A
person can be a God-fearing Christian on Sunday and a working scientist come
Monday morning, without ever having to account for the partition that seems to
have erected itself in his head while he slept.[1]
This “partition” between
science and Christianity has been constructed from both sides. Many scientists
see Christianity as anti-science and anti-reason, and in direct opposition to
science. Many Christians see science as anti-God and view evolution as a direct
attack on the Christian faith. This “war” between faith and science is needless.
Not only are science and Christianity not in conflict, they actually are very
much connected.
Science and Christianity
have historically complemented each other. Christians see God as a Lawgiver, as
a rational mind, and as the Creator. Because of this, the world must be
rational, must follow prescribed laws, and must have a reason for its
existence. Science is the way we study the world, the laws, and the reasons. Christian theology also teaches that man was created in the
image of God, so we also have the ability to comprehend God’s laws and reasons.
Therefore, science arose only once: In Christian Western Europe in the
17th century.
Christianity depicted God as a rational, responsive,
dependable, and omnipotent being and the universe as His personal creation,
thus having a rational stable structure, awaiting human comprehension. Christians
developed science because they believed it could be done and they thought it
should be done.[2]
Since they believed it
could be done, the vast majority of initial thinkers in science were Christians
who did their investigations because
of the Christian ideas they had about the universe. Nicolaus Copernicus was a church
deacon who did astronomy in his spare time. Robert Boyle, father of modern
chemistry, set up Christian apologetics lectures. Gregor Mendel, the father of
genetics, was a Christian monk. Isaac Newton, discoverer of the universal laws
of gravitation, finishes his Principia with:
This most beautiful system of sun, planets, and
comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and
powerful Being...This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world,
but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont to be called
Lord God.[3]
Johannes Kepler, discoverer of the
laws of planetary motion, wrote:
The chief aim of all investigations of the external
world should be to discover the rational order which has been imposed on it by
God, and which he revealed to us in the language of mathematics.[4]
Arno
Penzias, Nobel Laureate and co-discoverer of the cosmic background radiation,
says of Kepler’s philosophy:
That
really goes back to the triumph, not of Copernicus, but really the triumph of
Kepler. That's because, after all, the notion of epicycles and so forth goes
back to days when scientists were swapping opinions. All this went along until
we had a true believer and this was Kepler. Kepler, after all, was the Old
Testament Christian. Right? He really believed in God the Lawgiver. And so he
demanded that the same God who spoke in single words and created the universe
is not going to have a universe with 35 epicycles in it. And he said there's
got to be something simpler and more powerful. Now he was lucky or maybe there
was something deeper, but Kepler's faith was rewarded with his laws of nature.
And so from that day on, it's been an awful struggle, but over long centuries,
we find that very simple laws of nature actually do apply. And so that
expectation is still with scientists. And it comes essentially from Kepler, and
Kepler got it out of his belief in the Bible, as far as I can tell. This
passionate belief turned out to be right. And he gave us his laws of motion,
the first real laws of nature we ever had. And so nature turned out to redeem
the expectations he had based on his faith. And scientists have adopted Kepler's
faith, without the cause.[5]
One common charge
against Christianity is that it “hinders scientific progress.” Any commonly accepted
idea could hinder science—not just ones that Christians hold. The best example
was the dogmatic adherence to Aristotle that hindered scientific progress for
over 2000 years. One of the first people to disagree with Aristotle was a
Christian, Nicolaus Copernicus. And it was Galileo, also a Christian, who
challenged the prevailing scientific view of the universe in the name of
science. Most people at the time, including secular scientists, held the
Aristotelian idea that the earth was at the center of the solar system and
heavenly bodies moved in perfect circles. It was Kepler who showed planetary
orbits to be ellipses. Christians were the ones actually pushing science
forward in an age of scientific stagnation.
Another example
of this was Louis Pasteur, a devout Christian credited with the discovery of germ
theory. The prevailing view in Pasteur’s time was that microbes could
spontaneously appear from chemicals and this was the cause of illness. Spontaneous
generation disagrees with the Christian Doctrine of Creation, so Pasteur set
out, with obvious success, to show that life appearing from non-life could not
be correct. Based on his Christian beliefs, Pasteur was motivated to test a
prevailing scientific theory to the benefit of mankind.
A current example of a
theory holding back science is the belief
that our DNA contains a vast amount of “junk” that has no function. Scientists
held to this belief because it was one of the evidences for evolutionary theory
and this “held back” science for 30 years. We are now discovering all kinds of
function in “junk DNA” that we never bothered to look for earlier because of a
dogmatic adherence to evolutionary theory. Christianity
is no more guilty of “holding back science” than any other commonly held idea
that society sees as correct.
Christianity and science
are not at odds, nor should they be at war. Some of the hostility comes from a perceived
limit of each domain; the assumption that science deals only in facts and
answers the “how” questions, while Christianity is limited to faith questions
and only can answer the “why” questions. These are artificially imposed limits
that neither area actually restricts itself to. I believe most of the hostility
comes from a misunderstanding of how each area operates.
Because humans make
mistakes, it is the interpretation of nature (science) and the interpretation
of scripture (theology) that can be in conflict. In fact, both domains can work
together, support each other, and learn from each other. When interpreted
correctly, Christian scripture and nature should be in harmony. God created the
universe and inspired the Bible, so both should agree. Science is constantly
changing based on new evidence and our
interpretation of scripture should be open for evaluation as well.
As it did with the early
scientists, Christianity can provide inspiration for scientists; giving them a
reason for their work. Discovering how the universe began or deciphering the
ultimate nature of matter is a much richer activity when you can pair it with
the knowledge of the One who created it all. Christianity may even provide some
direction for investigation like it did with Kepler and Pasteur.
Conversely, Christians
should not be afraid of “good” science; that is models and theories that
honestly are based on evidence. For example, Christians should not simply
dismiss evolutionary theory, nor should we assume we have to rethink our
interpretation of the Bible to fit evolutionary theory. Instead, we should
learn the current evidence for the theory and evaluate it based on this
evidence; it is not persuasive to argue against a scientific theory by using
passages of scripture. We shouldn’t be upset when a discipline that looks only
at the natural world has a theory that leaves God out. What we can do is show
how the same evidence used to support evolutionary theory can be used to
support the doctrine of creation.
The physical world and
God both constantly surprise us and as we probe deeper they both stretch our
intellect in unimaginable ways. The more I study God and the more I study
science, the more I see an intimate connection between the two.
What I see the current generation of apologists
doing, is moving heavily into philosophy—I think that's a good thing. I mean,
what I notice is that, philosophers are becoming more and more predominantly
Christian as time goes on, but I'd like to encourage balance, that we'd also be
encouraging young Christian scholars to go into theological apologetics and
scientific apologetics, and the latter's where I see the greatest need. Too
many churches are discouraging their young people from pursuing scientific
disciplines. They kind of look at science as the enemy of the Christian faith…
At Reasons to Believe we emphasize the opposite: science is the ally of
the Christian faith, and we need to be sending an army of young people into the
top scientific institutions, to get advanced degrees and to use those advanced
degrees to develop new reasons to believe and to show people that we can
integrate new science, philosophy and theology to find the truth that God wants
us all to understand.[6]
[1] Sam Harris, The End of Faith, Norton, New York,
2004, page 15
[2] Rodney Stark, For
the Glory of God, Princeton University Press, 2003, page 147
[3] Isaac Newton, Principia,
1687
[6] Hugh
Ross, Reasons to Believe, http://www.apologetics315.com/2012/11/interview-transcript-hugh-ross.html
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