Thursday, December 08, 2005

Can People of Faith and Science Talk?

I think much of the frustration in the dialouge betwen conservative Christians and people who believe in science comes from the scientists' belief that these theories have been founded, not only on good objective evidence, but much of it on overwhelming objective evidence. So much so that it is totally reasonable to expect the other, less well supported ideas to accumulate a similarly overwhelming degree of proof.

Yet those in the YEC camp seem unwilling to follow the evidence where it leads. And not just remain unconvinced, but call the ToE a fairy tale, or impossible. This adherence to an a priori belief, incapable of refutation, makes reasoned argument difficult.

You ask, does science contain truth. I think of the discoveries of science as the end product of truth. No matter how we got here, here we are. No matter how we got here, we share DNA with primitive single-celled creatures. We share the inability to make vitiman C with those animals we have descended from, while many of those we did not descend from can synthesise C. These are facts. What they mean, and how that story unfolded is becoming more clear. As this happens, the kind of role God played in this process is more precisely understood, because we are eliminating things that God did not do. For example, God did not create the world 6,000 years ago, and God did not create each species more-or-less in their present form.

So here is the debate. These facts ar not in dispuit, except by those who have a religious need for them to be true. Since they have to be true for YECs, discussion and proof of facts are very difficult. Introducing the kind of special pleading carried out by folks attempting to proove YEC is not, and never will be, science.

Not that there isn't a rich and fruitful dialouge to be had between faith and science. Science is revealing a world of head-scratching wonder, which leads many materialists to wonder if there isn't something more. Many people of faith follow the unfolding drama of scientific discovery with awe, wonder and worship. I certainly find my faith deepened, challenged, and even sometimes corrected as I follow after scientists who are uncovering the How of creation.