Science and the Christian Faith

[Larry]

These are my notes from the 2BS Podcast of 19 June 2009. The 19 June Podcast was a followup to an exchange that Brad and I had had earlier.

I had been listening to the Two Blind Squirrels podcast that Brad announced on 1 May 2009.
"Today and Tomorrow's 2BS shows
by bradmc on 01 May 2009 13:23
Mr. Coffey is a very interesting man -if you can get him to talk which I think I was successful at."

I wrote in response.

"I just don't know what to say.

"I see how you and I can agree on what is essential, but have profound disagreements on everything else. I really wish, Brad, that you and I had a day just to sit down and talk about this."

I felt as though I really understood Brad’s point of view. I had an overwhelming sense of empathy. However, I could see that Brad had only the barest clue of what I was thinking and why. That made me sad. What I would like to do is just to explain my thoughts. The objective is not to convince him that I am correct. That is not going to happen. What I would like at the end of the day is for Brad to say, “Larry, I understand where you’re coming from – you’re wrong – but I understand you.”

And so there we were, having that discussion.

The topic in question is the relationship between Science and the Christian Faith.

I posted my testimony in my blog on May 23 to establish that I believe that the Bible is true, and why I believe that. The short version of that story was that I compared the Bible to an alternative scripture, and it was like holding a real $10 bill up against a counterfeit bill produced on a poor-quality color Xerox machine.

On-the-other hand, I am very comfortable with mainstream science. I was a Math and Science major in college, my sister is a PhD in Biology and does veterinary research. In my current work, I am basically an engineer, but I work with scientists and I have a feeling for how they work and think. I’ve had a subscription to Scientific American for 30 years.

Science provides us with a more or less accurate model of the natural world. That model is not reality; it is an approximation to reality. But within some domains it is a very accurate approximation. Why is that? It is because there are a lot of different eyeballs on any particular problem. If one scientist publishes a set of results, other scientists will try to duplicate that experiment and reproduce those results. There is a huge social stigma against publishing false results.

So, what do we do when there is an apparent conflict between science and religion?

My favorite question: How old is the earth?
- Science: 4.54 × 109 years ± 1%
- Bishop Ussher (young earth creationists): 6,000 years

Either mainstream science is wrong, or the Bible is wrong, or they are talking about different things.

I am pretty sure that the science is accurate. When I was an undergraduate in college, my school had a nuclear reactor. I was one of the reactor operators. One of the procedures we would do was called neutron activation analysis. We would bombard a sample with neutrons which would produce radioactive elements and measure the spectra of those elements as they decay. It is not precisely the same techniques as are used to measure the age of the earth, but the science is similar enough that I have a good feeling for how those techniques might be used. To me it seems just a plausible that the earth is flat as that it is 6,000 years old.

On the other hand, we have already established that the Bible is the true revelation of God to humankind.

So therefore, the young earth derivation of science from Genesis 1-11 must be incorrect. I.e. God did not intend for the first 11 chapters of Genesis to say anything about the age of the earth. [1] And this makes sense. There is a significant difference in style between Genesis 1-11 and the rest of Genesis. Genesis says that God is the Creator. I fully affirm creation, but don’t believe that we can derive our science from Genesis.

Science has nothing to say about spiritual things. Its realm is natural law, and models constructed using the experimental method. If the Bible says anything about science, the two worldviews will agree, and we won’t have to force fit the two.

Some Christians reject science because it disagrees with their particular interpretation of the Bible. This becomes a huge problem when we are trying to evangelize thinking people. They ask, “Aren’t you Christians a bunch of know-nothings? Do I have to believe in a flat earth to become a Christian?” The only thing that I can say to these people is it is not a salvation issue, and focus on Jesus.

In our conversation, Brad brought up the very valid point that mainstream science assumes that the rates of decay have stayed the same for as far back as we have evidence. What if there was a change in the rates of decay at the Flood that would cause all of the measurements that date pre-flood events to appear much older? My answer: That would be a miracle, and the point where a miracle occurs marks the end of the domain of science. Science has nothing to say.

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[1] This is not a new idea. In 1890, Princeton professor William Henry Green wrote a highly influential article in Bibliotheca Sacra entitled "Primeval Chronology" in which he strongly criticized Ussher. He concluded: “We conclude that the Scriptures furnish no data for a chronological computation prior to the life of Abraham; and that the Mosaic records do not fix and were not intended to fix the precise date either of the Flood or of the creation of the world.”

[Scott Roche]

Great post Larry, I agree with you.