CONVERSATIONS WITH A SKEPTIC: “IN A MODERN SCIENTIFIC WORLD, HOW CAN YOU HAVE FAITH

CONVERSATIONS WITH A SKEPTIC: “IN A MODERN SCIENTIFIC WORLD, HOW CAN YOU HAVE FAITH?”

Genesis 1:1-8, 26-27; Matthew 6:25-34; Hebrews 11:1-3

A sermon preached at First Presbyterian Church by Carter Lester on

September 23, 2007

Edward O. Wilson is one of the most outstanding scientists of our generation. In his book, On Human Nature, he confidently claims that science can explain all that needs to be explained, including religion as a human-created phenomenon. Theology’s days are numbered, he contends.[1] Richard Dawkins has written a number of books on evolution in which he contends that modern evolutionary theory proves that there is no god. Dawkins states that he cannot imagine how anyone in a scientific age can think there is a place for faith: “Faith is the great cop-out,” he writes, “the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence.”[2]

But it is not just the published scientists who are skeptics about faith. Most of us know people who, whether or not they are scientists, have a hard time with faith in God in our modern, scientific world. They trust their senses – what they can see, hear, and touch – and the idea of a God who is real but invisible is hard for them to swallow. How do we respond to such friends and family members – as well as the Wilsons and Dawkins of the world?

One response comes from proponents of what has been called “creationism” and “intelligent design.” They contend that the conflict between science and the Bible have led to most of our current social problems: For example, Henry Morris argues that “When science and the Bible differ, science has obviously misinterpreted its data.” He goes on to say, “evolutionary thought is basically responsible for…the chaotic moral and social disintegrations that have been accelerating everywhere [in our society].”[3]

Is that the only response we Christians can make?

I don’t know about you. But in many of these debates and battles over religion and science, I feel like I am in a war zone’s “no man’s land,” standing in between two warring sides with the bullets flying over my head as each sides fires at the other from well-fortified trenches. I am not ready to join either side but wonder if there is a way to get the shooting stopped before people are hurt unnecessarily.

How do we then respond to the science-oriented skeptics in our midst? Is there a way to respond without having to jump in our own trenches and fire back?

First, I would like to respond to the anti-faith scientists.

When you say that faith, unlike scientific theories, cannot be tested and proved in the way scientific theories can, I say “guilty as charged.” You are correct.

I often wish that faith could readily be proved through our senses: that everyone could hear the voice of God, that everyone could videotape Jesus doing some great miracle that would convince everyone that he is the Son of God. But that is not the way God has decided to work. And, in any case, that is not the way humans work. God could speak audibly for all – but we would find some reason to explain it all away if we do not believe in God. God gave us the great gift of his Son; Jesus Christ came to live among us. And yet, even when people could see, hear, and touch the Son of God, most people then rejected Jesus as the Messiah for the Jews, much less for the whole world.

The fact is: seeing is not enough. As Hebrews reminds us, “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” We do not believe by sight, but by faith. Whether there is a god or not is not something that we cannot prove through our senses. Answering this question requires something more than science and reason, something more than our senses and our mind.

So, when scientific skeptics say that you cannot prove faith by science or reason, I agree. But when skeptics say that faith is therefore irrelevant and unnecessary in our modern scientific world, I have to say “hold on there.”

Science can tell us how creation has unfolded, but it cannot tell us why it was created or by whom. Science can tell us all about the DNA and physical structures and processes of humans, but it can tell us what it means to be human, or what it takes to have a meaningful life. Science can give us a definition of life; it cannot show us how we should live.

People like Dawkins and Wilson contend that faith is unreasonable. But I question how reasonable atheism is. Consider this: According to the best cosmologists, “in the early moments of the universe following the Big Bang, matter and antimatter were created in almost equivalent amounts.” I don’t understand this but I will take their word for it! But the point is that the symmetry between matter and anti-matter was not quite precise. “For about every billion pairs of quarks and antiquarks, there was [one] extra quark.” If there were not this slight asymmetry, planets, stars, and people would never have come into existence.[4]

In fact, there are 15 physical constants, such as the speed of light, the rate of the universe’s expansion, and the force within an atom’s nucleus that have to be exactly what they are, precisely no more and no less, for there to be a universe capable of supporting complex life. I ask the scientific skeptics, in the face of such evidence, is the combination of all these factors being precisely the right number – up to one in a billion quarks – is that merely an accident or evidence of design – and therefore a designer? Stephen Hawking, the famous cosmologist, responded this way, “The odds against a universe like ours emerging out of something like the Big Bang are enormous. I think there are clearly religious implications.”[5]

But ultimately, neither science nor reason can get us to faith. Something more is required because God is not confined to the physical world that science explores. As Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, one of the world’s leading scientists, and a strong Christian, writes in a book I highly recommend, The Language of God, “Science’s domain is to explore nature. [Religion’s] domain is in the spiritual world, a realm not possible to explore with the tools and language of science. It must be examined with the heart, the mind, and the soul.”[6]

In a scientific world, how can we have faith? By recognizing the limits to the answers that science can give us. And, by committing not just our minds, but also our hearts and souls, to the quest for a relationship with the One who is our Maker and Redeemer.

Now, let me address anti-evolution Christians.

To them I would say: be careful. Be careful that in your understandable zeal to combat atheistic scientists that you do not hurt the witness of the gospel. While Christians always want to recognize the limits to what science can address and answer, I don’t think Christians want to ever engage in “bad science,” particularly on the basis of the Bible. Why? Because those who hear us and think we are getting bad science from the Scriptures are likely to dismiss the rest of the Bible as an outdated book of errors as well.

Lest we think this is a modern problem, consider these words of one of the great church theologians, Augustine. His words were written more than 1600 years ago in a commentary on the Book of Genesis. He writes, “Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and seasons…and so forth….Now it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people [see] vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.”[7]

1600 years ago! Then the question was the picture Genesis has of the sky as a big dome separating water above from the earth below. Now the question is one about evolution theories. Then as now, those in the church who try to trump the data gathered by science with the words of Genesis 1 are in danger of walking out on the very thin ice Augustine warns about.

David Wilcox is an evangelical Christian, scientist, and professor at Eastern University who spoke to the Forum Class last year. He recently wrote a book, God and Evolution: A Faith-Based Understanding. There he notes that there is no necessary tie between evolutionary theory and atheism. He then argues from his experience that the biggest impediment to witnessing to non-Christians enrolled in graduate science programs is not evolutionary theory. Instead, it is Christian leaders who argue for a science that these graduate students understand to be blatantly wrong.[8]

There is a middle ground. The truth is there may be conflicts between Christians and scientists. But there really is no conflict between faith and science.

Truth is truth. The truth gained by science may be different from the truth gained from the Scriptures, but there can be no real conflict – because God is the source of both. Where there is conflict, it is either because our scientific theories are wrong or our interpretations of the Scripture are wrong.

The fact is Genesis 1 is not a scientific textbook. Read chapter 1 sometime in its entirety. We did it the other night in the evening Bible study. You cannot help but be struck by the beauty of its poetry. For that is what it is – poetry which is no less truthful than science, but which conveys different truths in a different manner and must be read differently.

Genesis is not trying to answer how our world came into being. What Genesis is trying to answer is Who created what is, and what our Creator is like.

Science and the Scriptures may get answers that sound different, but that is only because they ask different questions. As Wilcox notes, science gives “a description of the outward appearance of the creation, whereas the Scriptures give us a description of the inside story, the meaning.”[9] Science may tell us that our DNA is 98% like that of the chimpanzees; the Scriptures tell us that we alone among God’s creation are created in the image of God.

This is the way Genesis has been read for centuries – long before anyone had heard of Charles Darwin or debated his theories. 1600 years ago, Augustine pointed out that the seven days mentioned in Genesis 1 and 2 did not have to literally mean 24-hour days. 500 years ago, John Calvin said in his commentary on Genesis that “He who would learn astronomy… let him go elsewhere than to what [Genesis] has to say about waters above the heaven.” (Commentary on 1:6).

Calvin and Augustine knew that science and faith are not mortal enemies. Instead, they are meant to go hand in hand. Our faith need not rest on one theory of science versus another. Instead, we can listen to the latest scientific discoveries and theories and marvel and say, “Oh, that is how God did it.” Because that is what is really at stake when it comes to faith and science: Is there really a God in charge of all that we see and know?

Nicolas Copernicus caused quite a stir when he published his book, On the Revolutions in 1530 in which he contended that the earth revolved around the sun rather than the sun revolving around the earth. Many religious people grew upset with Copernicus because his theory seemed to be contrary to their understanding of the Scriptures.

But for Copernicus and his supporters, many of whom were members of the new Protestant churches trying to reform the Church, Copernicus discovery celebrated rather than diminished the grandeur of God. This is what Copernicus himself wrote about science and faith:

“To know the mighty works of God; to comprehend His wisdom and majesty and power; to appreciate in degree, the wonderful working of His laws, surely all this must be pleasing and acceptable mode of worship to the Most High.”[10]

500 years later, that still makes sense to me.