Sam McKee argues that modern science was built on Christian foundations, and the two aren’t at odds. Christian families can show children how curiosity and belief go hand in hand
Normally, as some point, a child from a Christian family will ask their parent or carer about science and faith. It will come up in different contexts and in different ways with different subtexts but it will almost always come up in some way, shape or form. Maybe you’ve already fielded this question or maybe you’re dreading when it comes up – when it does, what will you say?
I speak regularly in schools on science and faith, and a common misconception that often comes up is that they are enemies. Are science and religion enemies, friends, or neither? As always, the answer is “sort of” depending on who is asking, how they define science, and how they define faith.
As a cancer research scientist at the University of Reading, I know only too well that the big questions raised by a scientific exploration of the world are significant. As someone who publishes and works also in space science, works consistently with astronauts, and has had an experiment flown to the International Space Station, the wonder, elegance and staggering beauty of everything from microbes growing on the surface of the ISS to the universe revealed by our probes and telescopes never ceases to amaze me. However, we often make these conversations too simplistic or narrow.
God did not give us scripture as a scientific textbook to explain natural phenomena
The first mistake is committed by both atheists and Christians – the view that science and Christianity are enemies. This view is proposed by the extreme end of atheists and creationists. So-called “New Atheists” believe that faith is a description of the natural world and therefore is in competition with science: a competition that it always loses. However, we do not see Christianity as a description of the natural world and its processes. God did not give us scripture as a scientific textbook to explain natural phenomena. As Galileo once said, scripture was given to tell us how to get to heaven, not how the heavens go.
Creationists and Intelligent Design proponents are also mistaken in pitting science and Christianity against each other. In their case, science is a false world system bent against Christianity and trying to undermine it. Only Christianity gives a true explanation of life, the universe and everything and that includes the scientific detail. They also believe that one can detect God inside the cell or in the laws of nature so that God becomes a scientific explanation of the natural processes that could be explained in equations and experiments. Not only did the Jews and early Christians not teach this, but it seems an odd perspective on God’s nature and behaviour. There is no need to see science and Christianity as enemies.
It seems that the development of modern science involved a Christian foundation
They might not be enemies but are they friends? Many of the early pioneers of modern science seemed to think so. Isaac Newton, Galileo, Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, James Clerk Maxwell, Blaise Pascal, Michael Faraday and the overwhelming majority of those comprising the beginning of the Royal Society were devout Christians who believed the world was rational because God created it ordered and comprehensible to us.
As the centuries progressed, we find Christians and believers in God across the birth of every major scientific discipline and sub-discipline. Even Darwin, Einstein and those that were skeptical or not church attendees believed in a God whose spirit underpinned the laws of nature or the structure of the universe. It is centuries after the development of modern science that purely materialistic views of the universe emerge, and often the skepticism had nothing to do with science but with personal matters.
The Christian vision of reality allows a fruitful base for us to do science in the first place
It seems that the development of modern science involved a Christian foundation: a view of the world as ordered and comprehensible that allowed for it to be investigated and rationally understood. Does that mean they are friends, or just not enemies? That really is a question for philosophy or theology.
When I am practicing science, I am not studying supernatural things but natural things. However, I am a Christian and do not divide myself in two. It is me that is doing science even as I seek a scientific explanation. I am in love with this beautiful world and its incredible processes, and it is God’s world. Sir John Polkinghorne said the phrase “One World” to describe the process of a scientist of faith. There is only one world, and it is God’s as He is the God of the whole (Colossians 1:15-20) rather than hiding himself in parts. This is why the answer of “neither” is inadequate. It is true that science and faith answer different questions and involve different processes, but they overlap and converge in different places. The proper approach is one of respecting the answers given by both in their domains and looking for the areas of fruitful conversation.
Read more:
Studying chemistry as a Christian
Studying biology as a Christian
Atom and Iota help children bring science and Christian faith together
The Christian vision of reality allows a fruitful base for us to do science in the first place. A Christian account of nature is one of discovering truth so must account for the real answers that science gives and respect its process. The two uplift and enrich one another when this is done well, and it is ugly when it is not done well.
The correct answer is that science and Christianity are partners in the search for truth, but just as I wouldn’t use a wrench to unlock my car or a washing machine to fix my sink, we use the correct tools in the right place to get the right answers. Science and Christianity operate in mutual respect when we understand what they are.
I love being a scientist and I owe my whole life to Christ rescuing me at a point in my life when I was at rock bottom. My journey as a scientist has mostly come after my return to belief and I am delighted it has been that way as my faith enriches the experience tremendously.
