Seven themes related to Christianity and science

There’s a recent post on the BioLogos Forum, dealing with the relationship between Christianity and science. There have been lots of those, but this one is especially good. One of the things that make it good is that it considers wisdom literature, especially Job, more than Genesis 1 and 2, which have been covered so many times. Another is that the author, Tom McLeish, who is a physicist in the UK, lists seven themes, related to science, that he says are found in the Bible. This is a paraphrase (and simplification) of those themes:
1) Things change -- the future will be different from the past.
2) Humans are able to learn how nature works, and should do so.
3) Knowledge is not enough -- wisdom is important.
4) “Doing science is hard.”
5) There is both order and chaos in the world.
6) We don't know everything, but can learn by asking questions.
7) We should love nature, and other people.

Well said. Thanks for reading. Read McLeish. There’s an attempt at something similar in a post in this blog.

Appendix: Biblical background to McLeish’s themes:
1) The future will be different from the past:
Job 38:4 “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Declare, if you have understanding.
5 Who determined its measures, if you know?
Or who stretched the line on it?
6 Whereupon were its foundations fastened?
Or who laid its cornerstone,
7 when the morning stars sang together,
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?...”

2) Humans are able to learn how nature works and should do so: 
Job 39:1 “Do you know the time when the mountain goats give birth?
Do you watch when the doe bears fawns?
2 Can you count the months that they fulfill?
Or do you know the time when they give birth?
3 They bow themselves, they bear their young.
They end their labor pains. ...” (God speaking to Job. This implies that humans could know this, and also, of course, that we understand that young mammals develop in the womb.)
Genesis 1:28b “... Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Effective environmental stewardship requires knowledge of how the environment works.

3) Knowledge is not enough -- wisdom is important:
Job 42:2 “I know that you can do all things,
and that no purpose of yours can be restrained. ...” 
(Job, speaking of God. One of the most important pieces of wisdom.)
1 Kings 4:34 People of all nations came to hear the wisdom of Solomon, sent by all kings of the earth, who had heard of his wisdom. 
 
4) “Doing science is hard:”
1 Kings 4:32 He spoke three thousand proverbs; and his songs numbered one thousand five. 33 He spoke of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon even to the hyssop that grows out of the wall; he also spoke of animals, of birds, of creeping things, and of fish. (This feat of Solomon was considered to be a unique accomplishment, and must have taken considerable effort on his part, and, perhaps effort on the part of his servants.)
 
5) There is both order and chaos in the world:
Job 37:5 God thunders marvelously with his voice.
He does great things, which we can’t comprehend.
6 For he says to the snow, ‘Fall on the earth;’
likewise to the shower of rain,
and to the showers of his mighty rain.

 6) We can learn from asking questions:
Job 42:4 You said, ‘Listen, now, and I will speak;
I will question you, and you will answer me.’ (Job, speaking to God.)

7) We should love nature, and other people:
Job 42:10a Yahweh turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends. (These supposed friends had been vigorously disagreeing with Job for more than three dozen chapters.)
Psalm 24:1 The earth is Yahweh’s, with its fullness;
the world, and those who dwell therein.

"What's with all the talk about religion? I thought this was a scientific web site?"

The title of this post is taken from a comment posted a day or so ago, on a post on why living things have cells. You can see the comment following that post.

The title poses two fair questions. I attempted a brief answer in my response to that comment, but let me muse further.

Why all the talk about religion?

I believe in a Creator, a powerful God who created the universe, after an amazing divine plan, and who still is involved in the universe today. (Colossians 1:16 For by him all things were created, in the heavens and on the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through him, and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things are held together. St. Paul used the present tense in verse 17.)

Although it is not possible to prove God's existence scientifically -- see the verse in the graphic at the top of the page, which tells us that we understand God's creative power by faith -- it is not possible to disprove it, either. Prominent atheists, such as Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking, have tried, but have not done so, and Dawkins has not claimed to have presented a knock-down proof for God's non-existence. If there is even a possibility that the universe, and we ourselves, are the result of a divine plan of some sort, that possibility must be taken seriously.

Like great scientists of the past (and present) such as Johannes Kepler, Robert Boyle, Francis Collins, and others, lots of them, I believe that all the things scientists can study are present because of a Creator, who initially began the universe, probably with the Big Bang, or just before the Big Bang, and established it with the processes, laws and physical constants that scientists have been finding out about for centuries, and which processes, laws and constants make the earth a place where we can live. I also believe, as indicated in the verses quoted above, that God the Son is presently involved in maintaining the universe. Like those great scientists, responsible for much of the foundations of astronomy, chemistry, and sequencing the human genome, respectively, I believe that God is important, and doing or studying science without acknowledging Him is like building a house without a foundation.

I thought this was a scientific web site?

Well, yes and no. It's a blog, wherein I discuss all sorts of things that have been, or are of interest to me, such as, for example, why living things have cells, or the color green, or whether there are signs that one is, or is not a believer, or the writing of Connie Willis, award-winning science fiction author.

Some of the posts relate to science, some do not.

Thanks for reading.

Scriptural Principles that Relate to Science

Here are some scriptural principles that relate to science:

1. God is creator. There is no unassailable proof of this statement. The Bible, itself, does not attempt to prove it. It assumes it. The Bible starts out by saying that God created, in Genesis 1:1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. (All Bible quotations are from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain, and are in this color.) The Bible says that the best evidence that God is creator is our faith. (Hebrews 11:3 By faith, we understand that the universe has been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen has not been made out of things which are visible.) The Bible further points out that the principal agent in creation was God the Son:
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 The same was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him. Without him was not anything made that has been made.

Colossians 1:14 in whom we have our redemption, the forgiveness of our sins; 15 who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.16 For by him all things were created, in the heavens and on the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through him, and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things are held together.

Christians have several views about the timing, and other details, of how things began. However, the most fundamental truth is that God created. Genesis 1:1 does not tell us why, when, or how God created. It does tell us that there was a Who involved in creation. There are people who believe that there is nothing but nature. They are called Naturalists. In other words, they do not believe that there is anything supernatural. To them, there is, and was, no Who. The Bible begins by assuming that that is a wrong belief. It does not attempt to prove this, except by telling us what God is like. (Some Christians mistakenly think that the idea of a Big Bang is a theory that claims that there is no God, or that claims there was no God involved in creation. That view is mistaken. A belief in the Big Bang can be compatible with belief in God as creator.)

Creation was called good, in Genesis 1. This does not necessarily mean that it was good in the sense that it is useful to humans. Goodness in God’s view is more important than usefulness to us!

Psalm 104:24 Yahweh, how many are your works!
In wisdom have you made them all.
The earth is full of your riches.
There is the sea, great and wide,
in which are innumerable living things,
both small and large animals. 
In this passage, we read about the marvelous diversity of creation. Humans have never yet seen many of the organisms that are alive on earth today, let alone found uses for them. They are still important, because God made them, or allowed them to come into existence.

2. God sustains the natural world. Colossians 1:16-17 (above) and Hebrews 1:3a (His Son is the radiance of his glory, the very image of his substance, and upholding all things by the word of his power) indicate that God not only created, but that Christ is presently involved in holding things together, including your body and the monitor you are reading this on. Do we understand this? No, and we aren’t capable of understanding it. God is omnipotent and omniscient. We aren’t. But we do understand, from these passages, that God, especially God the Son, has not gone away and left the world. He is sustaining it now.

3. Humans have responsibility for the world around them. Humans were put in charge of God’s “very good” creation.
Genesis 1:26 God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 28 God blessed them. God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Since the Fall, there have been problems with the natural world, but scripture teaches that it is still important to God, so it should be to us, as well:
Psalm 24:1 The earth is Yahweh’s, with its fullness;

the world, and those who dwell therein.

Psalm 50:10 For every animal of the forest is mine,
and the livestock on a thousand hills.
11 I know all the birds of the mountains.
The wild animals of the field are mine. [God speaking] 

The Israelites were supposed to take care of their land by letting it lie fallow every seventh year:
Leviticus 25:3 You shall sow your field six years, and you shall prune your vineyard six years, and gather in its fruits; 4 but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to Yahweh. You shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. 5 What grows of itself in your harvest you shall not reap, and you shall not gather the grapes of your undressed vine. It shall be a year of solemn rest for the land.

Their failure to obey this command was one reason for their captivity:
II Chronicles  36:20 He carried those who had escaped from the sword away to Babylon, and they were servants to him and his sons until the reign of the kingdom of Persia, 21 to fulfill Yahweh’s word by Jeremiah’s mouth, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. As long as it lay desolate, it kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy years. [“He” is the king of the Chaldeans.]

Proverbs 12:10a says “A righteous man respects the life of his animal.”

4. God is revealed to us through nature. Here are Bible passages that say that we ought to learn something of what God is, and how God works, through a study of nature.

Job 12:7 “But ask the animals, now, and they will teach you;
the birds of the sky, and they will tell you.
8 Or speak to the earth, and it will teach you.
The fish of the sea will declare to you.
9 Who doesn’t know that in all these,
Yahweh’s hand has done this,
10 in whose hand is the life of every living thing,
and the breath of all mankind?

Psalm 19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God.
The expanse shows his handiwork.
Day after day they pour out speech,
and night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech nor language,
where their voice is not heard.
Their voice has gone out through all the earth,
their words to the end of the world. 

Acts 14:17 Yet he didn’t leave himself without witness, in that he did good and gave you rains from the sky and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.

Romans 1:20 For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse.

Revelation of God though nature includes knowledge gained through science. Some of the greatest scientists of all time, like Johannes Kepler, have believed that God is revealed through nature:

I give thanks to Thee, O Lord Creator, Who hast delighted me with Thy makings and in the works of Thy hands have I exulted. Behold! now, I have completed the work of my profession, having employed as much power of mind as Thou didst to me; to the men who are going to read those demonstrations I have made manifest the glory of Thy works . . .
From The Harmonies of the World by Johannes Kepler, 1619, translated by Charles Glenn Wallis. (The Great Books, Chicago: Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1952, volume 16, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler, p. 1080.)

Science is not God’s only, or main, means of revelation. (Others include the Bible, our consciences, the Holy Spirit in our lives, the church -- those who believe in Christ as savior and Lord, and, most importantly, the incarnation of Jesus Christ.) But it is one means. Properly understood, scientific findings and scripture do not conflict. However, humans don’t completely understand either scientific or scriptural revelation.

5. God is a God of order. The Bible begins with a portrayal of God’s orderliness in creation. Literal or not, the description in Genesis 1 describes order and sequence. The Ten Commandments, the covenants established with Abraham, and with the Israelites, and God’s promise, (Genesis 8:22) after Noah’s flood, declare that God is a God of order. Some historians of science have written that, without the Judeo-Christian concept of God as a God of order, the development of science would have been impossible. (There were other influences, including Greek and Arab thought, in the development of science, so that science is not a strictly Judeo-Christian enterprise, but it developed among countries where most of the people were at least nominally believers.) There were some technological developments in China before similar ones in Europe, but science doesn’t seem to have developed there as a discipline, perhaps because this sense of order wasn’t part of the prevailing world-view there at that time.

6. The responsibility that humans have for nature (principle 3, above) includes responsibility to learn how it works.
Psalm 111:2 Yahweh’s works are great,

pondered by all those who delight in them

There is delight in such learning (See also principle 4) and it is our responsibility, as good stewards, to learn about God’s works. Some individuals are specially gifted in the area of learning about God’s creation -- in other words, God gives some gifts that help people be scientists.

In a previous post, I listed some scientific principles that tell us about God.

Thanks for reading!

Belief in God among scientists vs. the general public: a graphic

The Biologos Forum has published a graphic, comparing belief in God, and related matters, between scientists and the general public. The post is here. You can click on the post to see a larger version.

Sunspots 303

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

Science: (also Christianity) An interesting introduction to a discussion of the relationship between science and religion.

We have known for some time that some animals can use the earth's magnetic field to navigate longitude (North and South). Wired reports on experiments with sea turtles that show that these animals can also use the magnetic field of the earth to navigate latitude (East and West)

The Arts: National Public Radio notes that the number of producers of a typical movie is pretty large (110 total for the 10 Best Picture nominees for this year's Oscars) and examines how this came to be, using The King's Speech as an example.

Image source (public domain)

"God exists" is a religious claim. So is "God doesn't exist."

Michael Ruse, one of the most important philosophers of science of our time, and a man who does not believe in God, has written an article, in which he asks:

If “God exists” is a religious claim (and it surely is), why then is “God does not exist” not a religious claim?

The article is well worth reading, and examines some serious questions, most importantly the one raised by the quotation. Ruse has gotten a lot of flak for raising this question, such as in this post by Mark Perakh on the Panda's Thumb, in which the author wrote: I dare to claim that the sole value of philosophy of science is its entertaining ability. I doubt that all the multiple opuses debating various aspects of the philosophy of science have ever produced even a minute amount of anything that could be helpful for a scientist, be he/she physicist, biologist, geologist, you name it.

Other writers on the Panda's Thumb (which is not especially friendly to Christianity) did not agree with Perakh's assessment of the philosophy of science, and pointed to a rebuttal by John S. Wilkins, a philosopher of science. Wilkins does not say whether or not he believes in God.

That rebuttal points out three things:

First, statements like Perakh's claim are, themselves, philosophy, not science. (Perakh has no scientific proof of his statement.)

Second, philosophy of science has been practiced by some pretty influential scientists, Einstein, for one. (Wilkins doesn't say so, but one evidence for this is that the starting points of his special theory of relativity were not determined by experiment, but by Einstein's thought -- they were assumptions.)
Third, "If a scientist claims that science asserts the non-existence of an object that is, by definition, not investigable, like a deity outside time and space, then that is not science, no matter who makes the claim."

Wilkins mentions a post at Thinking Christian, which also refutes Perakh.


There are a number of thoughtful comments on the article by Wilkins, from several viewpoints.

Ruse wrote, in the next sentence after the one quoted above: And if Creationism implies God exists and cannot therefore be taught, why then should science which implies God does not exist be taught?

I agree with Ruse on this matter. No one should be allowed to say, in a public school science textbook, or in a public school science class in the US, either that science has proved the existence of God, or that science has proved the non-existence of God. Neither is true.

It is important to consider the word "Creationism." Ruse appears to be using it in the sense of "belief in a supernatural creator." If that is what the word means, then all Christians, as I see it, are creationists. However, the word is also used as short-hand for "Young-Earth Creationism." All Christians are not Young-Earth Creationists. See here for an analysis of strengths and weaknesses of different views on origins held by Christians.

Thanks for reading!

Science and religion: my principles/assumptions

I believe in four principles, relating to the interaction of science and Christianity.

1) The universe is here because of purpose, or plan, of a supernatural, loving, redeeming, omnipotent and omniscient God. See Genesis 1:1, and other scriptures, such as Colossians 1:15-20.

2) Principle 1 cannot be accepted without faith, as Hebrews 11:3 says.

3) God has revealed Himself to us in a number of ways, the most important being by the revelation of Himself in Jesus Christ. One of those ways is through nature. (Romans 1:20, Psalm 19:1-4) Since that is true, we must take the findings of science seriously. If there seems to be a conflict between the findings of science and what the Bible says, our understanding of what the Bible says may be in error, or we may need more findings, or our understanding of those findings may be in error, but, in principle, scientific findings and God's other forms of revelation should not conflict, and should be complementary.

4) Humans are special. God appeared, in Christ, as a human being. Humans are, in some measure, in God's image. Humans are, in some measure, responsible for the care of other living things. (See Genesis 1:26-28) Caring for other things requires that we know something about them.

There are a number of things that I did not say, on purpose. I didn't say, for one, how old the universe is. I didn't say that there are no other planets with life on them, except the earth. I didn't say how the different types of organisms came to be. I didn't say that our universe is the only one. All these matters, and more, are of interest. I have opinions on them, but they are not as important as the four principles given above. The Bible does not tell us any of these things. It does support the four principles above.

Can I prove these principles? Not to everyone's satisfaction. But I assume them to be true.

Everyone has basic assumptions, things they believe in that can't be proven. The most basic of these is the assumption that our senses are feeding us reasonably accurate information. An atheist probably assumes that miracles are impossible, or that there is no God. These things cannot be proven, any more than my four assumptions can.

Thanks for reading!

*   *   *   *   *

I have previously posted on Hebrews 11:3, here, on "Science and the Bible," here, and on "Scriptural Principles that relate to Science," here.

Books on science and religion

I have been blogging here since December, 2004, and I've tried to cover a lot of ground.

One topic that continually interests me, whether it interests any of my readers or not, is the topic of science and religion, in particular, science and Christian faith. I have been reading books on this subject since I was in graduate school, nearly a half a century ago. I was never assigned any such books for a class assignment. I assigned a few such books to myself, and my students, as textbooks, and I read many more because I thought I should. I would guess that I have read at least 75 such books, by many authors, from many viewpoints. Some people, when they see the title of this post, would suppose that "science and religion" has to do with origins, or, if you prefer, evolution. That is a legitimate subset of such books, but the "science and religion" also includes other, more fundamental topics, such as the historical relationship between science and Christianity, the assumptions necessary to do science, and whether or not scientific study is compatible with religious belief at all.

I'd like to do two things in this post. One of them is to post links, for my own benefit, to reviews and discussions of such books that have been published on this blog. More on this below.

The second thing I want to accomplish is to tell you that I have recently finished the best book on science and religion (mainly Christianity, although the author touches on Islam and Judaism somewhat) that I have ever read. That's saying a lot -- I've read some good ones. I wish that I had read Ferguson earlier, and that I had assigned it to some of my classes. That book is The Fire in the Equations: Science, Religion and the Search for God, by Kitty Ferguson. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995) I expect to be posting about that book in the near future, God willing. I had heard of it, and ordered it for the Southern Wesleyan University library, but I had never read it. Shame on me.

Ferguson has a brief article in the Wikipedia, and there is an unofficial Kitty Ferguson web site. (For some reason, it classifies The Fire in the Equations as a "novel," which it certainly is not. The Amazon web page on the book is here, and the Barnes and Noble web page is here.


Books on science and religion that I have reviewed on this blog

The books mentioned below do not include books on environmental or medical ethics, some of which are also about science and religion.

Lest there be any doubt, I do not necessarily agree with everything that each book listed said, and tried to make clear where I did not in my reviews.

I reviewed Lee Strobel's The Case for a Creator. The last of four posts is here. Strobel was really presenting a "Case for Intelligent Design." Although he was well-intentioned, I do not believe that he made a good case, and, in fact, I don't think that such a case can be made. See here for my post on my problems with the Intelligent Design movement. (I have plenty of Christian company in this.)

I reviewed The Language of God, by Francis Collins, who, until recently, was director of the US Human Genome Project, and is a Christian. Collins does a good job of arguing that science and Christianity should be compatible. He also gives his personal testimony. The last post is here.

I reviewed A Biblical Case for an Old Earth, by David Snoke. The last post is here. Snoke is clearly a student of the Bible, and not one to do violence to scripture. He makes some strong arguments that a belief in Scripture is compatible with a belief in an earth much older than a few thousand years, although, of course, everyone is not convinced.

I devoted one post to a review of Michael Shermer's Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design. Shermer, a well-known atheist, was surprisingly respectful of religion in this book.

I reviewed John F. Haught's Is Nature All There Is? here. Haught argues that it is not possible to explain purpose, or critical intelligence, without going outside of nature, which of course, means that he is arguing for the existence of God.

I reviewed The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins, probably the most widely known atheist of our time. The last post is here. Dawkins does not believe that there is a God, and argues that case at considerable length. He does not claim that he has disproved God's existence. Dawkins is an excellent popularizer of science, and has solid scientific credentials.

This post, which is not a review, mentions three important authors in the field, namely Stephen Barr, Ian Barbour, and John C. Polkinghorne. Although I have read books by each of these -- several by Polkinghorne -- I read them before I started blogging, and have never reviewed one of their books.

Here is a post -- not a full review -- about Stephen Jay Gould's Rocks of Ages, wherein this important popularizer of scientist, who was a geologist at Harvard University, and apparently not a believer, indicated that he believed that religious study and belief were legitimate activity for humans.

I have also read, as I said, many other such books, including Darwin on Trial by Phillip E. Johnson, Darwin's Black Box, by Michael Behe, The Genesis Flood by John Whitcomb and Henry Morris, and Davis A. Young's Christianity and the Age of the Earth. I consider these books to be among the most influential volumes on Christianity and science written between 1961 and 1996. Johnson, a lawyer, argued that Darwinism was based on false logic and unsupported assumptions, and founded the Intelligent Design movement. Behe gave some scientific respectability to that movement. Morris founded the modern young-earth creationism movement, and Young's book refuted The Genesis Flood. I have not, so far, at least, reviewed these books here. (I have here documented statements showing that Young-Earth Creationism and the Intelligent Design movement are not very compatible.)

Thanks for reading.