This is, rather, one of the deepest forms of pious reverence for God: to look at his handiwork and see in it the love of the Author.
Seeing His love, though, is not understanding it.
Western science, which is to say modern science, did not begin as a philosophy or as an alternative religion
Actually, it began as pagan philosophy. Greek philosophy and humanism where the driving force that culminated in the Age of Reason, in the West, glorifying, even deifraying man as a being capable of solving all problems. I am not so sure that the world is substantially better, or that our understanding of God is any more profound than that of Early Fathers because of science. If science, then, didn't deepen our knowledge of God, what good did it do for the faith?
I would describe it that your religion comes through your heart and mind, while the characteristic Western style of religion has come through the eyes to the heart. I do not think that your approach is bad or wrong, just different.
We know what love is, although no one has ever seen or measured it. Yet we all speak of love as something substantial and very much real. We have never seen justice either. Neither of these appears in nature to be observed and measured.
Perhaps you don't mind me sharing with you a few select short passages of St. John of Damascus Book I (from An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith")
"All things, that exist, are either created or uncreated. If, then, things are created, it follows that they are also wholly mutable. For things, whose existence originated in change, must also be subject to change
"But things that are created must be the work of some maker, and the maker cannot have been created. For if he had been created, he also must surely have been created by some one, and so on till we arrive at something uncreated. The Creator, then, being uncreated, is also wholly immutable. And what could this be other than Deity?
"It is plain, then, that there is a God. But what He is in His essence anti nature is absolutely incomprehensible and unknowable [my emphasis]. For it is evident that He is incorporeal(3). For how could that possess body which is infinite, and boundless, and formless, and intangible and invisible, in short, simple and not compound? How could that be immutable(4) which is circumscribed and subject to passion? And how could that be passionless which is composed of elements and is resolved again into them? For combination(5) is the beginning of conflict, and conflict of separation, and separation of dissolution, and dissolution is altogether foreign to God(6).
"Again, how will it also be maintained(7) that God permeates and fills the universe? as the Scriptures say, Do not I fill heaven and earth, saith the Lords(8)? For it is an impossibility(9) that one body should permeate other bodies without dividing and being divided, and without being enveloped and contrasted, in the same way as all fluids mix and commingle.
"But if some say that the body is immaterial, in thee same way as the fifth body(1) of which the Greek philosophers speak (which body is an impossibility), it will be wholly subject to motion like the heaven. For that is what they mean by the fifth body. Who then is it that moves it? For everything that is moved is moved by another thing. And who again is it that moves that? and so on to infinity till we at length arrive at something motionless. For the first mover is motionless, and that is the Deity. And must not that which is moved be circumscribed in space? The Deity, then, alone is motionless, moving the universe by immobility(2). So then it must be assumed that the Deity is incorporeal. But even this gives no true idea of His essence [my emphasis], to say
"God then is infinite and incomprehensible and all that is comprehensible about Him is His infinity and incomprehensibility. But all that we can affirm concerning God does not shew forth God's nature, but only the qualities of His nature [my emphasis](8). For when you speak of Him as good, and just, and wise, and so forth, you do not tell God's nature but only the qualities of His nature(9). Further there are some affirmations which we make concerning God which have the force of absolute negation [my emphasis]: for example, when we use the term darkness, in reference to God, we do not mean darkness itself, but that He is not light but above light: and when we speak of Him as light, we mean that He is not darkness." [this is an example of apophatic thinking of orthodox theology, my comment]
This is a Holy achievement, and to the glory of God, whence nature, and the idea to seek Him in nature, both came.
Orthgodoxy does not reject science but finds in it only further proof of God's glory (look up Elder Cleopa).
Ping...sorry I didn't include you on this one.
Yes! This "unknowability", acknowledged in the West, is more fully developed in the East. All reality is enveloped in a sense of Mystery - some things may never be figured out.
This is seen in Maronite liturgical tradition in a very interesting way in the Monday weekday text. The memorial for this day is that of the Angels. In the Opening Prayer, the Celebrant prays:
O Eternal One,
though you are concealed from the angels in heaven,
you willed to assume a human body from mortal Adam.
Grant that we may join in the worship
of the heavenly choirs
and give you thanks and praise ...
Strange as it may seem at first to say that God is "concealed from the angels,", the Divine Liturgy is stating the essential truth about God, preserved so strongly in Eastern Tradition: God's fundamental unknowability, God's hiddenness. Even to the angels - who are, after all, creatures - God, the Infinite One, cannot ever be fully known. Yet, as the prayer recognizes, God has mysteriously shared something of the Godhead with us. With the angels, we become adorers of the Mystery.
Captivated By Your Teachings