Christians and skeptics often talk past each other. It’s almost as if they are speaking different languages or, at the very least, speaking from a very different frame of reference. Recently, I observed this first-hand as I corresponded with an atheist about the role of science in developing useful knowledge. He agreed with me that science does not have an “explanation” for everything and that for some things, it may never have. “On the other hand,” he said, “‘God did it’ has never impressed me as much of an explanation. I would prefer simply to admit ‘I don't know.’” What he meant, I think, was that resorting to a supreme being who set things in motion, and whose laws guide the workings of the universe, is not helpful. No, more precisely, that resorting to such explanations is actually a step backward, a movement away from the acquisition of the knowledge that science promises.
In this, the skeptic is mistaken. Science can answer many questions, but all of these questions fall into the category of “how” things work, and not “why” or "for what ultimate purpose." Things work a certain way, and the workings that we witness can be observed, studied and eventually understood. This yields great predictive power regarding future events, and allows for those events to be shaped through the use of modern technology. But science does not answer the question, “Who set all this into motion” and “What does that Creator want from us?”
Take for example the study of the Big Bang. Science and Christianity agree: the universe was created from nothing a very long time ago. Genesis (“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth) and the Gospel of John (“In the beginning was the Word…”) both assert what astronomy and physics have, relatively recently, discovered. The Bible doesn’t attempt to speak to the question of how God went about performing this amazing feat, and science does not tell us for what purpose the universe was created.
This is an important distinction, and one that seems to be increasingly lost on the many secularists who, seeing a conflict between science and faith, try to force all manifestations of religion from the public square. Perhaps an example from a much less esoteric source will help to illuminate the distinction I am attempting to draw. When police respond to the scene of a possible murder, they collect the evidence for a very specific purpose: to determine the “source” behind the killing, the answer to the question "for what purpose?" The coroner who does the examination can shed light on this determination, though the use of scientific knowledge, but their role is largely to determine how the person died. For example, if the investigators found the victim lying on the floor with a bullet wound to the head and a pistol lying nearby, science would tell us that the victim died as the result of exsanguination and damage to vital tissue caused by the entry of the bullet. But determining the manner of death would not answer the question the police are called upon to determine: was it an accident, suicide or murder? For that, other considerations must come into play, including other types of evidence left behind during the commission of the act. This may include further physical evidence, but it might also include a writing – perhaps a suicide note or other writings reflecting what the victim was planning to do. However informative and accurate the scientific evidence might be regarding the cause of death, it will never answer the most important questions: who did it, and why? For that, different questions must be asked. More to point, if these questions are not asked - if the mere asking of such questions is deemed inappropriate - the most important aspect of the inquiry will never be accomplished.
Similarly, as it applies to accounts of the creation events, science has come a long way in explaining the mechanisms by which the universe began to unfold and life to appear and flourish. But it has not the means to determine why any of this has occurred. Other disciplines, such as theology and philosophy, are better suited to weigh in on those types of questions. However fascinating the answers to the "how" questions might be, they pale in comparison to the importance of the "for what purpose" questions, especially if one considers how long "eternity" will be.
The two realms – science and theology – need not be in conflict. The conflict arises when some, enthralled by the potential of scientific discovery, push science into inquiries it cannot address.
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6 comments:
Al said: “Genesis… and the Gospel of John… both assert what astronomy and physics have, relatively recently, discovered”
Genesis and John don’t really unambiguously assert anything about the ‘Big Bang’. There are enough superseded, ambiguous, prophetic, mythical, metaphorical and poetic words in the Bible so that you can spin them to mean just about whatever you want (what is a ‘firmament’?).
Christians (and others) believed until just a few hundred years ago that the universe (at least beyond the moon) was fixed and unchangeable. Given the state of scientific knowledge then, that was perfectly understandable. Problems only arose when scientific knowledge expanded, and the words in the Bible were used in preference to scientific evidence. Obvious examples are when the Bible is used to ‘prove’ that the earth is fixed in space with the sun, moon and stars orbiting around it, or to ‘prove’ that the universe is less than 10,000 years old, or to ‘prove’ that humans have only lived on the earth for less than 10,000 years.
Al said: “science has come a long way in explaining the mechanisms by which the universe began to unfold and life to appear and flourish. But it has not the means to determine why any of this has occurred”
Christianity provides answers to some of those ‘reason why’ questions, as do other religions, but it is generally not possible to test those answers to see which if any of them are actually true, or if indeed there is any ‘reason why’.
mcp:
Not really. The Bible asserted creation ex nihilo, a position that was unpopular for quite some time, as science claimed the universe to be eternal. I don't think it could stake out that position any more clearly - in the beginning, from nothing, God created. That's what the Big Bang confirms - without the God part (for now).
I do agree with you that the Bible was never intended to be a science or astronomy text. The belief in creation from nothing is not a scientific explanation, any more than saying my children are my offspring says anything scientific about DNA. The statement remains true despite the fact that it does not describe the process by which this was done.
The creation/origins story recorded in Genesis 1 is a myth, just like many other origins myths – any similarity to historical truth is purely accidental. Why so many people invest so much effort and emotion in trying to reconcile this particular myth with modern scientific theory is a mystery to me.
Cosmological science, in a theory often described as the ‘Big Bang’, describes what has happened to the known universe since just after what we call time = 0. Quantum effects prior to that are still subject to scientific speculation and investigation.
How does “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” bear any resemblance to the Big Bang? The earth was not created in the ‘beginning’ – it has only existed for about a third of the age of the known universe, and was formed from existing material. If by ‘heavens’ Genesis means the sky in which the moon, sun, and stars appear to move, then the heavens were not created in the beginning either.
An ‘ex nihilo’ interpretation of current cosmological theory is at best a gross simplification, and even Genesis, for that matter, does not unambiguously support ex nihilo creation. So no doubt if science concludes a more definite theory about how the Big Bang was initiated, many believers in an inerrant Bible will take advantage of Genesis ambiguity to still claim that the science confirms Genesis. (Some other inerrant Bible believers will continue to ignore science and insist that God created everything less than 10,000 years ago!)
I appreciate your statement that the Bible was never intended to be a science or astronomy text. But you are still using the Bible to assert the truth of certain claims that can only be determined scientifically. Do you have any reason to suppose that the Genesis creation/origins myth should be a better indicator of historical truth than any other myth?
Saying that any similarity is “purely accidental” is a statement not an argument. What evidence do you have that the creation account was not meant to teach the basic lesson that God created, as opposed to a contrary view – the universe has always existed? At the time these writers wrote, they would have had no way to know which view – creation or eternal – correctly described the universe.
People place emphasis on this account for that very reason. If the Bible asserted that the universe always existed, you can bet atheists would use that as proof that the Bible could not have been divinely inspired. While this doesn’t prove the Bible’s veracity, it is interesting to note that primitive writers – with no knowledge of Big Bang cosmology – staked out a creation account. You focused on Genesis, but I think a fair reading of John’s gospel is that “nothing” preceded the “Word” through whom all things came into being. Seems pretty clear to me, however bizarre a thought this was for his earliest listeners.
In the end, these passages prove nothing either about the veracity or the source of the bible. The point of my post wasn’t to prove anything in that regard but to argue that no inherent conflict exists between science and faith.
Al said: “At the time these writers wrote, they would have had no way to know which view – creation or eternal – correctly described the universe”
Exactly! The writers had no way of telling what was the truth, so, as I said in my previous comment, “any similarity to historical truth is purely accidental”. And as it happens, there is very little unambiguous similarity to historical truth in the Biblical or in most other creation/origins stories.
Al said: “If the Bible asserted that the universe always existed, you can bet atheists would use that as proof that the Bible could not have been divinely inspired”
I don’t know what you mean by ‘divinely inspired’, but how do you tell whether some piece of writing is or is not? I think you’ll agree that it is not possible to rationally interpret the Biblical creation account literally. Obviously God did not create the heavens and the earth ‘in the beginning’. What, if anything, do you personally get from the account other than that God existed before anything else and that he somehow created the universe? Why do you accept these things but not some others?
Al said: “The point of my post… [was] to argue that no inherent conflict exists between science and faith”
I agree that there is no inherent conflict between science and faith. Sadly, however, there is often a very large conflict between some Christians’ beliefs (including their faith-based interpretation of the Bible) and science.
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