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This is my top recommendation, well worth listening to
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Science -vs- Religion – isn’t it all over for religion?
IF there is such a thing as ‘Objective Truth’ (see later session on Relativism) and IF the bible is ‘true’, and IF science is a valid mechanism for discovering ‘truths’ then there can be no contradiction between biblical truth and the findings of science.
Why do we think there is a conflict?
3 reasons
- Misunderstandings
- Mistrust
- Mis-representation
Mistakes made by Science
a) ‘Scientism’, methodological reductionism becomes ontological reductionism – too many long words? Call it ‘nothing-buttery’, i.e. the error of claiming we are 'nothing-but' a collection of chemical elements, a piece of biology, etc:
Richard Dawkins – ‘we are machines for propagating DNA…it is every living objects’ sole reason for living (my italics)’
Mistakes made by Christians
a) Mishandling Scripture. E.g. to suggest that the Genesis account was written in order to give a scientific explanation of the processes of the origin of everything. I would suggest instead that its purpose has more to do with God explaining (4000 years ago and still today) our relationship to HIM
b) Natural Theology (Over-reliance on) – How much can we discover about God from the natural order?
Romans1:20 ‘For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse’
There is a tendancy for some Christians to look at unsolved scientific problems, and call the solution ‘God’ by which they mean ‘miraculous’ (e.g. the ancients and sunrise, relationships between stars, evolution.) The problem is that then science comes along and provides a ‘natural’ i.e. non-miraculous explanation and Christianity is left to argue the scientific explanation is a lie (e.g. evolution). This is ‘God-of-the-gaps’ theology, and is essentially a form of DEISM (God sets things in motion and may occasionally intervene through miracles but essentially the world runs itself) Biblical Theism would place God as intimately involved in constantly sustaining the universe, not intermittently meddling, but God is NOT identical with some force WITHIN the universe, or the universe itself.
c) This last error (to identify God with the universe) is PANTHEISM (or what Schaeffer calls Pan-everything-ism, the error is to deny the TRANSCENDANCE of God.
To be true to Biblical THEISM, we must remember that God is both IMMANENT (intimately and continually involved in creation) and TRANSCENDANT ('beyond' space and time, not contained within the universe or dependant upon it in any way)
How does science say we came about? – Heidegger – ‘The fundamental question is why is there something instead of nothing?’
1. Cosmology – big-bang ex nihilo – numerous attempts by cosmologists to deny this but all have failed, most cosmologists now accept that the universe and space-time itself has a beginning, philosophically we can imply that a beginning necessitates a cause, and theologically we can only name that cause ‘God’ (The only things we know of that are ‘uncaused causes’ are minds, therefore God is personal).
2. Evolution – there really is no point denying the reality of evolution, if it didn’t happen we wouldn’t be worried about MRSA and bird-flu. It actually took very little time for the mainstream church to accept Darwin’s theory as the cause of biological diversity, but understand that’s ALL evolution can tell us, how diversity came about. It CANNOT answer WHY, or what life means. Some (e.g. Dawkins) extrapolate from this failure an ABSENCE of meaning, but a more sensible approach is to look in another part of the library for the answer, not to conclude that because the answer isn’t in the biology section that it doesn’t exist.
Theists have long used a ‘Teleological’ argument (argument from design) for the existence of God e.g. a watch implies a watchmaker so man implies a ‘man-maker’, who must have intelligence to be able to design, hence ‘Intelligent Design’ Dawkins strongly opposes this (‘The Blind Watchmaker’)
Fine tuning argument:
Both cosmology and evolution depend on astonishing contingences, fine tuning
Does this imply design?
How does a biblical God fit into this? The bible gives at least four creation accounts each with a different emphasis and purpose.
1) Genesis 1 – Hugely stylised account (the original Hebrew is very carefully strutcuted, down to the numbers of letters of the numbers of words for each section). The current view is that this account was written to directly challenge (even to make fun of!) other prevailing creation myths to emphasise the true God’s sovereignty. (Phoney Phoenecians!)
2) Genesis 2 – God’s special relationship with man – appointed as caretaker. Adam means ‘groundsman’, something about Man being different from other animals, the soul?
3) Psalm 104 – poetic description, helps to further identify the futility of a ‘literal’ interpratation, the earth CAN be moved, indeed it is moving very rapidly through space, spinning as it goes. Emphasises God’s IMMANENCE in creation, just as life on earth is continually sustained by the sun’s energy, so the whole universe is only sustained through God’s continued action and will. Deism-vs-Theism. Also emphasises that creation is to be enjoyed, explored, examined and this leads to worship.
4) John 1 – Metaphysical or even mystical account of primacy of Christ in creation, identified as ‘Word’ = logic and meaning. Logos is a concept that can be given much currency at the quanatum level of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle – but beware of making a ‘God-of-the-gaps argument’ here.
Another possible error (made on both sides)
Category errors – maps showing different information levels, looking for economic information on a map showing average rainfall is meaningless, similarly science and religion operate at different levels. Dawkins correctly asserts that a solely scientific understanding of our origin will deny ultimate meaning, for that we would need a different ‘map’ – that of religion, but to use that map to understand the chemistry of DNA is similarly meaningless, the bible has nothing to say on the subject. It’s a category error. So teach science in science lessons and religion in R.E. and maintain an orderly library with appopriate cross-referencing capability.
Stephen Jay Gould – NOMA
On noting that many of his colleagues are Christian (and other faiths) he concludes:
'Either half my colleagues are enormously stupid, or else the science of Darwinism is fully compatible with conventional religious beliefs - and equally compatible with atheism.'
He went on to propose NOMA – non-overlapping majesteria, which might be seen as a noble way of preventing arguments, but I for one won’t have it. A god (or an ethical system) that sits alongside the physical universe is not a sovereign god.
· 2 Chronicles 7 describes God as choosing to ‘Dwell in thick darkness’ – why has God hidden himself from us?
· How should we conceptualise (understand) the relationship between religious interpretations of reality and scientific explorations into reality? (TRANSCENDANCE – Mr Men analogy)
Note that atheistic beliefs (for that is what they are – beliefs) are EQUALLY logically satisfying as theistic ones.
Why is this? Why is God not more ‘self-evident’ in creation, why NOT create miraculously, outside the laws of physics and chemistry? Why is the universe not made in such a way as to COMPEL us to believe in God (e.g. as a face in the sky for each human to relate to directly)?
The most profound statement to deal with this comes not from Descartes, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Hawkings, Dawkings or Gould, but from Adams, in the philosophical treatise known as ‘The Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy’:
`I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'
`But,' says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'
`Oh dear,' says God, `I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly disappears in a puff of logic.
Change one word (without faith YOU are nothing) and inadvertently I think he’s written the most profound piece of theology of the 20th Century. God has indeed fine-tuned the universe, so that we may find him if we seek, and to do so we need not have any scientific education at all, but equally the most extreme, profound scientific and philosophical probing can never finally satisfy that need by itself, at best it may lead us to marvel and wonder but worship involves choosing to respond to God in faith. The universe is predicated on choice, choice to believe, choice to worship.
Ultimately whether we respond to the universe in atheistic wonder, or to God in worship is a matter of choice – one or other is correct, and both have profound implications, but the problem is so poised as to be one of choice, not proof.
So the final reason for the conflict thesis is and always has been, human arrogance. I BELIEVE my view to be correct, but I can’t PROVE it to you and shouldn’t INSIST that you agree with it, you must make your own choice, recognizing that the choice is between meaning and non-meaning for existence.
My Analogy – Mr Men TV characters (little men in the box) dependant on the author of the original picture book. If we imagine those TV characters to have intelligence, they may uncover evidence that they exist within a ‘universe’ i.e television set, they may work out that their ‘being’ is composed of a flourescing screen hit by electrons fired at it from a cathode ray gun. They may even conclude that their lives have some ‘meaning’, they tell a story, but the author of that story can only be known to them if HE decides to reveal himself to them, he is in no way a part of their ‘reality’ in the box, but they would not exist and would have no more stories to tell if he ceased to exist.
Deism – God = Roger Hargreaves (who died in 1988)
Pantheism – God = everything in the TV set, including the set itself
Theism – God ‘transcends’ everything but is continually involved in it’s maintenance, from script writer, to produce, to animator, to TV station, to transmitter, to TV repair man. All of these are characterized by purpose or intentionailty BEHIND the observed reality. The Mr Men in the TV can only discover this if HE reveals himself in some way in their reality.
Science and Religion as friends
Postmodernism is inherently relativistic, denying the possibility of absolute truth:
- Existing
- Being accessible
- Being agreeable
Science and Religion may occasionally argue about details of truth, but at least they agree that there IS a truth to argue about.
Dr Alan Kerry - September 2006
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