Science Cannot Threaten God, Only Your Pride

Great article. I must admit haven’t thought about these things very much for quite some time — not since I was an undergraduate student, when I was anxiously protective of my fundamentalist faith and ready to denounce anything that threatened it. Since then, though, I’ve slowly and casually come to rethink my initial relationship to science and evolution. Since I’m not a sciencey person, I have gradually come to lean away from belief in evolution but remain open to the possibility (because really, what does an English lit grad know about the validity of evolution?). I’ve sort of just left it at that. It no longer really interests me all that much because my faith no longer hangs on whether or not evolution is true and the Genesis story literal.

Your article has kind of renewed my interest in thinking about these things, though. As a more mature adult who is no longer terrified that someone is trying to steal my faith from me, I can more reasonably assess the situation and conclude that you’re probably right — there’s probably enough evidence to reasonably conclude that evolution is true. And I’m OK with that. Thanks for the brain poke.

I was so excited to read this article. I hope more people (Christians, non-Christians, scientists, non-scientists) consider this idea that science and Christianity do not need to threaten each other. I like how you put it that, “science explores the natural world, which, if you take the account of the Bible seriously, God created in all of its wondrous detail.” When a Christian studies science they have the opportunity to appreciate God’s creation.
I will probably go read Collins’ book now.

I agree, it’s pointless to put up that kind of hurdle. I always try to avoid arguing about things that aren’t relevant to the discussion. But I’m not sure I follow you about why I should take interest. It’s not as if my lack of interest in evolution is creating hurdles for others. I don’t challenge evolution, I just don’t care about it.

It is misguided. There’s a lack of understanding of the nature of actual science amongst those who oppose it, and amongst those who would wield it as a lead pipe against anything they don’t agree with. It can only ever tell you about the physical world – never about the metaphysical, never about the spiritual, never about the moral. It can give light to these things, but ultimately all it gives is information. How that information is used, and what is decided from it, comes from philosophy. Not science.

The most outspoken example of someone who points to evolution as evidence for God’s non-existence, from what I have heard, is Richard Dawkins. I’ve also heard something about Stephen Hawking getting in on the act, even going so far as to claim that philosophy is dead and that scientists have to step in in that area.

All people are fallible.

“Are you saying that the way the word ‘theory’ is used in relation to evolution can equally be used to describe what we know as Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation which Newton derived from empirical observations using the process of induction? I cannot see the similarity. Can the laws of gravity be described as theory on the same level as a theory that cannot be tested or repeated in whole or in part?”

The scientific community has rather specific rules regarding what is theory and what is not. An untested, unsubstantiated idea is a hypothesis. A theory is, on the other hand, the end result of a hypothesis that has been tested and shown to be true, within the bounds of what is already known.

Gravity is, indeed, referred to as a theory. It is through simple observation that one can see an apple will fall to the ground, but what actually causes this to happen? The force that does so is called gravity, but how does gravity work? Why do bodies of mass exert an attractive force upon each other? It is these questions that the Theory of Gravity addresses, attempting to explain the world. The explanations posited within that theory are, within the framework of current knowledge, considered accurate – but further knowledge may, in fact, force a change in what is currently understood.

In similar fashion, the contents of the actual Theory of Evolution (as opposed to the straw versions that people inevitably mock up on both sides of the faith debate) are called Theory by the scientific community, and yes, this includes a great many of the Christian scientists, Collins among them. By the simple fact of calling theory, it is considered to have been tested and, through weight of evidence, understood to be true within the framework of current knowledge.

So, no, I’m not saying that the Law of Universal Gravitation is theory, so far as I am aware, at least. The theory part is the why and how, or at least, that is my current understanding.

The point of the quoted paragraph is to point out that, far too often, people see the word “theory” and then discount it off-hand because it is “only a theory.” I myself have done this. This is a failure to understand the nature of how the scientific community uses the term – you cannot discount theory off-hand. If it is considered a working theory, it needs to be considered seriously.

Ultimately, it doesn’t affect the reality of God’s existence or his sovereignty. So, if you wish, you need not worry overmuch over it. But under no circumstances should anyone discount evolution as false without doing a proper study of the theory itself and the evidence for it – and that is the whole point.

Bryn,
Thanks for the response. From what you say there remains more to be discovered about the mechanisms at work in both gravitation and evolution – the difference being that the laws of gravitation (as opposed to its mechanisms) have been formulated by the scientific method (i.e. by observation and experiment) whereas, so far, nothing has demonstrated – even remotely – that life arose (or even that life can arise) from non-living matter. (I am still awaiting Collins’ book).
You say, ‘By the simple fact of calling theory, it is considered to have been tested and, through weight of evidence, understood to be true within the framework of current knowledge’.
In ‘The Funeral of a Great Myth’ C.S. Lewis quotes a biologist Professor DMS Watson: ‘(Evolution) is accepted by zoologists not because it has been observed to occur or…can be proved by logically coherent evidence to be true, but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible.

The subject of origins cannot be investigated scientifically because the principles upon which scientific enquiry depends, observation and experiment under controlled conditions, cannot be employed. What is observable is the adaptation of species to their environment. Any conclusions from this observable fact will be based entirely on the presuppositions of the scientist or individual.

In theorizing about origins, (i.e. the universe from a point source of inexplicable properties and origin, or life from non living matter) observable trends like the expansion of the universe or the adaptability of species need to be projected backwards on the assumption that the observable trend is in each case, a snapshot of a continuous process. The basis of that assumption is not scientific but ideological. If Genesis is true the assumption is false. The observable trends that the evolutionist uses to conclude evolution have good explanations within the framework of creation: A static universe for instance, would collapse under its own gravity and adaptation is a characteristic ‘built-in’ to species by the same Mind that created a habitat containing different and changing environments.

I believe God ‘downloaded’ the universe from his mind into space and time in six stages over a period of 144 terrestrial hours through the vehicle of his Word. This view is as ideologically founded as that of the evolutionist. Both involve faith. One involves faith in the assumption of continuity going back in time and the other involves faith in the authority of Scripture. Origins cannot be discovered scientifically because the scientific method cannot be used to find out whether the beginning was a creation or an explosion.

The following shows why this is important for Christians to consider because it impacts on the character of God in two important ways.

One of the reasons I made reference to CS Lewis’s essay, ‘The Funeral of a Great Myth’ in the earlier comment is because in it, he identifies the way evolution shifts from being a theory about changes to a fact about improvements. If evolution is true then the changes must be improvements. I suspect C.S. Lewis did not like this idea because the God he believed in did not need to make improvements much less create by a method that depended on them. The creation has been directly dispatched from eternity. The need for ‘time to get it right’ and ‘waste along the way’ is contrary to what we know about God’s character. You rightly point out that From the Moral Law alone, conclusions can be drawn about this being’s nature. The same is true from the way he creates. Equally fundamental is the distortion to the moral law if we admit the process of natural selection acting on the survival of the fittest as the process of creation before the Fall. There is death and cruelty before the consequences of man’s rebellion impacted a creation that God described as ‘good’. The God who creates gradually and wastefully by improvements that are selected by the cruel process of the survival of the fittest and the God who creates as described in the book of Genesis are very different Gods. These two problems of theistic evolution do impact on our conclusions about this being’s nature…a nature contrary to that manifested by Jesus who said, ‘he who has seen me has seen the Father’ and whose inclination was to the poor, the needy and the least fit.

Bryn, Some thoughts and responses to some of the points you raised.

1) I will clarify this point: the Theory of Evolution, to my knowledge, has nothing to say about the origin of life itself, only the origin of diversity of species.

I don’t know how accurate your statement is. Assuming it is accurate then maybe there are different opinions among modern evolutionists. In the attached link, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q6eT1isJlM

• the speaker is addressing the seven postulates of evolution as laid down by a prominent evolutionist. The first two relate to the origin of life. Perhaps as a result of clear thinking on this subject evolutionists have withdrawn from talking about the origin of life in evolutionary terms and restricted the theory to the origin of diversity.

*this talk is also laid out in the book, ‘The Natural Sciences Know Nothing of Evolution.’ (If it is of any interest to you the speaker, Wilder Smith, was taught by C.S.Lewis).

2) Yet this evidence goes largely ignored, or is discounted out of hand, by those who support creation as the origin.

• I agree that the evidence should not be discounted out of hand unless it has been shown that it is not evidence for what it claims to be.

3) I do not necessary believe that the earth was created in a week. There is enough evidence of the earth’s age, indeed, of the age of the universe, that this stance seems unlikely to me.

• Whether or not the ‘earth was created in a week’ it tells us nothing about the earth’s age, or indeed, the age of the universe. In any case, what is the evidence you are referring to?

4) …there has been a situation somewhat similar to this before – the controversy that surrounded the heliocentric model of the solar system. When the theory that the earth revolved around the sun was put forth, there was, eventually, a massive religious outcry against it, and it was claimed to be directly counter to scripture and a threat to faith.

• There is no similarity since the geocentric model was not scriptural. It was simply assumed. A six day creation is scriptural.

The idea that ‘creating the earth (and the universe) in a state of age’ smacks of a great deception is questionable. We who believe the Bible do well be consistent. We believe that Jesus fed five thousand men in the desert with only five loaves of bread. The loaves were multiplied and would have been in what you describe as a ‘state of age’ or we could say the ‘result of a process’ that did not take place in space and time. Is there a reason why we believe this for the loaves yet insist that the universe must have a history in space and time despite revelation to the contrary?
You say that the word ‘day’ can mean something other than 24 hours (and that may be so) yet in this case each day is referred to as having an evening and a morning as if to clarify what meaning of the word ‘day’ the author intended us to understand.

You say ‘the sheer time scale upon which things such as the formation of stars are understood to occur flies directly in the face of the idea of a 128 hour period of creation’.

In Genesis it says:

“The earth brought forth vegetation … trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day. Gen 1:11-13.

On the day that the trees were created they had fruit. This flies directly in the face of the idea that fruit trees take years to bear fruit, or is it the other way around? God created the stars the following day which you say flies in the face of the sheer time scale involved for the formation of stars to occur. Like the trees that had fruit on the branches and rings in their trunks the stars, on the day they were created were mature or in various stages of their life cycle. We can see stars being formed through the Hubble telescope. We can also see seeds sprouting into fruit trees. It is not science but mentality that dictates that the first trees and the first stars began the same way. Despite the navel Adam was not born of a woman.

Some of the crowd sought Jesus the day after they were fed because they could not believe the bread they had eaten the day before was ‘from heaven’. When they found him they challenged him to prove to them that it was from heaven by making it come down from the sky. The crowd that ate of the loaves the day before said to him:
“Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” John 6:30-31. They believed the loaves were baked in an oven because they were crusty and crust is the result of baking. Was this a great deception? By demanding a more explicit sign they were indeed implying deception on his part. As far as I am aware this is the only occasion that Jesus was angry with people who were not religious leaders. He told them they had to drink his blood (an abomination to the Jews) to get rid of them.

Neither of us are experts in the relevant sciences but that is not important since even if we were our presuppositions would determine our interpretation since the scientific method cannot be applied. It is not a case of dismissing evidence out of hand it is a case of understanding the genuine limitations of science and the reality of the supernatural.

When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, “Lord, what about this man?”
Jesus said to him, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!”
So the saying spread abroad among the brothers that this disciple was not to die; yet Jesus did not say to him that he was not to die, but, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?” John 21:21-23

However, in Galileo’s time many people were quite convinced that it was, and they had texts that they thought established this just as you take Genesis 1 to establish a young earth.

The difference is, as you point out none of the scriptures you mention teach geocentrism but people believed it.
In the case of creation the text is unequivocal.

For my part, I think the above points apply equally well to the early chapters of Genesis, which also do not seem to be intended to be read as literal science or history. If you are going to claim that geocentrism was not taught in Scripture but that a young earth is, you are going to have to give some principled reason for differentiating between the proof-texts used in both cases, and explain why the Bible is teaching science in one case and not the other.

I see your point about interpreting scripture but I do have a principled reason. It is that the same text refers to a specific geographical location and, beginning with Adam, names and ages of descendants are specified. This puts the Genesis account in space and time which is what I understand to mean history. Unless you have a principled reason why you think a text that is not meant to be taken historically refers to specific individuals, places, and times I will stick to my guns in claiming that egocentricity is not taught in scripture and a six day creation is.

For what it is worth I find the term ‘young’ earth unhelpful since at creation it was transmitted from eternity.
Also I would argue that the Bible is not attempting to teach science here but about God’s character. In doing so it teaches selective history so we can learn about God’s dealings with man and thereby come to know more of his character. The creation would be an important part of history to miss out and it is included because it teaches us about the character of God.
If God created by the process of the survival of the fittest (red in tooth and claw) before man was created and hence before the fall and proceeds to tell us (in Scripture! His Word!) that he created in a manner that puts him in a much better light… Now that would be deceitful.
A related point is that if God created the cosmos using natural processes over vast periods of time there is a good deal of deism in his character and it does bear out in the way we expect him to work which in practice means ‘through natural processes’. This is a barrier to the kind of audacious faith we read about in the early church.