Thursday, April 28, 2005

What is the conflict between faith and science?

A straightforward reading of Genesis 1 leads many to the interpretation that the universe was created in 6, 24 hour days. The genealogies after Genesis 1 suggest a timeframe of a few thousand years between this creation and the birth of Jesus.

Until a few hundred years ago, there was no particular reason to question this chronology. In Europe from the 14th century onwards, people began applying logic and observation to the world around them in new ways, with astounding results. New attention began to be paid to odd formations in rocks that appeared to represent creatures that no longer lived on earth. New observations of the heavens brought into question the nature of the universe, and the notion that earth was at the center of creation.

As people began to form these various observations into coherent theories, a picture sometimes emerged that was at odds with a "literal" reading of the Bible. Most of us recognize that sometimes the Bible is making a statement of fact, and sometimes it is drawing an analogy, or using some other device to convey its meaning. At the same time, it is clear that some statements in the Bible are meant to be taken as communicating facts about the physical earth, the universe, and living creatures. Because the Bible claims to be the inspired word of God, it is critical that we engage the issues raised by scientific discoveries that appear to contradict the Bible. Why? Because our answer will determine how we interpret the Bible, and what we believe God says to us though it.

Not everyone sees faith and science in conflict. Most of the early scientists were men and women of faith. Albert Einstein is quoted as saying that science was “Thinking God’s thoughts after Him.” It is the experience of many scientists and Christians that science and faith does not have to be in conflict. Strategies for dealing with faith and science have ranged from denying the conclusions of science (and attacking the motives of scientists), to dismissing anything in the Bible that is not supported by science.

This blog will explore some of the issues around the subject of science and faith, and provide a survey of the main approaches that Christians take towards science.

What is the Scientific Method?

The scientific method is a tool to discover certain kinds of things about the world around us. Consider a tree. The scientific method would not be of much help to us if we wanted to plot an adventure story involving the tree, or wanted to know if it was a good abode for fairies, but if we wanted to know what purpose the leaves served, or what kind of soil it grew best in, the scientific approach is one of the most powerful tools ever devised.

Consider this illustration:

The Scientific method

This model looks at the process of proving an idea- how many observations, reinforcing one another and independently verified, fit together into systems and areas of knowledge- and as these various systems provide mutual feedback and correction, these shared insights are used to direct, refine and finally produce a way of explaining some aspect of the world (a theory).

The diagram is labeled "idealized" because science is not really so cut and dry. For example, as often as not, a scientist is thinking about a particular kind of problem when she starts the cycle. Few, if any, people notice some random fact and start framing an experiment. More often, people are thinking about a particular kind of problem, and use this approach to figure out what is going on. What is important here is that instead of jumping to the conclusion, the person doing the experiment is asking good questions, performing tests to eliminate possible alternative explanations, and (hopefully?) listening to the data. This is not so much a procedure as a mindset.

Sometimes, we think we are closing in on an answer, and then everything is changed by new discoveries- for example, Newton's framework of physics was replaced by Einstein’s General Relativity- though keep in mind that Newton's laws still work- just not in as many instances as Einstein's - so this is really a case of a partial understanding being replaced by a more encompassing one.

And a few terms:

A fact is an observation that can be independently established by different observers.

A hypothesis is an explanation that accounts for observed facts. Click here for more.

A theory is hypothesis that fits all the observed facts. It has been tested by enough people over a long enough time to be generally accepted as true.

Given the above, a theory can never "graduate" to the status of a fact because they are not the same thing. Facts are the things explained by the theory. You can have so much confidence in a theory that it is not reasonable to deny the explanation. If facts are discovered that cannot be explained by the theory, then the theory is false, and has to be modified, or replaced by a theory that more accurately explains the facts. This is one reason why we are always reading about new discoveries that call some theory into question-it is the nature of science that we "know in part," and we revise our understanding as we go. This is actually a good thing, if it results in a more accurate understanding of our world.

There is no Single "Scientific Method"

"No single criterion yet formulated has succeeded in defining science completely, leading to two possible interpretations. Either we haven't found the all-sufficient definition yet, or it doesn't exist. The latter seems to be much more likely. Thus it is wrong to speak of the "Scientific Method". Rather, there is a constellation of scientific methods. The most robust definitions - those of widest applicability, most immune to abuse and capable of correcting errors - revolve around replication of results by independent observers and seeking ways to falsify theories."

http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/pseudosc/badmodl.htm

Does Science Discover Truth?

Some people argue that the assumptions behind science blind scientists to reality. By searching for naturalistic answers, scientists refuse to consider supernatural explanations. As a result (some would say), by definition, scientists are unable to "discover" facts that would support faith. They might go on to say that the entire educational establishment, hostile to faith, rejects and ridicules any attempt to bring faith into science, and even evidence that might support, for instance, a young age for the earth is ignored. This perception is strengthened by a number of scientists who are hostile to religion, and by a definition of science that specifically excludes the consideration of super-natural explanations.

On the other hand, the purpose of science is to uncover the mechanics of how things work-in specific. Ultimate answers like "God made it" does not add much to our understanding of blood clotting, for example (though it might enlarge our sense of awe). I think that part of the problem is that we have confused science with Truth, and think that if there is not a scientific answer, there is no answer to be found. Some scientists do hold that there is nothing but matter, and that everything that happens is only the interplay physical systems- but they are not speaking as scientists when they make these kinds of statements; they have become philosophers. Scientists can hold opinions about the nature of ultimate reality, just like theologians can hold opinions about the quantum mechanics- but in each case, they run the risk of arguing outside of their areas of expertise.

How God chooses to manifest in our lives, and how God interacts with the physical universe may not be discoverable, except through the eyes of faith. Seeking to validate our faith through science may be expecting too much of the discipline. This is not to say that faith is not grounded in the physical world, but that God's creation is so well made that it does not require "propping up" to function, and has no "holes in the fence" through which we can peek to see the hand of God at work.

Others suggest that there is no reality to discover. How we experience the world is created by consensus (or our preconceptions). If we had a different consensus, we would have different laws of physics. From this perspective, scientists document our shared habits of belief more than discover basic principles about the universe. Interestingly, this is a difficult charge to defend against, because we have little choice other than to act as if the world we find ourselves in is real (just try not paying your bills!). In any event, this is not a Christian objection to science, as Christians do believe that God (and not us) made the world.

All people bring their assumptions with them to any human endeavor. As well, reality is larger and more subtle than any one of us experience. All the same, I believe that something unusually powerful is indeed uncovered by scientists. What is being uncovered is nothing less than what God has done in the universe. Of course, this work is being done by people, with all sorts of motives, prejudices, agendas, and different levels of skill, experience, intellect... which is why we have the practice of peer review and reproducible experiments, and why controversial ideas take some time to be accepted.

As poor a system as this might be, I cannot imagine that making science a matter of popular opinion makes much sense either. It is not only Christians that have a bone to pick with science. Some Eastern religions question the very notion that there is a reality to discover. Certain groups deny that various historical events occurred; different religions have trouble with even fairly recent anthropology. Non-specialists have trouble with the math that underpins much of modern physics, and the chemistry & biology behind medicine. Given this, does it make sense to determine scientific fact by popular vote? Based their popularity, should we add astrology and numerology to our science curriculum?

Discontinuity or Progressive Change?
One of the things that is not always obvious when we read about new discoveries is that these new discoveries are most often refinements or extensions to explanations of the world around us. For example, recently a scientist has reported that he believes he has demonstrated that the speed of light is not constant. But this actually represents progress in understanding the universe- General Relativity would still be useful and accurate (Just as Newtonian physics is still used, though it has been superseded by General Relativity). So we may be "honing in" on the truth, rather than starting all over again. This matters because, if science is discovering random facts, and our theories veer from one explanation to another, it would be reasonable to assume that "anything is possible," and a theory that is proved wrong today could be proved right tomorrow. What seems more likely is that we do not discard what has been proved right so far, but discover deeper or more fundamental theories that account for more of what we see in the world.

In Summary:

"Science is not merely a collection of facts, concepts, and useful ideas about nature, or even the systematic investigation of nature, although both are common definitions of science. Science is a method of investigating nature--a way of knowing about nature--that discovers reliable knowledge about it."

http://www.carleton.ca/~tpatters/teaching/climatechange/sciencemethod.html

How Do Christians Deal with the Conflict?

Of course, there are a wide range of responses. They tend to fall into four camps (though as was pointed out in class, there can be quite a lot of shading between these positions; they aren't quite as rigid as this may make it seem):

1. Young Earth Creationism - The world is less than 10,000 years old, just as a literal reading of the Bible indicates. Any science that suggests otherwise is wrong. This position is driven as much by an approach to biblical interpretation as it is with an objection to the discoveries of science. That is, the age of the earth only matters because it seems to contradict the Bible. Another way to put this is that there are few, if any scientists who argue for a "Young Earth" who are also not religious.

Some Links (Check out the home pages for more info)

Institute for Creation Research

Creation Research

2. Old Earth Creationism - The "days" in Genesis really mean ages or periods of time, and while science is right about the earth being old, it was created in stages as described in Genesis, and species were created by God as they appear today. This approach is more easily reconciled with some of the discoveries of science, and some proponents hold that God worked through evolution to bring Adam and Eve into existence. Many Old Earth Creationists are comfortable with the Intelligent Design movement, and simply replace the unknown "Intelligent Designer" of the ID movement with God (see the NewCreationism link, below).

Some Useful Links:
Reasons

New Creationism

3. Intelligent Design - this approach holds that science has it more-or-less right in terms of the age of the universe, the development of galaxies, suns and planets, the evolutionary nature of life- but ID rejects the "all by chance" implication of evolution. The ID position holds that it is obvious from the complexity of life that it had to have been designed. ID does not say who the designer is (and holds that science cannot know the identity of the designer), just that careful science reveals that life requires a designer- it could not have happened by accident. As a side note, the leading proponents of ID are careful to not make an association between ID and a religion, because then it could not be taught in public schools as an alternative theory to evolution. As such, ID is offered as a correction to Darwinism, more than a Biblical response to science.

Some ID Sites:

Discovery Institute

Access Research Network

4. Theistic Evolution- God is the Creator, and designed all of creation. However, He did not need to intervene at any particular stage to bring the world we see today about. "Big Bang" cosmology and evolution describes the "How" of creation. So Theistic Evolution shares the notion of God as the Creator with the Young and Old Earth Creationists, and the idea of an Intelligent Designer with the ID movement (though Theistic Evolution explicitly identifies the God of the Bible as the designer, unike the ID movement).

Three Supporters of this Position:
Dr. Kenneth Miller
Christian and Professor of Biology at Brown University
Finding Darwin's God

Dr. Denis Lamoureux,
Professor of Science and Religion at St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta
Home Page
Epic Battle
Overview on Dr. Lamoureux

Dr. Howard van Till
Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy at Calvin College
Second and Third Articles on this Page

And Speaking for the State of Science
One thing you will discover (if you have not already) is that the various creationist positions can be very critical about science, scientists and even other creationist positions. Here are a few sites that talk about science.

Science & Theology News

Talk.Origins FAQ About Evolution

This is quite a lot of information, and these just provide overviews of the subject! I encourage you to work through the various viewpoints, and integrate your view of science into your broader experience of faith and interaction with the world.

I hope you are coming to see that science is an approach to the world around us. As such, it is fair to question the assumptions scientists start with. All of us tend to see what we expect to see- this does not change just because we are "doing science" (or religion, for that matter). The scientific perspective that transformed our culture and worldview was at first radical and skeptical. But like most things human, science as an institution has too often become dogmatic and inflexible. But just like institutional failures of the church do not invalidate Christianity, neither do the failures of scientists or institutions invalidate the practice of science (though they might result in bad science).

My confidence is that the God of Truth is not threatened by hard questions and in-depth exploration of the world around us. It may be difficult, even unsettling to come to understand that the world is different than we thought; but men and women of faith have gone there before us, and we can learn from their experience.

How Do We Decide?

Science can be a challenge to faith, because it suggests that there is an avenue to certainty that speaks more authoritatively than revelation. God has access to information we don’t; in the Bible, He reveals this information to us. At the same time, He speaks to us from a particular time and culture, and He makes use of the ordinary things of day-to-day life to make His points. When He speaks of things in the natural world (like the sun rising), is He using things "commonly accepted" as true at the time of revelation, or is He attempting to teach things about the world (cosmology, geography, biology)? A scientific study of the world suggests the former - God is appealing to our sense of 'the way things are" to teach spiritual truth, not trying to educate people in what we would now call the physical sciences.

This appeal to "the way things are" is found throughout scripture. Almost all the books of the Bible appeal to our knowledge of the world we live in, as they attempt to explain spiritual truths.

This is normally not much of a problem- until what the Bible says about the world differs from our experience- then we have to make a decision: do we take the Bible literally, or do we believe the product of our observation and reason, and interpret the Bible as speaking figuratively?

Just as we understand spiritual truths by analogy with day-to-day experience, so our spiritual experience helps us see our daily life with new eyes. Oscar Cullmann described this experience as a circle:



Now, we have built up certainties about our world that make it very hard to read the entire Bible as "literally true."

When you read this passage from Isaiah 55:12*

12 You will go out in joy
and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
will clap their hands.


Most of us, based on our experience that mountains and hills do not sing, and trees do not clap, would identify this passage as poetry, and figurative (as opposed to literal).

Unlike the people who heard Isaiah for the first time, who would probably have agreed with us, the original hearers of Genesis 1 may well have taken the chapter at face value. Click here to visit a page that provides a picture of how biblical Hebrews may have viewed their world.

Now that our experience of the world is different (we believe in galaxies and billions of light-years of distance, and a round earth revolving the sun), is it fair that we re-interpret Genesis 1 more in line with how we read Isaiah 55:12? That is, should we concentrate on the spiritual truth God is trying to teach us, and not take the Bible as our science textbook?

Some suggest that we do just that; others say that this approach threatens the very foundations of the gospel. Central to my own faith is that God is the God of Truth; He has nothing to fear from science, because he made everything that scientists study.

This is not an area where Christians agree. Some, especially the Young Earth and Old Earth Creationists, view the Bible as containing information about the age and makeup of the earth that is accurate. Science is either wrong or misleading when it contradicts the Bible. Intelligent Design and Theistic Evolution might teach that in places where the Bible communicates a non-scientific perspective, it is speaking to a pre-scientific culture in words and images that made sense to them (much as we still speak of the "sun rising" when we know it is actually the world that turns).

What do you do? I believe that men and women of genuine faith study the facts, pray and read the Bible, and do the best they can. This is made difficult by the technical nature of the arguments. Few people can reach informed conclusions about such esoteric subjects as radio-carbon dating or the red-shift of light from distant galaxies. We are left to trust individuals; then it appears that trustworthy individuals disagree. My own approach is to believe that good ideas will be proven out. The germ theory of disease, the notion that fossils were actually mineralized creatures from the distant past, the formation of mountains, General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics - any many, many more ideas were controversial in their time, rejected by the scientific establishment, and gradually grew to be accepted. On the other hand, the history of science is littered with special pleading, meant to support some scriptural interpretation that has not withstood the test of time.

Under the circumstances, Paul's words to the Ephesians* apply:

4:1 As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. 2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope when you were called— 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

But, beyond that, how do you determine what you believe? One approach is to read through the various viewpoints (see above), and prayerfully consider the options.

Here are some links to thinkers on the subject that I have found helpful. And this is a link to a site that takes seriously the religious issues raised by this line of questioning.

It takes time, it can be a bit frustrating trying to sort out the claims and counter-claims, but it is part of the process of coming to grips with the nature of the world we live in, the nature of the Bible, and the relationship that God wants to have with us. You have the rest of your life to wrestle with these questions- my prayer is that God will lead you to a good place!

* New International Version (NIV)
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society

NIV at IBS International Bible Society NIV at Zondervan