Science vs. Faith? Dispelling the Myth
Psalm 19.1
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.
// Albert Einstein
The best data we have are exactly what I would have predicted, had I nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a whole.
// Arno Penzias, Nobel-Prize winning scientist
What is the difference between a cathedral and a physics lab? Are they both not saying: Hello?
// Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk
To be able to look, for the first time in human history, at all three billion letters of the human DNA--which I think of as God's language--it gives us just a tiny glimpse into the amazing creative power of his mind. Every discovery that we now make in science is, for me, a chance to worship him in a broader sense, to appreciate just in a small bit the amazing grandeur of his creation.
// Francis S. Collins, The Language of God
Christianity and Reason: The Theological Roots of Modern Science
I. A Biblical Worldview was the foundation upon which the enterprise of modern science was built.
Modern science was born in the cradle of Christian civilization.
// Kenneth Richard Samples
Science as an organized, sustained enterprise arose in Europe in the civilization then called Christendom. Why did modern science develop here and nowhere else? It was due to Christianity’s emphasis on the importance of reason.
// Dinesh D’Souza, Philosopher
The scientific achievements of the sixteenth century Scientific Revolution were not produced by an eruption of secular thinking. Rather these achievements were the culmination of many centuries of systematic progress by medieval Scholastics, sustained by that uniquely Christian twelfth-century invention, the university. Not only were science and religion compatible, they were inseparable—the rise of science was achieved by deeply religious Christian scholars.
// Rodney Stark, The Victory of Reason
Modern Science is built on the following Christian Teachings:
I. Christian doctrine has always taught both Special Revelation (The Scriptures) and Natural Revelation (The world).
Romans 1. 20
For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
II. God encourages science through his imperative to humans to have dominion over nature.
Genesis 1.28
God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."
III. The universe has Order and Uniformity.
There is a total commitment to the dogma of uniformity of nature, which is not necessarily itself the result of empirical inquiry. It is an assumption that actually lies beyond challenge.
// Alister McGrath,
All my experience as a physicist leads me to believe that there is order in the universe.
// Steve Weinberg, Physicist
Mathematics is a universal language.
// Ellie Arroway, Contact
Why nature is mathematical is a mystery. The fact that there are rules at all is kind of a miracle.
// Richard Feynman, Physicist
IV. The physical universe is a distinct, objective reality.
All my experience as a physicist leads me to believe that there is order in the universe…There is a simplicity, a beauty, that we are finding in the rules that govern matter that mirrors something that is built into the logical structure of the universe at a very deep level.
// Steven Weinberg, Physicist
Only a rookie who knows nothing about science would say science takes away from faith. If you really study science, it will bring you closer to God.
// James Tour, Nanoscientist
At this moment it seems as though the scientist will never be able to raise the curtain on the whole mystery of creation…He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.
// Robert Jastrow, (Agnostic and Scientist) God and the Astronomers
The Evidence of Design (The Teleological Argument)
Every design has a designer
The universe has a highly complex design
Therefore, the universe has a Designer
This most beautiful of system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.
// Isaac Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
I. William Paley’s “Watchmaker”
Suppose I pitched my foot against a stone and was asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer that it had lain there forever. But suppose I had found a watch upon he ground…I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given—the watch has not always been there, the watch must have had a maker.
// William Paley (1743-1805), Natural Theology
II. The Anthropic Principle:
The earth is finely tuned to support and reproduce human life.
The chances of this are so infinitesimal small that the very fact of our existence points to a Designer.
I do not like the Anthropic Principle. The reason is totally emotional, because it smells of religion and an intelligent designer.
// Dennis Overbye, The New York Times
The more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming.
// Freeman Dyson, Physicist
If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in 100 thousand million million, the universe would have re-collapsed before it ever reached its present size into a hot fireball…The odds against a universe like ours emerging out of something like the Big Bang are enormous. I think there are religious implications.
// Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time
There are 15 constants—the gravitational constant, physical laws, the balance of strong and weak nuclear forces, etc., —that have precise values. If any one of these was off by even one part in a million million, the universe could not have actually come into existence. Matter would not have been able to coalesce, there would have been no galaxy, stars, planets or people.
// Francis S. Collins, Geneticist
A commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with the laws of physics.
// Fred Hoyle, Astronomer
We will never know completely who we are until we understand why the universe is constructed in such as way that it contains living things.
// Lee Smolin, The Life of the Cosmos
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Anthropic Principle # 1: Oxygen Level—On earth Oxygen makes up 21% of the atmosphere, if it made up only 15% human beings would suffocate.
Anthropic Principle # 2: Atmospheric Transparency—if the atmosphere was less transparent not enough solar radiation would get through, if it were more, too much would get through.
Anthropic Principle # 3: Moon-Earth Gravitational Interaction—Life on earth would be impossible if the interaction between earth and the moon was greater (i.e., tidal effect on the oceans, atmosphere, and rotation period would be too severe).
Anthropic Principle # 4: Carbon Dioxide Level—If the CO2 level were higher than now the earth would be far too hot for anything to survive, if it were too low we would all suffocate.
Anthropic Principle # 5: Gravity—If the gravitational force was altered by 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000001% our sun would not exist.
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The Options:
(a) The Lucky Us Hypothesis: We are just very, very lucky.
(b) The Multi-verse Hypothesis: There may be an infinite
number of universes, with different laws than our own, thus making the odds of ours existing in a way that supports life, more likely (Richard Dawkins).
(c) The Metaphysical Mind Hypothesis: The precise tuning
of all of these variables reflects the action of an intelligent creator.
The Limits of Science: The Necessity of Metaphysics (Philosophy & Theology)
Science simply cannot by its legitimate methods make a ruling on God’s possible superintendence of nature. We neither affirm nor deny it; we simply can’t comment on it as scientists.
// Stephen Jay Gould, Atheist
Science is only one way to achieve knowledge, and it is a certain kind of knowledge…To reduce all knowledge to scientific knowledge is to condemn man to ignorance about the things that matter most in life.
// Dinesh D’Souza, What’s So Great about Christianity?
As a scientist, there are limits to the kinds of questions that science can answer. And that's where I have to turn to God and seek his answers. Science will tell me a lot about how things work. It will not tell me why we are all here, what the purpose is in life or what happens after we die. For that, I need my faith. And I'm grateful to be able to draw upon both of those ways of knowing in order to have a full appreciation of the wonderful gift of life that we've been given.
// Francis S. Collins, The Language of God
