Saving TruthSample

Clarity about Science and Faith

My best friend Mickey Badalamenti told me a humorous story of a man walking down a street who sees a sign in a travel agency’s window that reads, “River Cruise! Only $100!” Amazed at the incredible deal, he strides into the storefront, plunks down a crisp $100 bill and says to the woman behind the counter, “Sign me up!” Immediately, he’s struck on the head from behind. When he regains consciousness, he finds himself crammed into a barrel, bobbing down a river. He looks to his right and sees another man rubbing the back of his own head, also floating down the river in a barrel. Perplexed, he yells, “Hey! Do they serve lunch on this cruise?” The other man shouts back, “Well, they didn’t last year!”

Some believe that religious people are like the second man, gullibly clinging to wishful thinking despite having evidence to the contrary. The dangerous delusion of religion, some believe, can only be cured by the benevolent panacea of science. The current confusion over science and faith is made even worse by our misuse of the word faith. In fact, the Christian faith and the findings of science (as well as the very enterprise of science itself) are harmonious. People of faith, particularly the Christian faith, have been at the forefront of scientific discoveries for much of the modern era (and even before that). Scientific luminaries of both older and more recent vintages have been Christians: Tycho Brahe, Gregor Mendel, Johannes Kepler, Blaise Pascal, Robert Boyle, Michael Faraday, Francis Bacon, Louis Pasteur, James Maxwell, and the incomparable Isaac Newton, to name a few. A modern list includes the likes of Francis Collins (world-famous geneticist), John Lennox (professor of mathematics, Oxford University), Hugh Ross (doctorate in astronomy from University of Toronto, postdoctoral fellowship at California Institute of Technology), James Tour (doctorate in chemistry and professor at Rice University), Ian Hutchinson (professor of nuclear science at MIT), Ard Louis (Oxford professor of theoretical physics), and John Polkinghorne (doctorate in physics from Cambridge). It is their belief in God that drives them to do good science.

It’s also important to see that science is a pretty limited enterprise. We need history to learn lessons about our past failures and successes. Literature and poetry inspire us and make us self-reflective. Philosophy helps us explore logic. Good religion takes all of those fields and combines them with revelation to tell us who we are, why we’re here, and where we’re going. Science intentionally narrows its focus on the universe’s mechanistic, materials workings. A worldview based solely on science’s limitations can lead us to a world devoid of meaning and moral categories like equality and compassion. Clarity comes when we acknowledge the transcendent, nonphysical source for the nonphysical phenomenon of morality.

While we often use faith and hope synonymously, Hebrews 11:1 shows that they aren’t synonyms. Hope is a positive expectation of a desired future event. Faith is trusting in the one who promised to make that event happen. In fact, the Greek word translated as faith is pistis, which means trust. Hebrews 11:3 says, “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.” We use reason to infer that the cause of what is visible is invisible. We see the evidence of the physical world around us, and this allows us to reasonably infer that it must have come from a nonphysical, unseeable source, as Big Bang cosmology implies. And it is by faith—trust—that we understand God to be that source. Something nontemporal and nonmaterial must have created time and the material world. That is the logical inference from the scientific evidence that we have. Just as Hebrews 11:1–3 suggests, we have reason to trust that the universe we can see was created by something we cannot see. Faith is a part of every worldview. And so the question isn’t whether we have faith. The question is whether the one in whom our faith is placed is worthy of it.

Science alone cannot tell us why we’re here. But when coupled with a larger worldview that allows for nature’s design to speak to us about ultimate purpose, science can lead us to see that we are significant and relevant not only to each other but also to the One who created it all. Science confirms the truths in Scripture. Scripture unveils the poetry of science. Through science, we’ve discovered DNA’s 3.1 billion bits of information. Through Scripture we see that God has used that information to lovingly knit us together (Ps. 139:13). 

Questions

• Scientism is the view that science is either the only or the most reliable way to know the truth about the real world. Its proponents usually discount philosophy, literature, and other fields in the humanities as truth revealing. But if we should only use science to tell us about morality, meaning, love, and human purpose, how is scientism any different from a religion?


• If scientific naturalism reduces us to complex chemical machines or sophisticated chimps, then why must an atheist conclude that there really is no moral dimension to human existence?


• God has orchestrated the universe and our existence to foster a sense of wonder; He has given us the pleasure of pursuing our wonder through discovering things that aren’t so obvious (Prov. 25:2). What does it suggest about God’s character that He hasn’t spoon-fed us all the answers? How might this be the wise and loving choice of a Creator who wants us to experience joy?

Bible Passages

• Hebrews 11:1–3


• Genesis 1:1


• Proverbs 25:2


• Acts 17:28


• Job 12:7–9


• Psalm 139:13