as a missing book in the bible. How can we not want to know what miracles God has done? And creation is just one miracle after another.
Science tells us that to start, there was nothing but stand alone charged particles. It took time and dispersal before even the simplest atoms of hydrogen were able to form. But they did, and for a great length of time that was the predominant form of matter. First we got hydrogen, which is the simplest form of atom we know about. But over time, good old gravity pulled the hydrogen into clouds and then into stars, and at that point the gravity became strong enough to create the pressures and hence temperatures necessary to trigger nuclear fission. Stars then became the point of creation for all the elements larger than hydrogen. That includes the oxygen, nitrogen and carbon that make up the majority of our physical bodies. Stars then had to explode and gravity had to reform planets before those elements could be in a location that could eventually do us any good. But they did, and so here we are today, literally stardust. I have no problem calling that a miracle.
The list of what I am willing to call miracles would make a poor scientist pull out his hair. My apologies to the scientists, but for the rest of us, I suggest that the concept of a miracle is helpful to our spiritual growth. Look at a very small section of the list:
All matter, hydrogen to lead, is made of the same basic stuff such that under the right conditions one form can become another
The oxygen we breath, can "burn" both the food we eat, under controlled conditions within our body, and burn the fuel we use for heat under far less controlled conditions.
When oxygen burns hydrogen, both gases, we end up with water, a liquid, which just happens to be a universal solvent, and a necessary component of all life as we know it.
Science is deprived of the word miracle. So for science, all of the above amazing statements, just are. I can not look at any of those facts without awe and gratitude. So I put God in the middle of the equation and I call them miracles.
Science may find fault with my approach, but I can not look at creation without saying it is the work of God. For me, GOD IS THE CREATOR AND HENCE GOD EXISTS!