Just the Facts - Science versus Christianity
Introduction
Today, we're talking about the question, Do science and the Bible contradict each other? Ever since I was young the prevailing fact which has been taught is that Christianity is not, and cannot be, believed because it just isn't supported by science. Since the time of the enlightenment, there has been an undercurrent of us-versus-them designed to undermine and destabilize the connection between God and His creation. This is often expressed by both Christians and skeptics when they claim that “the Bible is not a textbook”. But what is really being sold to us is that the mythology of the Christian worldview cannot compare to the truth of the sciences.
Have you heard this? The Bible taught us the world was flat but science proved it is a sphere. The Bible tells us the world was created in six days but science proves it is billions of years old.
Ultimately, when we start talking about science versus Christianity what we are engaging with is arguments against religion. When it comes to the science versus religion debate everyone has an opinion.
Christopher Hitchens famously argued that science can be provable and studyable whereas religion cannot.
[https://youtu.be/2kZRAOXEFPI?si=2kreY1uDSA6E9EOi]
In today's podcast I have only one job and that is to give Christians the tools to listen to, and understand what is being argued as well as explain to you where Christianity stands in this debate. Are we to separate science from Christianity capitulating to the cacophony of descent spewed against us?
I am going to approach this in three different topics: The Bible as a textbook, the strawman and creation denial, and the argument in the eyes of scientists who happen to believe in God
“The Textbook”
When we face criticism about the Bible it is most often because as Christians we tend to go only to the Bible for answers to our questions. Why is that? Do we feel that if we stray and find contradicting facts they will cause the Bible to lose its claim of infallibility? Contrary to popular opinion we find that there are many branches of science which are supported by biblical statements. Astronomy, Physics, Earth Science, Ecology, Decision Theory, Economics, Botany, Sociology, Philosophy, and Genetics….. I could go on.
The argument is made that science depends on observable evidences, which is why we cannot count the Bible as a trustworthy source; but that just isn’t true. What about magnetic fields, gravity, or even light? We can observe their effects but try to define them and you fall into the same restrictions people complain the Bible is guilty of. Consider what Hebrews 11:3 says, “By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.”
Is the problem, then, that the Bible misrepresents science? Paleontologist AronRa, former president of the Atheist Alliance of America and current member of the American Atheists board of directors, is a well known critic of creationism and speaks against Christianity's representation of scientific facts as they are found in Scripture. As an example he attacks Leviticus 17:11a, “For the life of the flesh is in the blood,” saying, “nobody needs a god to tell us that.” But the argument made by AronRa does nothing to refute the Biblical claim. Quite the opposite; his attack on Scripture just confirms that before modern science it was obvious that a loss of blood very often preceded a person's death. It is interesting that he uses this verse, which addresses the consumption of blood, because Leviticus 17:14, is more contextually correct for the argument; "As for the life of all flesh, its blood is identified with its life.” The word for life in this verse (nephesh) can be understood to represent Life and the soul as well, but this relates to the teaching of atonement; therefore the Scriptures steps into multiple disciplines of science: not only hematology, but philosophy as well.
[https://youtu.be/fEZd4frf0qg?si=F9G6pUE6jxCPdx3R]
What about Darwinian evolution? Douglas Axe, Professor of Molecular Biology at Biola University, comments on the science of evolution by saying, “we know that it’s impossible to get information on (the scale of proteins and DNA) through a chance process that Darwinism employs”
[https://youtu.be/2grcHPo8oDQ?si=ynfRoedpnfZQMhzt]
Darwinianism is a philosophical, Emperor’s New Clothes approach to Science, spewing self-deception as truth; and as Christians, we are being told by society that we are the ones who don’t have enough faith. The abundant evidence of evolution seems to be emperor's clothes which we are expected to see lest we be regarded as the uninformed slaves to myth, legend, and stupidity.
But if evolution is right, then its implications would reach across all the sciences; wouldn’t it? What about string theory? Theoretical physicist, futurist, and bestselling author Michio Kaku says that string theory points to the existence of God. As a co-creator of string field theory, he says, “I have concluded that we are in a world made by rules created by an intelligence, not unlike a favorite computer game, but of course, more complex and unthinkable.” “By analyzing the behavior of matter at the subatomic scale affected by the semi tachyon pitch radius, what we call chance no longer makes sense, because we are in a universe governed by established rules and not determined by universal chances plane.” “This means that, in all probability, there is an unknown force that governs everything,”
[https://www.godreports.com/2016/06/noted-physicist-says-string-theory-suggests-were-all-living-in-gods-matrix/]
Astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson takes a shot at Christians saying we see the Bible as a literal truth of God, “and want to see the Bible as a science textbook” in order to subvert science in the classroom.
[https://youtube.com/shorts/HC6B-qE1nqg?si=2R2_AWSbD584MHWp]
Is that true?
Alisa Childers on her podcast asked, Is the Bible a scientific book?“ We don't take everything in the Bible literally; but the truths that the Bible is communicating are literal. So it's not going to get a fact wrong about science.”
[https://youtu.be/JbRbofZQMzk?si=T00wWCi2eEdvkvru]
Unfortunately the argument about the Bible as a science book, or textbook, is less about its reliability than it is about Scripture being an infallible proof of God.
In a comedic critique of the Bible, where he calls it “The dusty old book”, Ricky Gervais makes this statement, “destroy religious books and in a 1000 years they will come back different, destroy science books and in a 1000 years they will come back the same”
[https://youtu.be/gv0NFBEMf60?si=IrQ7Nyn-ABJXNe9B]
But his argument is easily proved incorrect by looking at science in very recent history. The Berkeley University of California’s Paleontology Department made this statement on their webpage, “Science is deeply interwoven with society, and as it has changed, so too has science.”
[https://undsci.berkeley.edu/modern-science-whats-changing/]
Consider how drastically computers have changed in the last 100 years – as has computer science – why wait 1000 years to record these changes. Science evolves along with advances in knowledge and technology, and with societal concerns. This statement clearly isn't true when it comes to Christianity (or, at least it shouldn’t be).
When we have the Bible as a science textbook discussion we need to make sure we do not minimize the fact that the Gospels are Historical Documents. In her book “The Crucifixion and the King of Glory", Eugenia Constantinou details the historical accuracy of the Biblical scholarship. The intimate details of the life of Christ and how early Christians interacted with Jews, Romans, and others who visited Jerusalem is reflected in the Bible in such a way that as we peel back the layers of each story, each layer becomes another witness to the perfection of its authenticity. She states, in an interview with Eric Metaxas," The Gospels themselves are historical documents. They’re not a fiction that was written by somebody to promote Jesus Christ; which is a very common accusation which is being made.”
[https://youtu.be/1jW-NYsIKFo?si=G2Ha2CJQRq6FNPz6]
Michael Hanson, writing on relativity and the age of the earth, introduces a scientific concept which I find absolutely fascinating; this is the theory of Time Dilation which says that time is not constant and varies due to factors such as gravity and velocity. Therefore, our reading of creation could be understood to be a literal 7 days and billions of years yet not contradict each other. We must also remember that God is infinite and not bound by time. He says, “I get frustrated at the fundamentalist crowd for clear anti-intellectualism and fear of scientific thought for sure. But I also get frustrated at Biology 101 professors who tell their students that the Bible is wrong because carbon dating says the world is (10.9 trillion) years old. Yeah, maybe by the time that we experience now it's that old but time is not constant. The theory of Time Dilation throws both arguments in the trash bin and should honestly lead us to awe in the infinite God who created time.”
[https://torreygazette.com/blog/2015/4/6/interstellar-relativity-and-the-age-of-the-earth]
“Sky Daddy” - The Strawman and Creation Denial
It is popular in social media and in discussion with those who challenge the claims of Christianity, to hear derogatory and offensive slang such as “sky daddy”, “sky fairy”, “magic beard man”, or “celestial dictator”; and such terms are strongly associated with childishness and immaturity.
For an example of this you can find hundreds of tick tocks, reals, and videos of Neil deGrasse Tyson defaming religion. Yet in his own words, “in the west, ⅔ of scientists pray to a personal god.” and he admits that science and religion can coexist but are not productive.
[https://youtu.be/ANZTjzcaoVc?si=AzbX-qd-Jye2mKR5]
So, we are accused of what is called the God of the Gaps. Neil Gaiman said this regarding those of faith, “Science takes us so far but we don't understand anything beyond that, therefore that's God. The stuff that we don't get, that's God; and the trouble with that is the moment that you actually go, ‘no we do understand that now’ is people are going, ‘well did God just go away then?’”
And it would be OK if he stopped there, because I do see his argument. If you don’t know how something happened, then, yes, you could default to saying that God did it, but don’t stop. God gave us the tools, find out how He did it; do the science and discover just how wonderful creation actually is. Of course, Neil Gaiman can’t stop with that statement, he continues, “nice simple things like the rainbow; the point where you go, ‘well the rainbow actually it's, it's an optical effect’ it's not something magic that gets put up in the sky to memorialize the flood.”
[https://youtu.be/ANZTjzcaoVc?si=AzbX-qd-Jye2mKR5 46:56]
Do you see what he did there? He committed an error called the strawman fallacy.
The strawman fallacy is marked by four basic examples: First, in an argument an opponent's words are quoted out of context. In presenting arguments like I am today, this fallacy is very real as it is tempting to eisegete a meaning, or intention, that was never intended. Secondly, giving the appearance that every upholder of that position has already been defeated, by using the argument of someone who defends a position poorly as the model of all defenders. Thirdly, one which is used ad nauseum in the atheist vs Christian debates called the oversimplification attack; where an opponent's argument is boiled down to an untenable position, thereby misrepresenting and defaming the opponent. Lastly, this fallacy presents an argument which has been brought down to a childish level, or more prominently, the political example where an opponent's argument is grossly exaggerated to allow the opponent to attack this exaggerated version.
One of the things we need to consider when we talk about the topic of Christianity and science is what CS Lewis called Chronological snobbery. Critics often ask, “What could a two-thousand-year-old faith have to say to us in the twenty-first century?” Lewis defines this chronological snobbery as “the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate of our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that count discredited.”
[“Surprised by Joy” book by CS Lewis]
The CS Lewis Institute says that “This was one of the obstacles that C.S. Lewis had to overcome in order to come to faith in Christ. Lewis eventually came to understand the need to ask further questions such as: Why did this idea go out of date? Was it ever refuted? If so, by whom, where, and how conclusively? In other words, you need to determine if an old idea is false before you reject it; we would not want to say that everything believed in an ancient culture was false. Which things are false—and why—and which things remain true?”
[https://www.cslewisinstitute.org/resources/c-s-lewis-on-chronological-snobbery/]
Owen Barfield explains chronological snobbery in his book “History in English Words” saying, it is the belief that "intellectually, humanity languished for countless generations in the most childish errors on all sorts of crucial subjects, until it was redeemed by some simple scientific dictum of the last century.”
[“History in English Words” Owen Barfield]
We see this very often in creation denial, but that brings with it a whole host of new problems. When we step into this camp we see a failure of human morality that follows very quickly into our skewed cultural perception.
The English historian Tom Holland wrote, “For eighteen long centuries, the Christian conviction that all human life was sacred had been underpinned by one doctrine more than any other: that man and woman were created in God’s image.”
[Holland, T., Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind, Little Brown, p. 425, 2019.]
But what happened after those 18 centuries? We have been told incessantly that Christianity and Science have no place together and that has become the mantra in our schools today. Surprisingly, Scientists like the physicist Paul Davies admit, “… even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith that the universe is not absurd, that there is a rational basis to physical existence manifested as a law-like order in nature that is at least in part comprehensible to us. So science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview.”
[Davies, P., Physics and the mind of god: The Templeton Prize address, firstthings.com, Aug 1995.]
“The Argument”
You may be surprised to hear that there are many scientists who profess a faith in God; and they do not see the faith versus science problem as a valid one.
I have found Os Guinness to be an outspoken scientist who takes his faith very seriously, defending it while still being true to his scientific discipline. He says, “Science is at the very heart of the modernizing world and, of course, the irony is that in Scripture, science is a matter of worship and praise, not controversy and argument.”
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGVJkvwJIsU&ab_channel=BioLogos]
Where does the Conflict Really Lie? In an address to Biola University, the philosopher Alvin Plantiga asked this question as well, and to it he responded by saying our understanding of how God influences us through actions beyond creation has driven this wedge in our culture. More to the point, he addresses whether or not the theory of evolution is compatible with theistic belief. He says that the semi- or quasi- religious aspects of scientific naturalism strays from a pure scientistic worldview to create its own fundamental answers to, ‘What does it mean to be a human being?’
[https://youtu.be/rbjp9PrtPS8?si=IRJ66Jgeu-NjW80A]
In answering this question, though, it feels that what we call science, tries to silence or muffle God. The irony here is that, in time, we may find that science will bury Atheism. John Lennox, Oxford professor and Mathematician said, “Why do I think that science can bury atheism? It's because science can be done.” “How is it that a mathematician, thinking in her head here, comes up with equations, and they appear to apply to the universe out there – how does that work?” “It's only unreasonable if you start by believing atheism; but if you start by believing that there's a rational intelligence behind the universe then doing science is reasonable”
[https://youtu.be/wBio3y0Rrbc?si=9NIJ9KE5R8rDiIa5 30:15]
It is orderliness and design that makes science possible and this is clearly demonstrated in the Bible. The rationality of a creator God was lost in the 19th century but it does seem to be returning. Today’s science is increasingly pointing skeptics to God. Stephen C. Meyer, in his book, "The Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries that Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe" asks, “did blind pitiless forces expect a beginning to the universe, or the exquisite fine-tuning that makes life possible, or the exquisite complexity of the cell?” During an episode of ‘Socrates in the City” he further states, “the evidence of cosmology, the evidence of astronomy, and astrophysics is not pointing to a material universe that has been here from eternity past, but rather a universe that had a definite beginning.”
[https://youtu.be/n3aoQircZeQ?si=7acD2vUz_RzVysp6]
In his book “From Darkness to Sight” Ming Wang writes about his coming to faith. As a scientifically-minded atheist his beliefs began to shift when studying for his second medical degree in Harvard. He says, “it quickly became clear to me with a scientific background, a PhD in Laser Physics, I realized that it is just impossible that the atheist worldview would hold. That means how could all these trillions of trillions of cells combine themselves to form a functional eye in a short span of 9 months.”
[https://youtu.be/lFIOak1k3mU?si=HJHQd5hXKNICmazw]
People have been trying to disprove the Bible for years and all this effort has had only one consequence; the truth of Scripture keeps getting stronger. In our lifetime, the evidence of science has been found in accordance with Scripture so often that it is an embarrassment. Eric Metaxas said, “the evidence from science for a fine-tuned universe, that everything is calibrated so perfectly that it doesn't make sense that it just happened, is the killer. It's killer evidence.”
[https://youtu.be/Nxxs0jkHpcg?si=JML7R_rcdql8tjd1]
Outro
Just for fun, I asked an AI generator to answer the question I’ve been talking about today and it gave me a very interesting answer. “The perceived conflict or harmony between science and religion largely depends on individual interpretations and beliefs. It’s a nuanced issue with deep historical, philosophical, and personal dimensions. ”When we discuss science and Christianity two things must never be forgotten, Judeo-Christian theology gave rise to science and it only did that because of Genesis 1:1, which states, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
We must get comfortable with the fact that there are things we will never know. There are many examples of this including the twin prime conjecture in mathematics. There will always be true statements that cannot be proven.
Obviously, this really is a huge topic and there was a lot of information I had to cut from this month's podcast; so, next month I'm going to continue by broaching the topic of how History is understood in the light of Scripture.
Let’s close in prayer.