Apologetics 5 - Questions of Science

Having discussed some of the theoretical issues, we’re now dealing with a succession of challenges that are often made by inquirers and critics of the Christian faith. The first of these has to do with a cluster of issues that could fall under the heading of the perceived conflict between science and religion. The issues here are quite broad and could easily consume a course on their own but I’ll summarize a few of those that seem most significant from my perspective.

At the outset I think it is important to emphasize that the perception of tension between science and religion is based on a misunderstanding. The suspicion of science within some Christian circles is rooted in the notion that as scientific discovery progresses, God will become an unnecessary hypothesis.

The link between the advances of science and secularization has become an unquestioned article of faith for many and it is only recently that proponents of this thesis have been forced to admit that the story hasn’t played itself out along these lines (Peter Berger is one of the most significant voices to have backtracked on this belief in secularization).

In class I tried to distinguish between philosophical naturalism and science and argued that we would be far better off identifying some of the problems we have with the former without unnecessarily denigrating the latter. It would be utter foolishness, in an age of laptop computers, suspension bridges and transplant surgeries to deny that science has contributed immeasurably both to the quality of our lives and to our understanding of the world in which we live.

By ‘naturalism’ I simply mean the basic conviction that ‘what is, is all there is’. The belief here is that explanations of causal relationships within the natural realm (what ‘is’) will eventually uncover answers to the most persistent questions that human beings wrestle with, including those questions that have historically been answered by religion.

It is this totalizing confidence in the universal applicability of the scientific method that I think we have cause to be uneasy with. Because it is at this point that the very real benefits of a particular method of investigation are elevated to the level of an ideology and voices that insist that there are very real (and fundamental) questions that cannot be answered in this way are dismissed out of hand (see here for some of my earlier thoughts on the problems of this kind of reductionism).

This introduction obviously fails to address some of the most prominent areas in which the tension between naturalism and Christianity is highest. From my observation the issue that has caused the most angst is the question of the origins of life and how science has allegedly overthrown religious explanations of how we got here. Yet it is precisely this issue that illustrates some of the confusion I’ve talked about above.

While there are, for those of us who take the book of Genesis seriously, a number of hermeneutical issues raised by the scientific consensus in this area, these issues seem to have distracted people from the far more basic questions about the origins of life itself (in the face of massive improbabilities) and the ways in which purpose and structure seem to be hardwired into the fabric of reality. These are the questions, of course, that matter the most and these are the questions that are obscured by the battles that continue to be fought over secondary issues.

So it seems most productive to me to put the emphasis where it belongs: on the real and fundamental differences that exist between naturalism and Christian faith, and point to the various ways in which the assumptions that underpin them make all the difference when it comes to the conclusions at which we arrive.