Science and Christianity Discussion...

Please join the discussion if you have comments on the recent sermon (8th January) on "Science Friction" (and please click hereDownload SCIENCE FRICTION- Does science clash with Christianity if you would like to read what we covered and here for Denise's article Download God and the scientists (by Denise Baines))...

Comments

[JF Sourdoire]

Dear all,

Thanks a lot and in particular to Denise and Lindsay for their practical contributions and the printed article. I honestly did not believe that people would in Europe still be faced with choosing between Science & Religion - it was for me a developing country or typically US issue !

On these issue I would recommend the following two DVDs from Louie Giglio available on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&search-alias=dvd&ref=dp_dvd_bl_act&field-keywords=Louie%20Giglio) or via some Linkers. Although his conclusions are a bit "theatrical", this is both very interesting and entertaining :
- Indescribable - which looks at the universe a bit the way Denise presented it to us from Earth to very big / very far
- How great is our God - which continues as Denise did it from the very big to the very small.

I would personally be interested to hear more about the issue of Genesis 1 (creationism v. evolutionism) as this is a very important topic which is sometimes difficult to address with people whose attitude is that if the Bible is so obviously wrong in its first chapter, then the rest must be very wrong too...

Thanks a lot.

[John Walker]

Congratulations Charlie on addressing this subject- and overcoming my initial consternation at the title on the slide God vs. Science- science friction is much better.
As a one time scientist, turned engineer, and recently retired manager of conversations, I have to admit to some interest in the subject.
As you well put it, the focus of science is on the how, although some scientists would no doubt question whether there needs to be a why.
Genesis was written by men who believed that the sun circled the earth- they knew no other. And yet they tell an essential truth. Our World exists in a vast cosmos- and though we seek other planets with life, we do not find them, and they do not find us. Ours is a unique creation. How does one find out about the creator, start with the first book (not of the OT but of the NT). Indeed fresh from looking at John 4, I cannot think of a better place. A while ago I wrote a short piece for network, I attach it here for interest.
But how did man get here- now that’s an interesting question…….

Black Cats and All that

I went up to University to study Natural Sciences, and four years later emerged with a Masters in Chemical Engineering. What caused this small, but significant change? Well it was in part due to a cat in a box, that darn black cat. We were studying Atomic Physics. When I told Deborah I was back on this topic, she said “Oh Schrodinger again”, and that from an English graduate! Atomic Physics is littered with memorable names, Einstein, Plank, and we’re about to come across another.

My tutor pulled a large cardboard box into the centre of the room. He said in the box was a black cat, and every time he opened a small hole to look inside, the cat was always looking at him. He said go ahead and try, sure enough the cat was looking at me. He then asked “Is that cat always looking at you?” Well I said, since at the moment neither of us can see one another I presume it’s not looking at me, but I just don’t know what it’s doing, I cannot be sure. The act of looking into the box causes the cat to look at me, the moment before, it could be doing anything. Put simply, and substituting a sub atomic particle for the cat, that’s Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. Is it important? Yes, because what it says is we just don’t know, what’s more we cannot know what individual building blocks of matter are doing at any precise moment. At its most fundamental that’s the way the Universe is constructed. What’s your reaction to that? Well it blew my mind and I switched from Science to something much more practical like Chemical Engineering, and I began a journey which amongst other things ultimately led me to Faith.

But where is this article heading you might ask? Well it’s heading to that barbed question often asked in a cynical tone; explain to me how a well qualified scientist like you can believe the creation story set out in Genesis? The resulting “discussion” is typically more coloured by ignorance and prejudice than any real search for understanding. Over time I’ve come to realise that the creation story is the wrong start point. When asked the same question today, I say do you mind if I rephrase the question slightly “Help me to understand how a well qualified scientist like you can be a Christian, and how do you understand the creation story set out in Genesis?”

In reply I answer that whilst the creation story is the start point of the Bible, it is not the start point of my faith. My faith begins with the well documented death of a Galilean, on a cross outside Jerusalem some 2000 years ago, his burial and three days later his resurrection from the dead. His name was Jesus, and Christians believe that he died in order that our relationship with the God who created the Universe could be restored. Turning to the creation story as set out in Genesis, many Christians do believe it to be the literal truth. Equally, many Christians, myself amongst them struggle with such a literal interpretation. My own view very briefly summarised is that the writers of Genesis were setting out a vital truth that is as true today as it was then- that God created the Universe. However these writers did not have the knowledge of that Universe which we have today. They believed that the Earth was at the centre and the Sun went around it, they did not have the benefit of the undeniable fossil record, or Darwin’s theory of natural selection, or Einstein’s theory of relativity. As these discoveries were made, they were interpreted by many as being in conflict with Genesis - the earth is just one small planet amongst billions, man evolved from the apes, we can understand the fundamental laws of nature, Genesis cannot literally be true, and the ultimate extrapolation- why God?

BUT what a wonderful and unique place the Earth is, there may be billions of other planets and whilst we search for life beyond the Earth we haven’t found it. If the gravitational constant (that’s what caused Newton’s apple to fall to the ground) was just a little bigger or a little smaller then life would be impossible, and the same is true of ALL of our natural laws. What a wonderful creation- and we can never know everything; by design because of that darn black cat- God’s paradox I’ve come to call it. Unfortunately science is seen by many to be in conflict with religion, when in my view the more we understand our Universe the greater the case becomes for a creator God. I’m happy to go on about creation, but even happier to talk more about Jesus Christ. The question he asks is the most important question facing each of us, and we shouldn’t ignore it.

[Denise Baines]

On the question of how we understand the early chapters of Genesis, I recommend the following books, both written by theologians:
Melvin Tinker: Reclaiming Genesis (Monarch books)
Ernest Lucas: Can we believe in Genesis today? (ivp)
Both these books do a thorough job of showing how we can understand God's message in Genesis, and they make its early chapters come alive and make sense in a 21st century scientific world. Actually I think they make God much bigger and richer than a simple literal 6-day interpretation does.
With respect to the enormity of the universe, it is interetsing how many planets are being discovered at the moment by astronomers, now that we have techniques for doing so. The most recent studies suggest there could be 200 million or even a billion earth-sized planets in our galaxy alone (there are 100 billion stars and we are realising that probably most of them have a planetary system). It is tantilising to wonder just what God might be doing on any of them .....

[David Sweet]

Thank you for posting this blog following the talk on "Science Friction". Only problem: I agree with all the posts so far!

At the risk (or maybe with the intention) of being provocative, I would like to raise the issue of intelligent design (ID).
I remember that at school (say age of 12 or so) thinking that of course this was the way to reconcile science with what I was learning at Sunday School about the power of God. The scientific processes and logic we were learning about were fine for what we knew but where we did not know (e.g. what made things be alive) that must be God. It's just a small step from there to the idea that every process and linkage is planned or designed by God.

And in a way I believe that is true - or at least it could be true. Certainly I believe that God c o u l d have created every step of the physical, chemical, biological sequences that create the world around us. But I also believe that God has chosen to work in a way that inspires us - or many of us - to seek to find out more about his creation: to do science.

So while God could have guided creation and evolution to lead to every detail that we now see, and could be intervening even now to make sure the fire burns, the electricity flows, the semiconductors switch according to his divine will, I really don't think such a perspective tells us anything useful about God or our world. If we follow the ID paradigm "The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." http://www.intelligentdesign.org/whatisid.php then every time we confront a difficult problem in science (called irreducible complexity) we postulate that God has intervened and there is nothing more to discover. Unfortunately, other scientists, less devout, keep working away at the "irreducible complexity" and find a firm hypothesis to explain it, meaning that the ID theorist has to move his defensive line further back. I don't believe that is God's plan for his supporters!

So I do believe that evolution is the best explanation for the life we see and rejoice in around us. I do believe (without much understanding) that the biochemical processes my son, among others, is helping to identify are responsible for the collection of phenomena we call life and I am prepared to accept (without understanding at all) that our entire universe came into being at a certain point in time out of, effectively, nothing. And there, I suspect, the most materialist of theoretical physicists comes nearer to the essential of the Genesis allegory than any of us non-specialists. In other words, in trying to understand our world without accepting the get-out clause of a Creator or Designer, the rigorous scientist is proclaiming the glory of God.