What do you know?

I left off the other day posing the question of whether bees eat honey, or if they merely make honey. The question was prompted by the James Taylor lyric, “How sweet it is to be loved by you . . . just like honey to the bee, babe.” I said that perhaps the lyric should be, “just like honey to the human.”

My sister, a budding bee-keeper, informed me that bees indeed eat honey in addition to making it. Thus it would appear that the lyric is okay. But in order to be fully satisfied in my mind, I have to ask one more question. Sure, bees eat honey. But do they think that honey is sweet? For if bees consider honey to be sweet, then the lyric of the song is totally appropriate—your love for me is so sweet, it’s “just like honey to the bee, babe.” But if bees don’t think honey is sweet, well, then the lyric just doesn’t work.

Now, here is where I transition from silliness to serious thoughts.

How can we ever know if bees think that honey is sweet? They can’t speak to us to confirm it. They have no other ways of direct communication. I’m going to suggest that we can’t know for sure if bees think honey is sweet. But I admit I’m not a scientist, nor a bee-ologist. I suppose it’s possible to run some scientific experiments, or make some inferences based on human or bee behavior, that could help us answer this question. But ultimately, we can’t get inside a little bee-brain and know for sure whether the bee thinks that honey is sweet.

Regardless of the answer to the bee/honey question, contemplating this idea led me to another thought, and admittedly, it is not original. That is, despite our high level of technology and advanced scientific know-how, there are some things that just can’t be known by way of science. The bee/honey situation is a silly instance, but let me give you another, more serious example of what I mean.

Suppose I were to ask: How did the universe come into existence? Many, perhaps most, might answer that a few billion years ago there was a “big bang” that set in motion the natural forces and processes that started the universe. I would then ask: Okay, well, what caused the big bang? And one might come up with an explanation. But I would then ask: Well, what caused that? And so on, and so on.

You see, scientific theories such as the big bang, evolution, etc., may or may not be true, but one thing they can’t do is allow us to know how it all started. We can always go back one more step in “history” and ask how that event occurred. (All this, by the way, is basically one of Thomas Aquinas’ arguments for the existence of God, which he postulated back in the 13th century. God is the “first mover.”)

Obviously, science can be very useful. I tend to be a fan of science, especially when I have a bad headache and need to pop a few Tylenol, or whenever the use of a combustible engine makes my life easier. But it has its limits. There are some things that we just can’t know through science.

As you know from reading my blog, I am a Christian. I believe in God. I believe that God created the universe. It probably wouldn’t surprise you to know that in my life, I have spoken to people who do not believe in God, and feel that the idea of a supernatural creator is a fairy tale, or a crutch for intellectual laziness, or not in keeping with established scientific “facts.” But when I think about what honey tastes like to the bee, or what caused the alleged big bang, or the mysteries of the nonmaterial parts of a human being (like the soul), I come to the conclusion that science can give only limited answers. To me, it makes just as much sense, if not more, to think that there is a Creator who made the universe and governs and preserves it, than to think that a big bang just happened one day for no apparent reason.

Of course, if one believes in a God who created and sustains the universe, then there is another inescapable and sometimes uncomfortable question: If there is such a God, how should I relate to Him?