A Christian Response to Science, Part One

A Christian response to Science Part One 

In 2006, Times magazine ran a front-page article entitled “God vs. Science,” featuring a debate between Dr. Francis Collins and Dr. Richard Dawkins. The title neatly summarizes how many evangelicals talk about science. For thousands of years, God has reigned supreme in the cosmos until this liberal, atheistic inventions, called science shows up on the scene. It is something we must protect our children from in schools and our laws from in the statehouse, and ourselves from in our news sources. This twisted position undermines thousands of years of Christian scientists exploring God’s world and using that knowledge to make human lives better. More importantly, it demeans the character of God himself.

With the title “God vs. Science,” you would expect a superb scientist on atheism’s side and a… theologian?...  on God’s. But those are not Doctors Collins and Dawkins. Dr. Dawkins is a real biologist and his PhD work about junk DNA that became the book The Selfish Gene was a meaningful contribution to the field. Since then, Dr. Dawkins has primarily focused on philosophy and atheist apologetics. Dr. Collins has spoken and written as a Christian apologist many times, but if you google him, that will not be the first thing that comes up. His early work was identifying the precise genetic sequence that causes cystic fibrosis (one of the first geneticist to be able to track a disease to its genetic cause). Combined with his leadership skills, that discovery facilitated his rise to the head of the Human Genome Project in the 1990’s. the Human Genome Project decoded the entire human genetic sequence and is considered one of the greatest scientific discoveries of the twentieth century. Like Dr. Dawkins, Dr Collins has moved away from original research in recent years, but rather than teaching philosophy (Dr. Dawkins’ current job), in 2009, Dr. Collins became the head of the largest scientific research organization in the world: the National Institute of Health. As the Director of the NIH, Dr. Collins’ influence on the scientistic community will be felt for decades to come. And just for context, directing the NIH makes him Dr. Anthony Fauci’s boss.  Perhaps, a more accurate title to the Times’ article would have been “A brilliant scientist defends God and a decent scientist defends atheism.”

The largest problem with the “God vs. science” nomenclature is that this supposed conflict sounds like “alien vs. predator” or “Godzilla vs Kong”; two monsters clashed and you have to watch to the end to know who will win. But God has no opposite (I Tim 6:16). Satan is not God’s opposite. He is just a created being who happens to be in rebellion. Sin is not God’s opposite. Christ died for our sins out of divine love, not because God needed to defeat sin to stay on his throne. In the 1700’s, French humanists such as Voltaire attempted to set reason up as the opposite of God. The masses had religion and the enlightened have reason. But, as C.S. Lewis pointed out centuries later, when a person uses reason to argue against God, they “are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all.”  

In the same way, science is not the opposite of God. God does not need Christians to rush to his defense from studies that make them uncomfortable or graphs that they do not understand. The Creator is not made uneasy by what a scientist learns by exploring his creation. God is not a magician and life is not a magic trick; his power is not threatened if we figure out part (or even someday all) of the “how” of how his world works.

The German astronomer Johannes Kepler once defined science as “thinking God’s thoughts after him,” which has become the motto for many Christian scientists in the centuries since him. And there have been many such scientists.  More than half of scientists in America believe in the Divine. While that is still much lower than the general population, it is certainly not a faithless group. Curiously, faith in God in the general population has dropped in the last hundred years, but American scientists’ faith level (about 50%) has stayed the same. Also, interestingly, this breakdown does not hold in all countries. In Hong Kong, for example, scientists are twice as likely as the general population to believe in God.

Less than a third of scientists believe that religious beliefs and science are at odds. For every new atheist like Dawkins and Sam Harris who have attempted to turn science into a religion, there are literally thousands of scientists who are simply doing good science. Science does not particularly care about a person’s belief system if their work holds up to the scientific method, respects its test subjects, and is subject to the interpretation of the larger scientific body of evidence. Even outspoken atheists publishes their scientific work in peer reviewed journals and academic presses and their atheist works as philosophy and popular reading.

The Bible commands Christians to “love one another” and “do unto others” (Jn 15, Mt. 7 Mt 25). The saddest outcome of turning science into an enemy is that it cuts off one of the church’s arms to share God’s love with the world. A pastor can pray with someone who is experiencing extreme abdominal pain and friends and family can walk them through it, but it is science that allows Christian doctors and nurses to actually relieve their suffering--- using diagnostic tools that have been rigorously tested to make sure they do not give the person cancer; drugs that have undergone extensive scientific trials to make sure they will not poison someone; and surgical instruments and methods that have been pieced from the individual works of dozens of scientists and doctors to give us a best practice method. Without science, the comfort of God is just a hazy concept to this suffering individual.

Using science, an astronomer or astronaut can remind humans of our smallest in the vastness of God’s created works; an architect can design a homeless shelter and a contractor can build it; an airplane can take a missionary to an unreached people’s group; a pastor can facetime with a isolated COVD patient; and a botanist can breed crops that grow in harsh conditions, helping feed the hungry.  Science remains what it has been for thousands of years: a gift of God for humans to explore, use, and share.

Sources and Further Reading:

Pew Research “ Scientists and Belief” https://www.pewforum.org/2009/11/05/scientists-and-belief/

Phys.org “First Worldwide surgery of religion and science” https://phys.org/news/2015-12-worldwide-survey-religion-science-scientists.html