Do we have to choose between Faith and Science, or may we reconcile Faith with Science?
Defending The Faith Is Spiritual Warfare-
We must recognize and answer challenges to the authority of God.
“Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?" Genesis 3:1
Speaking to Jesus- "By what authority are you doing these things?" they asked. "And who gave you authority to do this?" Mark 11:28
For though we live in the flesh, we do not wage war according to the flesh. The weapons of our warfare are not the weapons of the world. Instead, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We tear down arguments, and every presumption set up against the knowledge of God; and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ
2 Corinthians 10:3-5
Clearly a stronghold in Paul’s use of the word, is a place where a lie has taken a strong hold on a person's mind. Every lie is a spiritual weapon of the enemy. Not only the heart, but the mind must be won in the battle. The weapons we use are to demolish lies in the form of systems of belief that compete against the truth of the Gospel. God gives good, reasoned arguments “divine power” to destroy false systems of philosophy and religion that take people captive.
Those systems are to be opposed that presume to exalt themselves above the truth of God, so that a person's every thought may become obedient to Christ who is truth personified.
Is Defending The Faith Important?
The Christian is involved in a battle for hearts and minds. The famous wartime leader Winston Churchill once said:
“In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”
While we don’t agree that it “should” be surrounded by lies- the reality remains- that this is the nature of the world system in which we live.
"You may win every battle, but if you lose the war of ideas, you will have lost the war. You may lose every battle, but if you win the war of ideas, you will have won the war. My deepest fear--and your greatest problem--is that you may not be winning the war of ideas." -Charles Malik
For it is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true; it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false. —H.L. Mencken
Competing Authorities
The scientific worldview is used to challenge the authority of God’s truth. Everyone today understands the huge contribution that science has made to make life easier, safer, healthier and longer. The sense of authority that this carries means that those who unscrupulously harness the mantle of science, (whether aware of it or not) can use the philosophy of materialism under the cloak of science to push this opposing belief system. The real conflict does not lie between faith and science but between naturalism and theism. (Naturalism is the belief that nature is all there is).
Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga addresses the reality that theists (believers in God) have no quarrel with science, but the real argument is against those scientists and atheists who interpret the data that science gives within this particular philosophical framework.
He says:
"there is superficial conflict but deep concord between science and theistic religion, but superficial concord and deep conflict between science and naturalism" he continues- "if there is deep concord between science and Christian or theistic belief, but deep conflict between science and naturalism—then there is a science/religion (or science/ quasi-religion) conflict, all right, but it isn't between science and theistic religion: it’s between science and naturalism."
“The direction in intellectual history since the Enlightenment has been to grant to science the authority to pronounce what is real, true, objective, and rational, while relegating ethics and religion to the realm of subjective opinion and non-rational experience. Once this definition of knowledge is conceded, then any position that appears to be backed by science will ultimately triumph in the public square over any position that appears based on ethics or religion.” --Nancy Pearcey
Traditional beliefs and institutions do not have to be annihilated; it is sufficient to drain them of their ancient meanings and fill them with others—particularly if they are reduced to the realm of the subjective and therefore private, of “values” that cannot be “imposed” on others. --James Hitchcock
Theologian N.T Wright points out:
“Current accounts of knowing have placed the would-be objective scientific knowing (test-tube epistemology, if you like) in a position of privilege. [another name for bias] Every step away from this is seen as a step into obscurity, fuzziness and subjectivism, reaching its peaks in aesthetics and metaphysics. "The Challenge of Jesus
Scientism
Scientism is not science. It is an absolute faith in science. It is quasi religious. There are people that are sure that science is the only source of true knowledge, and some even hold that science has nothing to do with beliefs. People with absolute faith in science maintain that they have no need of beliefs. (We need to ask them if they really believe that!) This view is called “Scientism”. In this view, beliefs are for religions, science is knowledge and truth…Science only gives us facts. Religion gives us values and ethics. Ethics and values are subjective. Therefore values and things argued in religion, cannot be argued in the same way as facts are defined in science.
The outspoken atheist of the 20th Century, Bertrand Russell quipped:
"Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know"
That precisely sums up the atitude of scientism. Unfortunately that statement itself fails to live up to the demands of its own terms. It is not an empirically verifiable (scientific) statement. It is in fact a statement of faith.
Scientism is self defeating, internally contradictory, and is a type of faith, a form of belief. The true picture of science is somewhat different from the view of these devotees.
Thomas Kuhn is a philosopher of science whose work has caused shockwaves in the scientific establishment among those whose zeal overreaches reality:
“Scientists can never divorce their subjective perspective from their work; thus, our comprehension of science can never rely on full 'objectivity' - we must account for subjective perspectives as well”
Christian Philosopher Alvin Plantinga has said:
“It would be excessively naive to think that contemporary science is religiously and theologically neutral, standing serenely above this battle and wholly irrelevant to it.”
Defining Terms
What is faith? What is science?
My point here is to show that Faith is much more like Science than we might imagine, and that Science also, is much more like Faith than atheists might have imagined. The difference being that we use religious terms like “faith”, and the scientist uses terms like “Inference to the best explanation” or words such as “induction”.
Faith is characterized in several different ways.
“We don't believe something by merely saying we believe it, or even when we believe that we believe it. We believe something when we act as if it were true.” ― Dallas Willard
It conveys the idea of an act of trust. "I do believe [have faith, trust]; help me overcome my unbelief!" Mark 9:24
It is a spiritual gift. “This is the work of God, that ye believe [have faith] on him whom he hath sent.” John 6:29 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God”--Ephesians 2:8
Faith is trusting in unseen realities. “For we walk by faith, not by sight.” 2 Corinthians 5:7
Faith is not a blind leap in the dark, but neither is it absolute certainty. It is evidence based, but there is room for doubt. The world was designed this way, because if we had certainty, then there would be no need for us to hope. If God was so obviously present then there would be no room for faith.“For in this hope we were saved; but hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he can already see? But if we hope for what we do not yet see, we wait for it patiently.…”
Faith is not authoritarian, it is authoritative but not overbearing, it is the voluntary recognition of evidence leading to certain conclusions. Faith is evidential. Faith is reasonable, it is the result of a cumulative case for things like the existence of God, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”Hebrews 11:1
Faith is a sense of trust and confidence or hope, but it implies risk rather than certainty. It is sometimes used outside of a religious setting. “Some people have utter and complete faith that only science gives true knowledge to answer the problems that we face, it is called ‘Scientism’ “
When people opposed to Christianity define faith- the word faith is caricatured, or misrepresented to mean “blind faith”. Surely blind faith does exist in the sense that people of various persuasions simply take things on the authority of another, or trust in the authority of a text without any sense of requiring evidence for its veracity. But this is not Christian orthodoxy. A Bible centred Christian should carefully define faith as distinct from fideism or blind faith. Revelation is not antithetic to reason. The heart cannot rejoice in what the mind rejects as false. What I believe in my heart must make sense in my mind. Saint Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) was the outstanding Christian philosopher and theologian of the eleventh century whose motto was “faith seeking understanding” (fides quaerens intellectum) The revelation of God is given and when mixed with faith it is believed in the heart and justified by reason in the mind. When Thomas said:
“Unless I see the nail marks in His hands, and put my finger where the nails have been, and put my hand into His side, I will never believe.” Jesus said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and look at My hands. Reach out your hand and put it into My side. Stop doubting and believe.”…John 20:25,27
Thomas, who wasn’t there when the others saw the resurrected Jesus, refused to be a fideist. He wouldn’t believe the others word simply on their authority. The others had had the benefit of evidence with their visit from Christ earlier. Thomas was graciously given the evidence he asked for, he believed once he had reason to reconcile the doubts in his mind. All had deserted or forsaken Jesus at the crucifixion and only after his appearances did faith in him live again.
“Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD” in Isaiah 1:18
Science is defined:
“Scientific research is designed to make descriptive or explanatory inferences on the basis of empirical information about the world... By definition, inference is an imperfect process... Scientific research adheres to a set of rules of inference on which its validity depends...Scientific research uses explicit, codified, and public methods to generate and analyze data whose reliability can therefore be assessed... [Peer review is an important aspect of science.] The end result of these procedures is to minimize the influence of experimenter bias and/or prejudice as he or she tests a theory or hypothesis.” (From “inquiry & Scientific Method” by Robert S Michael).
Even scientists exercise faith in the sense that much of what they take as true is based on faith in the uniformity of nature which is understood inductively. Blind faith is when beliefs are formed on the basis of little or no evidence.
Biblical faith is not blind faith, it is a reliance on the reliability of historical witnesses to various events that took place in a real times and places that constitute the Gospel. The reality is then, that Biblical faith too, is based on reliable authority. The life of Christ is testable with the historic method. Other sciences are also based on historical research.
People who oppose Christianity and have exclusive faith in science seek to impose the idea that the Christian faith is opposed to evidence, and promote that only science is based around the idea of proof and evidence. In the public mind scientific conclusions are invariably associated with the idea of “proof” in the sense that it is based on strictly deductive reasoning. This is definitely not so.
Samir Okasha lecturer of philosophy at the University of York in England says “The word “proof” should strictly only be used when we’re dealing with deductive inferences, in this strict sense of the word, scientific hypotheses can rarely- if ever- be proven true by the data.’ To restate: ‘Scientific hypotheses can rarely- if ever- be proven true by the data.’ because they’re inductive inferences”
Philosopher of science Dr. Stephen Meyer, one of the leading exponents of the Intelligent Design movement- speaks of the inconsistency of certain scientists opposed to religion who attempt to discredit the theory of Intelligent Design saying it’s unscientific. The irony is that Meyer uses the same method of scientific analysis that Charles Darwin used in his widely accepted theory of evolution. In fact it was in reading Darwin, that Meyer realized, that if “Inference to the best explanation” was acceptable by the scientific community to approve the idea of evolution, why should it be any different for the theory of Intelligent Design? Then, as a matter of consistency, being validated in Darwinism, why should it not be considered valid science when that same idea was used as an explanation, reasoning to Intelligent Design?
David Hume (1711–1776) was a Scottish philosopher who was instrumental in the formation of the scientific method, he is described as an empiricist- that is- one who believes that knowledge only comes through observation, through the senses and therefore proposed that only empirical proof gave true knowledge. He was a religious skeptic.
“If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." -An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding David Hume
The problem is that Hume’s statement itself is not empirically proven, it is not a scientific statement according to his own terms!
However, to his credit, he did recognize that the “Principle of the Uniformity of Nature” (upon which all natural laws depend) depends entirely on principles of induction and not deduction. Virtually all of science is dependent on an understanding of natural laws. And yet none of the evidence for explaining the laws of nature can be found by purely deductive processes. They all employ an inductive process at some point, which means the are arrived at by inferences rather than absolute proof.
C. D. Broad said that:
"Induction is the glory of science and the scandal of philosophy".
A False dilemma (Science is God’s Idea).
“The children of believers are presented with a cruel and false choice: In order to accept the scientific method, they must abandon the beliefs of their community. And many will naturally choose science. If theological conservatives define themselves by their skepticism about the (marvelous, breathtaking, compelling) findings of modern science, they will eventually lose — not only in public debates but in the minds of their own children.” Michael Gerson
The Ministry of Reconciliation
"Science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration towards truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is , comprehensible to reason. I cannot imagine a scientist without that profound faith. This situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." Albert Einstein
"Note that I am not postulating a 'God of the gaps', a god merely to explain the things that science has not yet explained. I am postulating a God to explain why science explains; I do not deny that science explains, but I postulate God to explain why science explains. The very success of science in showing us how deeply ordered the natural world is provides strong grounds for believing that there is an even deeper cause for that order." Richard Swinburne
Theology Makes Better Sense of Science
Alistair McGrath points out that an important point to be made about scientific theories is this:
“In science, the predominant theories in science are inferences to the best explanation. This is not about some positivist idea about “proving” everything, that sort of idea you find in Richard Dawkins, but it’s not there in science as a whole...observations can be explained in lots of different ways... the patterns I find in Christianity made an awful lot more sense of the world than the pattern I see in atheism….Theology, Christian faith is not about running away from reality, it’s about embracing a deeper and better vision of reality...Again I must emphasize, Christianity is not irrational...sure, it’s not something that reason can prove...but... if we limited ourselves to what reason can prove, [in the strictest empirical sense] we would live in a very small world indeed… only shallow truths can be proved. The truths that really matter, about value, about identity, about purpose, about meaning, these are things that we can never prove, and yet they really matter to us as human beings...theology satisfies our cognitive desires, the longing to make sense of things, but also addresses the deep existential questions. “Who am I? Do I really matter? What’s the point of life? these are deep truths. What Karl Popper called “Ultimate questions”. Theology is able to give us answers, good answers, meaningful answers to those really important questions.”
Properly Understood, Science Is Our Friend
There are in fact two books written by God by which we may know him. The “book” of nature that is referred to in Romans 1:18-20. If science is the study of nature (the things that are made) then they point to the existence of ‘God. This is called Natural Theology.
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:”
“...The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.“ Psalm 19:1
Christianity doesn’t just make sense in a privatized, section of reality in which only the believers dwell, but it makes sense of all of reality. Science included. Therefore Christianity offers a reasonable account for why science is possible at all.
"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." - C. S. Lewis
