“Great are the works of the LORD; they are pondered by all who delight in them.” (Psalm 111:2)
Many today take it for granted that biblical faith is incompatible with scientific findings. The assumption is that science has provided all the knowledge we need about our origins and the origin of our universe. This idea that science and Christianity are at odds has been so widely promoted in our culture by popular science communicators – including Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson – that many have taken for granted that this is true.
Christianity and Cosmic Order
Before one can undertake any scientific endeavor, such as calculating the growth rate of fertilized plants versus that of unfertilized plants, one must hold some basic working assumptions. One such assumption is the regularity of nature. In other words, you must assume that certain physical laws will remain in place each time you observe and measure the plants. Such an assumption might seem incredibly obvious. We think, Of course, there is regularity in nature!
But on an atheistic worldview, why assume any kind of law-like structure to the universe? Laws don’t form by chance; they come from a Lawgiver. If the universe is the result of an undirected chaotic explosion rather than the ordered creation of an infinite Mind, why would we expect consistency in nature?
No one would believe that the Eiffel Tower formed as a result of an iron mine explosion. In the same way, we shouldn’t expect any kind of orderliness in a universe that formed by an unguided explosion.
Paul Davies is a physicist who is certainly not religious. And yet he comments:
“Just because the sun has risen every day of your life, there is no guarantee that it will rise tomorrow. The belief that it will, that there are indeed dependable regularities of nature, is an act of faith, but one which is indispensable to the progress of science.”[1]
The Bible not only says that “all things were created through [Christ] and for [Christ],” but also that “in Him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:16-17). It is because the Son of God “upholds the universe by the word of His power” that we can have confidence in the regularity of nature (Hebrews 1:3).
Physicist Michael Guillen says, “The Christian worldview best squares with the scientific worldview. It’s easy for me to be both a scientist and a Christian. Do science and Christianity have disagreements? Oh, you bet! And a few of them get the bulk of the publicity. But when it comes to the fundamentals, the two worldviews are very much in line. They are like my wife and me. We have our disagreements. And some of them are real doozies. But when it comes to core principles, we see eye to eye.”[2]
This is why modern science first began in the West, where the backdrop of the culture was the Christian worldview. This also explains why the vast majority of the founders of modern science were theists – and many were Christian theists.[3]
For instance, Galileo – often falsely portrayed as an opponent of biblical faith – was a Bible-believing Christian who argued that “the laws of nature are written by the hand of God in the language of mathematics” and that the “human mind is a work of God and one of the most excellent.”[4]
While many want to argue that faith and science are at odds, the scientific method itself is based on certain faith assumptions. Without these assumptions – which most scientists simply take for granted – science could never get off the ground. These include the orderly character of nature, the regularity of physical laws, the rational intelligibility of the universe, and the fact that our minds are equipped to understand certain truths about the universe.
Philosopher Richard Swinburne writes:
“The very success of science in showing us how deeply ordered the natural world is provides strong grounds for believing that there is an even deeper cause for that order.”[5]
The Limits of Science
Many have bought into the ideology of scientism, which says that science alone is the key to answering all our questions about the universe. But this ignores the many areas where science is limited. For example, science can teach us how to build an atomic bomb, but it cannot tell us whether it is right to use it.
Science cannot even tell us why there is a universe to study in the first place. Science is a wonderful tool, but it cannot give us a grand explanation of everything. Instead, science points us to a greater explanation beyond its analytical reach.
Scientific observations showing that our universe is expanding indicate that our universe had a beginning. But if the universe had a beginning, there must have been a cause. Things don’t just burst into existence without a prior cause. A timeless and all-powerful God who transcends nature would be a reasonable explanation for the origin of our universe.
“For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” (Romans 1:19-20, ESV)
Atheism and Its Illogical View of the Beginning
In his book The Grand Design, the late Stephen Hawking argued that we don’t need God to explain the origin of the universe. Instead, the universe’s physical laws can explain why there is a universe.
Hawking wrote: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.”[6]
Interestingly, when I shared this idea with my 7-year-old son, Logan, he laughed and said, “That’s impossible for something to make itself.” He recognized that Hawking’s statement is logically flawed. For something to create itself, it would have to be in existence already. His statement is incoherent.
Why would a scientist as accomplished as Stephen Hawking make such an obvious logical blunder and claim that the universe brought itself into existence?
Scripture provides insight here. The Book of Romans says that when you reject the one true God who created nature, you will end up worshiping various aspects of nature itself (Romans 1:21-23). Interestingly, there is a parallel to this ancient form of nature worship among many scientists today. They attribute creative power, eternality, and even design to the cosmos instead of the Creator of the cosmos.
Oxford scientist John Lennox observes:
“Perhaps there is a subtle danger today that, in their desire to eliminate the concept of a Creator completely, some scientists and philosophers have been led, albeit unwittingly, to re-deify the universe by endowing matter and energy with creative powers that they cannot be convincingly shown to possess.”[7]
Can Irrationality Produce Rationality?
If nature is all there is, that would mean there is no divine mind outside the universe responsible for our existence. But that would mean that our brains are the result of blind and irrational natural processes. Now, if that is where atheistic science takes us, then why in the world would we trust our brains can grasp the truth? In fact, why think we could ever do science in the first place?
Consider a scenario where I told you about a computer that was not designed by a human mind but came about purely by the blind forces of nature. Would you expect such a machine to function well, let alone assemble naturally in the first place? Such an idea sounds preposterous. In the same way, we could only trust our brains to grasp scientific truth if they have been designed by an intelligent Creator who transcends the blind processes of nature. The great irony is that, in their eagerness to eliminate God from the scientific enterprise, atheists have actually removed any reason whatsoever for trusting our rational faculties.
Some atheists have recognized this and are haunted by the logical outcome of their godless worldview.
The chemist J. B. S. Haldane said, “It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true.”[8]
Atheist John Gray has put this problem more bluntly: “Modern humanism is the faith that through science humankind can know the truth and so be free. But if Darwin’s theory of natural selection is true this is impossible. The human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth.”[9]
Gray’s point is that on Darwinism, there’s no real basis for thinking we have adapted the ability to know the truth. After all, the Darwinian worldview says that there is no ultimate design and purpose to organic life and that humans are the result of unguided chance.
Christian apologist C. S. Lewis similarly asked, “If thought is the undesigned and irrelevant product of cerebral motions, what reason have we to trust it?”[10]
If atheists want to go on believing that their brain is the product of blind chance, they are welcome to do so, but I’m going to stick with the hypothesis that the only wise God designed my brain. Praise God, we are not mere accidents. Instead, we are “fearfully and wonderfully made” by God with loving design and intention (Psalm 139:14).
According to the Bible, we have every reason to believe our brains can grasp certain truths about the natural world. In fact, the Bible says that God created us in His own image – meaning our rational minds are a reflection of His rational mind (Genesis 1:27-28). Thus, on the Christian worldview, we have good reasons to think we can learn about the world through the scientific endeavor.
Science and biblical faith are not at war. They complement and reinforce one another.
Feel free to comment below!
[1] Paul Davies, The Mind of God, 81.
[2] Michael Guillen, Seeing Is Believing.
[3] Such theistic scientists include Roger Bacon, Gregor Mendel, Blaise Pascal, Johannes Kepler, Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, and Michael Faraday.
[4] Galileo quoted in John C. Lennox, Cosmic Chemistry, 43.
[5] Richard Swinburne, Is There a God? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 68.
[6] Hawking and Mlodinow, The Grand Design, 180.
[7] John C. Lennox, Cosmic Chemistry, 113.
[8] J. B. S. Haldane, Possible Worlds and Other Essays (reprint ed.) London, UK: Chatto and Windus, 1932.
[9] John Gray, Straw Dogs, London, Granta Books, 2002, 26.
[10] C. S. Lewis, Miracles.
Photo Courtesy of NASA, M. Livio, and the Hubble Heritage Team.
