The Scientist and the Believer Can Be One and the Same
Recently I read a digital booklet produced by a ministry that I admire greatly that nonetheless left me scratching my head a bit. The reason was that it was on the topic of how to respond to challenges to biblical truths about social and scientific issues. Most of it was what you would expect but the part about evolution really left me confused. This section hardly touched on the concept of evolution at all, but instead covered at length the geology of the earth, strongly promoting the view that the earth is thousands, not billions, of years old, and that the continental plates were torn apart in a short, cataclysmic event and did not drift apart over eons as many of us were taught in public school science classes. I was confused by the apparently diversion from the discussion on this to focusing so much on geological topics instead. Did the author(s) just not realize these are distinct areas of science that don’t relate directly to one another?
The communication style of the booklet was basically something like “Who could possibly believe in such nonsense as evolution and an earth that is billions of years old?” I want to be clear that I am a believer that the bible can be taken at it’s word and that it gives a true account about what happened at the creation in Genesis and elsewhere. I do believe that mankind was created by God, and that He created human beings in His image in one go, and not in a lengthy process that started out with the collision of amino acids in some primordial pool that eventually led to marine creatures that evolved into ape-like beings that eventually evolved into Neanderthals and then homo sapiens.
That being said, the bible is not a science textbook and I will not engage with it as such. I firmly accept it’s account of creation as the truth, but that doesn’t mean I have a perfect picture of what that looked like. The bible describes many things that can hardly be conceived of by anyone who didn’t witness it in person (and often even when people have witnessed them, such as Ezekiel describing the “living creatures” he observed at the throne of God in Ezekiel 1, it is still difficult for them to convey it in a way we can understand). Who knows what it looked like when the spirit of God was “hovering over the waters” as described in Genesis 1?
Exactly what happened when the “sun stood still” as described in Joshua 10? Was it just that it appeared to stand still until the battle was over, or did God actually stop the rotation of the earth for some period of time? Who knows? How about when the shadow went backward up the steps on the sundial of Ahaz as depicted in 2 Kings 20? If these events can’t be observed in the astronomical record through our measurement of the position of the earth today, that certainly doesn’t mean they didn’t happen.
Scripture is silent on these matters and I neither preach my theories on them nor spend a lot of time speculating about it. I think it matters little to my relationship with my Creator what I think about them. What matters is that I believe what Scripture says, and not so much what I wonder about what it doesn’t. That’s not to say I haven’t asked God about them. It certainly is no sin to express curiosity to the Lord about His works, and I rather suspect He enjoys sharing the answers, given we’re able to receive them.
Science is about our understanding of the universe, it’s fundamental makeup, and how it interacts with itself and our place in it. Being a human-driven pursuit, it will inevitably fail to perfectly capture the entirety of all that is true about creation and the timeline in which is has existed. We gather data and study it, and sometimes we arrive at the correct conclusion, other times conclusions that are partially correct, sometimes no conclusion at all, and sometimes a conclusion that is entirely wrong. When the science we engaged in appears to be at odds with Scripture, we don’t necessarily have to discard it altogether but rather consider it in terms of what God has told us through His Word. The science is not the problem when this happens, rather, it is our personal agendas and motivations that lead us astray. If I approach science with the humility to understand that we cannot ever completely explain any part of creation through our limited ability to interact with it, I avoid concluding that I can disregard God’s truth and replace it with my own.
Scripture tells us what we need to know about God’s nature and His creation. Science seeks to fill the gaps in our knowledge about the world around us, but can never supersede the Word in our view, unless we want to divorce ourselves from the truth and rely on this imperfect, constantly changing, self-contradicting human system for our source of truth, and what a shaky and unstable foundation that would be to base our understanding upon! And yet we should not disparage or disdain science either, for it is the means by which we gain a greater understanding of our world, and an appreciation for the resourcefulness and creativity of God in designing it. Consider the alarming number of people who believe the earth is flat because of a failure to appreciate that Scripture uses metaphor to describe the “four pillars of the earth” as a testament to the dangers of disregarding science.
Francis S. Collins is best known for his work in leading the Human Genome Project and served as the director of the National Institute of Health from 2009 to 2021[1] and at the time of his writing serves as the Science Advisor to the President of the United States. He became a believer in Christ while he was in medical school after reading the book Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis [2]. He describes his views on the relationship between faith and science this way:
Will we turn our backs on science because it is perceived as a threat to God, abandoning all the promise of advancing our understanding of nature and applying that to the alleviation of suffering and the betterment of humankind? Alternatively, will we turn our backs on faith, concluding that science has rendered the spiritual life no longer necessary, and that traditional religious symbols can now be replaced by engravings of the double helix on our alters?
Both of these choices are profoundly dangerous. Both deny truth. Both will diminish the nobility of humankind. Both will be devastating to our future. And both are unnecessary. The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. He can be worshipped in the cathedral or in the laboratory. His creation is majestic, awesome, intricate and beautiful - and it cannot be at war with itself. Only we imperfect humans can start such battles. And only we can end them.
- Francis S. Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief
I certainly would not suggest I can offer the definitive position on how those who believe in Christ should relate to science, but I will say I feel quite comfortable with accepting that science can lead us to a increasing understanding of the truth, while not seeking to base my understanding of the truth primarily on it. I can give scientists the benefit of the doubt most of the time that they, like me, are seeking to know what is true. With God, I don’t need to give Him the benefit of the doubt, I can just trust what He says is true.