Essay - Science and the Bible
Fast Facts
Science is based on the principle of working out what is known to be true or most probably true and then seeking further knowledge on its terms. It sternly avoids trying to explain what is not known through something that is unknown. Religion is about assumptions and speculations dressed up as knowledge and wisdom so science is definitely against religion.
You have no right where evidence is concerned to believe in many religious
doctrines. Even if Jesus came back from the dead it would not mean there
is evidence that God did it. It only means somebody came back. Yet
it is central to Christianity to have God raising Jesus.
Science is the best thing to show how we work and how the universe works. But it is also the the only thing. Religion denies both of these. Alleged revelation from God is put first.
Foreword
The biggest challenge to the reasonableness of the Bible
and its truth is the view that science and Bible based religion are incompatible
and locked in conflict. It is my intention to answer that perception by
examining how the Bible responds to it.
Christianity would need to be more than just tolerant of science. It would need
to embrace and encourage and praise it with utmost sincerity. For some
Buddhists, science is mysticism without the magical thinking (page 114, WHY I AM
A BUDDHIST, No Nonsense Buddhism for Modern Living, Stephen T Asma, Watkins,
London, 2011 - sadly maligned but wonderful book, a gem!). Christianity does not
give science true respect. It says all truth comes from the one source - God. If
so, then science because it is always checking itself out and revising and being
cautious with evidence and logic then should come before anything else as a
source of truth. The fact of the matter is that a learning discipline based on
evidence is good but one that even more based on it science alone occupies that
place, is better. Christianity in principle does not give science its rightful
place and thus should be walked away from.
Claims of the Bible
We are suspicious of miracles and revelation from God - seeing them as hangovers
from a pre-scientific age. Yet the Bible states that it is the revelation from
God and it endorses a worldview based on miracles including the power of God to
change even the hardest of hearts.
If the Bible does not claim to be the word of God, then there is no point in
worrying that it might disagree with science. It’s just another ancient work.
The Bible claims to be the word of God - and all of it is breathed out by God. 2
Timothy 3:16, All Scripture is God-breathed (All Scripture Quotations except
where stated otherwise: New International Version, Study Version (Zondervan,
2011).
It presupposes that God is all-powerful: Matthew 19:26, Jesus looked at them and
said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” So
God then will not need to resort to lying Numbers 23:19, God is not human, that
he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. Does he speak
and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?. To tell a lie is to try and
assert control over something that may not be controllable. Deep down we do not
want to believe in a God who is capable of being deceived or who can deceive.
Such a God cannot be our rock and our fortress. Psalm 18:2, The LORD is my rock,
my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my
shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. If the Bible is God’s word
it cannot err and it claims to be revelation from God and therefore a miracle -
result of direct supernatural divine activity.
Such a claim automatically makes the Bible matter.
If science collapses it does not matter as long as the Bible is there.
This view is clearly a threat to science. It says an infallible Bible
matters and science does not for it uses trial and error and self-correction
thus it is not infallible.
Limits of Science
Christian say that science is restricted in what it can discover for us so it is
wrong to assume it necessarily rules out the biblical worldview. The limit needs
to be seen as honouring science not as an excuse for looking down your nose at
it. It is not sciences fault and it is a pity it cannot tell us more. It is a
pity if it cannot debunk a religion.
Christians argue that, "Science can only deal with what came to be at the big
bang. It cannot show that God does not exist or does not exist for that is
outside its scope. If the universe came from something at the big bang, where
did the something come from? Christianity answers that it was made by God who is
a non-physical entity - spirit John 4:24 “God is spirit” and who did not make it
from anything: “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the
word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do
appear” Hebrews 11:3 (KJV). Science only deals with physical energies and
entities Vernon, M. The Big Questions, God, (Quercus, 2012), p. 29
The problem is that this sees creation as merely a past act. Creation in
Christian theology is seen as continuous. It is like a woman baking bread.
Unless she focuses a magic ray on it, it will revert to dough. She has to
continuously act on it to keep it baked. Science will tell us the apple fell off
the tree because of gravity. Christianity will say that that it is not gravity
for gravity is just God's action. Those two views are incompatible. Both mean
something different by the word gravity.
Science cannot verify many non-physical realities. It cannot prove that we love
God. It is thought that there is no conflict between the core biblical theory
that God made all things and what science has learned about the origins of all
things. But who decides what the core is? And the Bible spends very little time
caring about God creating - it is very interested in his miracles and what
terrible laws he gives out.
It is said, "The scientist knows that there are non-scientific realities such as
love. He cannot prove it. He also knows there is no reason to assume there are
non-physical realities outside of our experience such as God." But just because
science cannot test for love does not mean love is a non-scientific reality. An
illness can be a medical reality though no doctor can find it.
It is said, "Science cannot prove that we really have free will for it admits
that we might be programmed to feel we really are making decisions and have
freedom. If we are programmed, we cannot trust ourselves to know the truth. The
Bible says we know what is right and wrong in our hearts even if we do not admit
it. It is necessary for science to assume we have free will or to believe
perhaps the Bible that we have it. The Christian who says, “God said I have free
will”, is better off than the unbelieving scientist who merely assumes it. It is
more scientific to believe a testimony from God than to merely assume it." This
clearly makes religion the master. It is put over science. Science does not care
how we manage to learn things but just cares that we do learn.
The claim that science tells us how things came to be; the Bible tells us why is
untruthful. The Old Testament gives no clear answer on the meaning of life and
the New Testament bases it on the resurrection of Jesus. Also there is no
real continuity between both Testaments so in effec there are two Bibles.
The Bible does say how things came to be. Jesus did not
rise from the dead so we could simply wonder why he did it. The answer to the
how of the resurrection is that God, the master of life, raised Jesus Acts
2:32 God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it. The how
is inseparable from the why because if God was not the cause of the resurrection
then the why does not matter.
Science ignores the supernatural. To say something has come from nothing - that
is has been created - is supernatural. It is not naturally possible. The Bible
teaches that only God can create or make from nothing. The Bible sees creation
as a miracle endorsing a supernatural worldview.
Miracles
A miracle is to be defined as something God does to inspire us to be holier
people that does not have a natural explanation. For example, Jesus dying a
cruel death and being alive and well a few after days is naturally impossible.
It is however supernaturally possible. God has the power to do that. The Bible
speaks of the resurrection of Jesus as a supernatural sign from God verifying
the claims Jesus made to be our God and Saviour. Mt 12:39,40 Jesus answered, A
wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it
except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three
nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and
three nights in the heart of the earth.
Believers say that science will be limited to showing that there is no natural
explanation. It cannot do experiments on the supernatural so it can say no more
than that. However, think about what they are saying. Science will not test a
claimed miracle exhaustively so it cannot really rule out every natural
explanation. It is impractical. And science has more important things to worry
about than if God took away your tumour. It prioritises what to investigate.
The view advocated by Mark Vernon that a miracle is any event strange or
otherwise that makes a person feel they have just encountered God Vernon, M. The
Big Questions, God, (Quercus, 2012), p. 77 is inadequate. It is too subjective
because some people believing their cow is God, feel they have experienced it.
We would be unable to take such miracles seriously. Scripture tells us to live
by faith and not feeling so that we might take faith very seriously - 2
Corinthians 5:7 For we live by faith, not by sight.
Most Christians accept the scientific doctrines that all things including space
and time began at the big bang and that there wasn’t anything until then
Stannard, R. Science & Belief, The Big Issues (Lion, 2012), p. 55. Should we
think that there is no conflict between miracles and science primarily because
the greatest miracle of all is creation from nothing and both science and
Christianity concur with that?
Christians complain that materialistic naturalist scientists refuse to deal with
the agreement and focus on the following line of thought to deny that miracles
are possible or believable.
Science says dead men stay dead.
Jesus was claimed to have risen from the dead according to the New Testament
evidence.
The claim is untrue for dead men stay dead.
Line 3 should be,
The claim is probably true for the evidence that Jesus rose is sufficient.
That version of the argument honours science. Science is fundamentally concerned
about evidence. The previous version of the argument only pays lip-service to
science.
Mc Grath approvingly puts forward Pannenberg’s conviction that “The decisive
factor in determining what happened … is the evidence contained in the New
Testament” McGrath, A. Bridge-Building (Inter-Varsity Press, 1954), p. 164. This
teaching appears in scripture John 20:30 Jesus performed many other signs in the
presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are
written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that
by believing you may have life in his name.
Science is about external ways of checking things out. For example, equipment is
used to measure and test. The Christian encounters the risen Jesus in her or his
heart John 6:56 “lives in me and I live in him” The Christian does not test the
relationship that he experiences. He just experiences it and that is better than
using any experiment or test. What is more scientific than that?
Science is Based on Faith too!
Some Christians complain, “Why do so many people today insist on adopting a
literal approach to Genesis - one that inevitably puts them on a collision
course with science?”Stannard, R. Science & Belief, The Big Issues (Lion, 2012),
p. 19
This contains the hidden assumption that God telling us something was the case
is unscientific.
The fact that the scriptures give evidence that God has spoken doesn’t make them unscientific. We put faith in what the scientists tell us and trust that they conducted experiments honestly. We just cannot get away from faith and faith is scientific. The Bible like science requires faith. The importance of the Bible is that it gives us a way to ‘divinise’ science and fill it with light and life so that it is not a source of insipid and dry facts.
When science is based on testimony, surely the person who grounds himself on
divine testimony is the most scientific person of all? God is in a better
position to tell us than anybody else Matthew 6:4, Your Father, who sees what is
done in secret, will reward you.
Conclusion
The Bible despite being written by ordinary and often poorly educated people
should contradict science. And it does. Faith in the Bible is about non-experts
wanting to feel they know better than scientific experts. Loads of lies are told
to make Christianity look like the friend of science. It is its fairweather
friend.
Bibliography
Griffiths, R. Ed. Hitchens vs Blair, Is Religion a Force for Good in the World?
(Black Swan, 2011)
McGrath, A. Bridge-Building (Inter-Varsity Press, 1954)
Newman, R. Questioning Evangelism (Kregel Publications,
2007)
Reid, A. Apologetics (Moore Theological College, 1996)
Stannard, R. Science & Belief, The Big Issues (Lion, 2012)
Vernon, M. The Big Questions, God (Quercus, 2012)
Warfield, B B, On the Antiquity and the Unity of the Human Race (The Princeton
Theological Review, 1911)
