“Science was my path to the Gospels.”
“I thought I was building a wall, but it was the beginning of a bridge.”
Dedication
To all those who, like me, did not believe.
To those who doubted, denied, fought;
to those who took refuge in apparent reason or in anger,
thinking it was a wall and discovering, step by step,
that it was actually a bridge.
With the promise that, in the end, one understands,
and that every reading, every wound, every breath
creates the necessary certainty that life—patient and wise—
always unfolds toward perfection.
The Invisible Design
Life designed me—as it designs everyone—according to the beliefs that surrounded me, the political loyalties of my environment, and the convictions of those responsible for my development. Life shapes us with perfect precision. And just as my personal history was made of invisible forces, my body itself—without me realizing it—was the work of a silent design. What lived outside was reflected within. The same life that formed my ideas sustained my tissues, my cells, my heartbeat. Scientifically, the human body is a symphony of wonders: it is enough to read a little about the harmony between organs, the microscopic dialogues that make existence possible, the astonishing adaptability of this sacred mechanism that never stops trying to preserve life.
Inside us beats a tireless drum that pumps seven thousand liters of blood each day through a vascular system that, if stretched, could circle the Earth several times. Our lungs harbor microscopic forests—three hundred million alveolar “leaves” that, every time we breathe, exchange carbon dioxide for oxygen, as though they were purifying the world’s air inside our chest. Our eyes can capture a single photon and distinguish millions of colors; our brain, a luminous narrator, contains eighty-six billion neurons that communicate faster than light, consuming barely the energy of a small bulb while holding the capacity to imagine, to remember, and to dream entire universes. All of this happens every second, without effort, without noise, without command.
Childhood Between Dogmas and Rebellion
I grew up in a third-world country where the religious institution in power—in that case, the Catholic Church, though it could have been any other—held enormous influence over the people. The teachings of Jesus seemed twisted by the ambitions of certain leaders, and between their manipulation and the ignorance of us, the parishioners, a web of submission was woven that few dared to question.
My father, always skeptical of clerics, never indoctrinated me; instead, he left books lying around that spoke of another kind of God. He was the first influence behind my love for the written word, and though many of those readings now feel outdated, they became the foundation that later allowed me to think freely. It was always the written word—the same word that opened my mind and exposed contradictions.
That word, the one my father taught me to revere, no longer matched what I heard in church: the verses spoke of love, but the actions of those who claimed to represent God contradicted His message. That fracture between Scripture and behavior was my first theological doubt—a crack through which reason quietly entered.
On the shelves, among old newspapers and folded pages, I found the Liberation Theologians—Gustavo Gutiérrez, Leonardo Boff, Jon Sobrino—who spoke of a Christ who walked with the poor, not with the powerful. I also read Eduardo Galeano, Frei Betto, Ernesto Cardenal, and Camilo Torres, men who mixed prayer with protest, Gospel with revolution, conviction with poetry.
Through them I discovered another way of naming God—a God of justice, not fear. In those books, the divine name lived beside words like freedom and earth. The Cuban Revolution echoed through the house, as did the dreams of the students who believed the world could be rebuilt from below.
My father, a journalist of the left, never lectured me. He would simply leave books open, like traps of thought. From them I learned that the world could be seen from many perspectives—yet in nearly all of them, the villain had another face: first the conquest, then the empire, then capitalism. Each era needed its enemy.
And so I grew up believing evil always came from outside, that our misfortunes as a people were born of foreign design. It was hard to believe in a just God when the pain of the people seemed permitted by a distant divinity. I learned to criticize others with precision but rarely learned to look inward. The word self-criticism was as foreign as the word grace.
That ideological atmosphere—part lucidity, part resentment—shaped me. The fire of justice became rage, and rebellion became disbelief. I began to defy all that smelled of dogma, especially the image of a God who allowed suffering from afar.
When I finally had the freedom to decide, I stopped going to Mass. It was my first act of public independence. In my town, though, it was almost a sentence: people stared, whispered; I was the boy who didn’t believe, the candidate for hell, the one who dared to think.
Science as Refuge
“And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:32)
I immersed myself in readings that confirmed my ideology and justified my anger. My ego whispered that I was some future liberator. “The only truths are scientific,” I repeated with arrogance. Then came Kant, Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, Hume, Locke, voices of the Enlightenment—though I understood little of them—and later Sagan, Feynman, Hawking, Dawkins, Dennett, Gould, Zimmer, who strengthened my disbelief.
I walked through life questioning the faith of others from the arrogance of thinking I possessed the truth. I could quote numbers like weapons: the speed of light, the age of the universe, the code of DNA. Facts became shields. But beneath them, I was hollow.
I memorized data, dates, authors; but at the end of the day, in my room, surrounded by four walls, something was missing. There was an invisible emptiness that ached without form—a pain that no equation could soothe. Knowledge gave me order, not peace.
Life passed in predictable rhythm: books, work, arguments, logic. I thought I was safe within that fortress of reason. But under the surface, a question kept whispering. And one day, life answered brutally—through my father’s illness.
The Rupture and the Mirror
His illness shattered me. That pain tore down every wall. My rage was no longer intellectual—it was blind fire. I didn’t just stop believing; I wanted to destroy belief itself. I blasphemed, shouted, cursed the heavens, and only later understood the irony: I was arguing with what I claimed did not exist.
Even in my rebellion, I was acknowledging the divine. I discovered that disbelief is also a form of belief—a faith in absence as strong as faith in presence. We repeat what scientists write about the universe, trusting in phenomena we’ve never seen. We all believe in something—even if we call it doubt.
The Return to Wonder
Life, patient and wise, led me back through the labyrinth. I read enough science to rediscover awe. Gravity, curving space and holding the planets like invisible hands. The Earth’s 23.5-degree tilt, drawing our seasons. The water cycle, where every drop has lived countless lives. The atmosphere, filtering death yet letting in just enough light for life. Photosynthesis, that daily alchemy turning sunlight into breath. Every discovery reopened the mystery.
Then came a class by Richard Feynman that forever changed me. He said:
“The wood of a tree doesn’t come from the ground—it comes from the air.”
Science proved it true: the tree grows from the carbon dioxide we breathe out. Even the fat we burn leaves as CO₂. What we exhale becomes the tree’s body; what we release, it turns into shade. What dies in us becomes life elsewhere. It’s biology, not poetry—and yet, it feels divine.
“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)
I realized science hadn’t led me to a void but to a temple. Every equation became a key; every discovery, a hymn. Behind the laws and forces, there was order—and behind order, intention.
Science and the Gospel: The Fertile Paradox
Science was my path to the Gospels. First I used it as a wall, then as a sword, and finally as a key. Today, after so many books, so many experiences, so many roads explored in pursuit of denial, I have come to the conclusion that God exists. Not by appearance, but by certainty; not by blind faith, but by inner evidence. I know He is the Creator—here, now, as I write.
The books I devoured—from Kant to Voltaire, Rousseau to Hume, Sagan to Feynman—were steps on the same mountain. Each theory, each political critique, each manifesto, was another ledge lifting me higher.
I read speeches that sought to explain the universe and others that sought to redeem mankind.
The “We choose to go to the Moon” speech by Kennedy taught me that greatness is not in ease but in possibility. Through that speech, I understood what Jesus meant when He spoke of “doing the will of the Father in heaven” (Matthew 7:21): the will to rise, to go beyond comfort, to look upward.
Newton’s Principia Mathematica revealed that behind the fall of an apple and the dance of stars lies one same law. Through it, I understood that divine law is simply natural order—that what we call miracle is harmony at work.
Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” reminded me that the longing for justice is also an act of faith. Through his voice, I understood Jesus’ words to Nicodemus about “heavenly things” (John 3:12): that only one born of the Spirit can dream of justice, and by doing so, draw near to the Kingdom.
Then I understood that everything converges on the Sermon on the Mount: the precision of science, the dignity of human rights, the beauty of utopia. Every human discourse—no matter how brilliant—is merely an echo of that ancient voice that said “Blessed are…” and in doing so, lifted both thought and heart to their summit.
At first, I thought I did not believe; later, I thought I believed; then, I thought I knew—and finally, I understood that it was never about believing at all. Faith is not opinion or consolation, but certainty that takes root in the heart. I no longer “believe” in God as an idea—I know God, I feel Him, as one feels breath, as one feels life itself. He is here, now. Every book, every wound, every silence prepared me for that moment of realization—that Jesus confirmed it with His life and His word, not as metaphor, but as the perfect manifestation of the truth that sustains the universe.
Emiliano del Refugio
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