In this lesson, we’re once again looking at common skeptical objections to Christianity.  As we’ve done in previous lessons, we’ll try to examine not only the objections themselves but also the presuppositions that might lead people to think that a particular objection is persuasive.  We’ll examine, for instance, the presuppositions that might lead someone like Richard Dawkins to think that science has ruled out the existence of God.  But we’ll also spend a lot of time talking about why one particular subset of scientific-related objections is a particular problem for many believers.  In fact, of all the lessons in this series, this one might be especially relevant to parents of believing teens or youth who are trying to prepare them for the questions that they’ll likely encounter in their educational journeys.

 

What attitude should Christians have toward science? 

Psalm 19 shows that God has revealed himself through both the creation and his written word.  For that reason, Christians should view science and investigations of the natural world as a means to understand God more fully.  We also realize that if we fully understood nature and the Bible, there would be no conflict between the two.  Of course, because our understanding of both nature and the Bible is not perfect, there may be conflict between our understanding of nature and our understanding of the Bible.  But this is only an apparent conflict.  To resolve the conflict, we should study both nature and the Bible more deeply to see if we can discover the harmony between these two forms of God’s revelation.

 

Has science ruled out the existence of God? 

Atheists, of course, have a very different view of science.  They often view it as a path to truth that, in some cases, has disproved religious myth.  Some have even claimed that science has ruled out the possibility of God’s existence.  Atheists who make this claim usually believe the following points:

• In the past, people invoked God to explain the mysteries of the universe.
• Science has shown that there are naturalistic explanations for effects that people used to attribute to supernatural causes.
• In fact, science now shows that life and the universe could have begun through purely naturalistic means.
• By contrast, science has not shown us God.

Therefore, God does not exist.

What is the problem with this line of reasoning?  It misunderstands the limits of what science can discover and it misunderstands the nature of God.  Consider an analogy presented by John Polkinghorne, an Anglican priest who for years before his ordination was a professor of physics at the University of Cambridge.  In Polkinghorne’s scenario, someone might ask the question: Why is the water in the kettle boiling on the stove?  Someone might give a scientific explanation, saying that the water is boiling because heat was applied to the lower surface of the kettle, causing the molecules of water to begin moving faster and eventually bringing the water to the boiling point.  Or, Polkinghorne said, someone might answer the question this way: The water is boiling because I wanted to make tea.  What is the difference between these two explanations?  The first explanation focused strictly on the material process of boiling, but did not address the crucial “why” question.  The second explanation addressed the “why” question, but did not deal with the “how.”

Science, Polkinghorne said, is very good at answering “how” questions, but it’s not equipped to give us the “why.”  Religion (or, for the Christian, the Bible) might answer the “why,” but it doesn’t tell us very much about the “how.”

If we reexamine the four skeptical statements above with this distinction between the “how” and “why” questions in mind, we might answer them this way:

• In the past, people invoked God to explain the mysteries of the universe. – Yes, but this was a misuse of religion. The Bible does not picture God as intervening in a creative process only at periodic moments, but instead as controlling the entire process – and yet doing so through natural means, in many cases.  There is both a natural and a spiritual explanation for rain, and one doesn’t rule God out of the picture simply because one has discovered the water cycle – any more than the discovery of how water boils rules out the existence of someone who turned on the stove to make tea.  God is not merely a “God of the gaps” – that is, a force to be invoked as an explanation for natural processes that we cannot explain through science at the moment.  People who believe in a “God of the gaps” tend to lose their faith when science explains a process that they once thought only God could account for.  But a biblical view of God is very different.
• Science has shown that there are naturalistic explanations for effects that people used to attribute to supernatural causes. – Yes, this is the purpose of science. By showing how God has orchestrated the universe, science doesn’t make God smaller; it makes us understand God’s creative process more fully.
• In fact, science now shows that life and the universe could have begun through purely naturalistic means. – This is debatable. There’s actually a lot of question about how the Big Bang started, as we’ll see next week, but even if we could show definitively that life and the universe could have begun through natural means, we still haven’t ruled out God; we have simply shown that it’s likely that God brought the universe into being through indirect natural means rather than through direct intervention.  Again, science can give us a lot of insight into the how, and it might be able to build a convincing case that God brought the universe into existence gradually and without a lot of direct supernatural intervention, but it cannot tell us much about the purpose behind the universe any more than a study of molecular processes could tell us whether or not there was someone who wanted to make tea with the water boiling on the stove.
• By contrast, science has not shown us God. – Because God is not a physical entity in the universe, we would not expect science to discover God per se. But belief in God might offer a way to make the entire universe intelligible in a way that scientific materialism cannot.

So why should a person who believes in a strictly scientific materialistic worldview believe in God?  Consider this: Science is built on the premise that the universe is intelligible – that is, that it operates according to regular, predictable physical constants, and that we can understand these physical constants through investigation and experimentation.  This view accords best with theism.

Consider three worldviews and their possible implications for science:

• Animism / paganism – Natural forces are controlled by gods or spirits who behave in petty, arbitrary ways.
• Atheistic materialism – There is nothing supernatural beyond the universe, and there was no creation. Everything is part of the natural order.  Everything is simply a (possibly random) arrangement of atoms and molecules.
• Christian theism (and deism) – The universe is the creation of a rational God who set up predictable, orderly processes that reflect his purposes and character, and who created humans with the capacity to discover these processes.

Which of these views offers the best philosophical foundation for scientific inquiry?  If you believe in the possibility of rational, scientific investigation, you need to consider whether your worldview is consistent with the possibility of rationality and an ordered universe.

Science thus points us to God, but not necessarily by showing us that only God could account for certain phenomena.  Instead, a proper understanding of science and God should show that the world becomes intelligible only when we have a theistic worldview.

 

The perceived conflict between science and faith

The notion that there is a fundamental conflict between religion and science is a staple of contemporary atheist mythology.  For many contemporary atheists, science is a matter of reason and truth, whereas religion is a matter of dogma, faith, irrationality, and controlled thinking.  Some of their favorite stories about the conflict between scientific truth and irrational, dogmatic religion include the imprisonment of Galileo in the 17^th century and the Scopes trial in the early 20^th century.

But actually, for much of Christianity’s history, educated Christians believed that their faith was perfectly in harmony with science.  Most of the European and North American scientists of the 17^th, 18^th, and 19^th centuries (and some from the 20^th century) were either Christians or deists.  A Christian theistic worldview gives a good foundation for science, because Christians should believe in the intelligibility and rationality of God’s general revelation (the natural world).  It was a Christian culture in Europe that produced the scientific revolution of the 17^th century.      Only in the last 150 years has the idea developed that science and faith are fundamentally at odds.

 

Evolution and the Bible

The major area in which contemporary American Christians are likely to encounter a perceived conflict between science and faith is in the area of evolutionary theory.  I want to suggest a few ways in which Christians have tried to resolve this perceived conflict.  Perhaps none of these approaches are fully satisfactory, but they offer some possibilities.  I’d like us to keep a few principles in mind as we go through this survey of ideas:

• It’s important to separate our position on creation and evolution from the gospel or the truth of Christianity. It’s important for Christians (especially younger Christians) to know that evolutionary theory does not rule out God or Christianity.  Christians’ evaluation of the debate between evolution and creationism is important, but we should be careful to distinguish this debate from the central core of our faith.  It’s essential for Christians to assert that God is our creator, but we shouldn’t treat a debate about how God might have created as equivalent to a debate about whether God exists or the Bible is true.
• It’s important to recognize that faithful, orthodox, Bible-believing Christians differ in their views of evolution and creation, and we should treat each of their views with charity, even if we might also critique some of these positions. Clearly, not all of these views are equally correct, but each position deserves respectful consideration.

Before the mid-19^th century, the idea that there was a conflict between science and Protestant Christianity, or between the Bible and science, would have sounded strange to most American Protestant Christians.  And indeed, before the mid-19^th century, it’s difficult to think of any scientific discovery that American Christians found problematic.  Prior to the publication of Charles Darwin’s explication of the theory of evolution in 1859, many scientifically educated Christians had already begun to accept the idea of an old earth because of new geologic evidence, and they adjusted their understanding of the Bible accordingly.  Evolutionary theory presented a more difficult issue for some of them.  Many Christians, especially those who were more theologically liberal, accepted evolution as God’s method of creating the world.  But many others did not.  Those who found evolution theologically problematic usually cited the following objections to it:

• Conflict with the Bible’s presentation of natural history: The picture that evolutionary theory presented of life’s origins did not seem to match Genesis 1 and 2.
• Human origins: Evolutionary theory did not seem to leave room for a direct creation of human beings in God’s image.
• Theodicy: Evolutionary theory pictured a world of death, suffering, and struggle before the fall. Was this compatible with the idea of creation before the fall being “very good”?

 

Christians have had a variety of response to evolution, and I want to survey the most popular of these approaches, beginning with those that are most directly opposed to the theory of evolution and moving to those that are most in harmony with it.

 

Young earth creationism – This view says that God created the universe within the last 10,000 years, and that there has been no macroevolution of species.  The fossil record is the result of the Genesis flood.

This view (minus the explanation of the fossil record) is roughly equivalent to what most Protestants believed from the 16^th century through the mid-19^th.  But in its current incarnation, it is primarily the product of George McCready Price (an early 20^th-century Seventh Day Adventist) and John Whitcomb and Henry Morris (co-authors of The Genesis Flood, published in 1961).  Morris was a hydraulic engineering professor who popularized the idea that the entire fossil record was the product of the Genesis flood, and after the success of his initial book on the subject, he went on to found the Institute for Creation Research.  By the 1980s, young earth creationism had become one of the most popular approach to origins in conservative evangelical churches.

Interpretation of Genesis 1&2: Claims to read these chapters literally.  Believes in literal, 24-hour creation days.

View of contemporary evolutionary theory: Completely opposed to contemporary evolutionary theory.

Strengths and weaknesses: The strength of YEC is clearly its attempt to be faithful to the scriptural record.  It is the only view among those mentioned that offers a fully literal reading of Gen. 1, and it is the only view that avoids death before the fall.  Its reading of Genesis 1 is the one that nearly all Christians adopted between the Protestant Reformation and the mid-19^th century.  Its greatest weakness is probably the limited scientific support for its young earth view, which struggles to account for the geologic record and a number of other evidences of the universe’s great age.  Of all the views discussed, YEC presents the greatest conflict with contemporary scientific understandings of the universe, so someone who believes in YEC will necessarily have to believe that contemporary science is wrong in some of its fundamental assumptions.  For those who believe that the scientific evidence for an old earth is compelling, YEC will probably not be a legitimate interpretive option.  YEC will be most attractive to people who will side with special revelation in any perceived conflict between special revelation and general revelation, or people who take a common-sense realist approach to science (that is, they believe that a person can use common sense to evaluate scientific evidence without special training).  YEC advocates tend to have a very skeptical view of the academic scientific establishment; they believe that the scientific establishment has misread the scientific evidence.

Resources from a YEC perspective: Books by Henry Morris (e.g., Scientific Creationism) and Ken Ham; Institute for Creation Research; Answers in Genesis.

 

Old earth creationism / progressive creationism – This view, which was the leading view of origins among conservative Protestants for the first half of the 20^th century and which is still popular in some circles, accepts the idea of the old earth and death before the fall, but does not accept evolutionary theory.  It insists on a unique, special creation of human beings.  Its leading advocate today is probably Hugh Ross’s organization Reasons to Believe.

Interpretation of Genesis 1&2: May accept a variety of interpretations, but the most common is the day / age view – that is, the view that the “days” of Genesis 1 are creation eras, not literal 24-hour days.  More recently, some adherents of this view may be attracted to the “framework” view of John Walton.  OEC advocates read Genesis 2 fairly literally, and accept a more-or-less literal view of most of the rest of Genesis 3-11 (although some adherents of this view may believe that the flood of Genesis 6-8 was local rather than global).

View of contemporary evolutionary theory: By accepting an old universe, OEC avoids the most obvious scientific weakness of young earth creationism, but because of its skepticism about evolution itself, there is still a lot of conflict between contemporary scientific understandings and old earth creationism.

Strengths and weaknesses: Perhaps the greatest strength of OEC is its success in salvaging the unique creation of human beings and the fall (Gen. 2-3) without running into some of the scientific problems of YEC.  Its weaknesses from a YEC standpoint include its non-literal interpretation of Genesis 1, its belief that there was death before the fall, and, for at least some versions of OEC, its non-literal interpretation of Gen. 6-8.  The day-age theory clearly requires some creative or unconventional readings of the Genesis 1 account, because the days of Genesis 1 do not neatly correspond to the ages required for a 13-billion-year history of the universe.  (Old-earth creationists, for example, do not believe that the sun and stars were created after plants, even though this is the order presented in Genesis 1).  Those who accept evolutionary theory will have other reasons to criticize OEC, because in their view, OEC, despite accommodating contemporary scientific views of the age of the universe, appears to ignore a lot of scientific evidence about the genealogy and evolution of life on earth and is thus suspect on scientific grounds (even if, from the perspective of evolutionists, it is not quite as objectionable as YEC).  As a middle-of-the-road position between young earth creationism and theistic evolution, OEC gets criticized by both camps for both its scientific and biblical interpretations.  But as a middle-of-the-road position, OEC also avoids some of the most obvious pitfalls of either camp.  To many Christians, OEC will seem like an unsatisfactory compromise, but for others, it will seem to offer a happy medium between two untenable extremes.  OEC will probably be most attractive to conservative Christians who find the “young earth” part of YEC difficult to accept on scientific grounds, but who are persuaded by creationist literature that the evidence for evolution is weak, and who believe that OEC generally corresponds with the biblical record.

Resources from an OEC perspective: Books by Hugh Ross (e.g., The Creator and the Cosmos); Reasons to Believe.

 

Intelligent design: The intelligent design movement emerged at the beginning of the 1990s, and quickly replaced young earth creationism as the most popular conservative Christian response to evolution (or “Darwinism,” as many ID proponents prefer to call it).  Because ID doesn’t propose a theory of origins per se, but instead merely criticizes Darwinian evolutionary for gaps that it allegedly cannot explain, ID is a “big tent” that encompasses some people who read Genesis 1 and 2 very literally and others who don’t read it that way at all.  In short, ID is the assertion that although evolution may have happened, naturalism cannot account for every step in the origins of life.  For instance, many ID proponents have cited the cell as an example of “irreducible complexity” that cannot be explained through a naturalistic process of evolution.  A creator, they argue, must have intervened to design the system.

Interpretation of Genesis 1&2: Varies.  Some of the most theologically conservative proponents of ID may essentially be old-earth creationists and will read Genesis 1&2 in the way that other OEC advocates do.  Others who may accept a great deal of evolution will probably be attracted to the “framework” view.  (For more on this view, see the description of theistic evolution below).

View of evolutionary theory: Varies.  ID may be willing to accept some of the theory, but is strongly critical of assertions that, without outside guidance, evolution can account for the origins of life and the diversity of life forms.

Strengths and weaknesses: The strength of ID is its flexibility and its willingness to accommodate a much greater amount of contemporary science than YEC or OEC can.  Because ID doesn’t present a comprehensive theory of origins – but merely has to demonstrate weaknesses in naturalistic evolutionary theory – it’s much easier to win a debate as an ID proponent than as a creationist.  For this reason, ID has become very popular as a “big tent” in which critics of evolution, of whatever theological stripe, can gather.  But this flexibility can also be a weakness, because ID doesn’t really present a firm account of what actually happened at creation.  ID also risks the problem that any “God of the gaps” theory has, which is that, as scientists discover answers to the problems with evolutionary theory that ID raises, the role for God in ID’s theory of creation will become smaller and smaller.

Resources from an ID perspective: Books by Phillip Johnson (e.g., Darwin on Trial); Michael Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box; Michael Denton’s Evolution: A Theory in Crisis; Stephen Meyer’s Signature in the Cell.

 

Theistic evolution (conservative version): Since the time of Darwin, many Christians (including some moderately conservative ones) have accepted the theory of evolution but have believed that God guided the process to reflect his purposes.  A consistent theistic evolutionist will say that God did not directly intervene at any stage of the process (though some might leave room for direct intervention at the very end, with the ensoulment of Adam and Eve), and this differentiates them from the ID camp.  However, as Christians, they believe that God’s hand was in the entire process in the same way that God orchestrates human history.

Interpretation of Genesis 1&2: Christian theistic evolutionists usually read Genesis 1&2 in ways that are similar to John Walton’s framework hypothesis – that is, the view that Genesis 1&2 use mythological motifs from the ancient Near East to teach theological concepts but were not designed to be a scientific or historical record.  Many theistic evolutionists would also say the same about all of Genesis 1-11.  At its extreme, this view can eliminate room for a historical fall (which is obviously theologically problematic), but some theistic evolutionists salvage a unique creation of Adam and a historical fall through a “federal headship” view of Adam – that is, the view that God chose Adam out of a larger people group to be a “federal head” of humanity.

View of evolutionary theory: Accepts all of evolutionary theory, but unlike atheists who believe in a naturalistic version of the theory, theistic evolutionists do not believe that evolution was random or purposeless; they believe that God guided the process to accomplish his purposes for creation.

Strengths and weaknesses: The greatest strength of this view is the fact that it eliminates nearly all of the perceived conflict between Christian faith and contemporary scientific understandings of origins.  Those who perceive a conflict between evolution and scripture, though, will see this as a weakness, and will view theistic evolutionists as compromisers with the philosophy of the world.  Theistic evolutionists have various ways of interpreting the early chapters of Genesis, but nearly all of those ways end up heavily deemphasizing the historicity of those chapters and reading them in a metaphorical, poetic, or mythological sense.  Whether a person can accept theistic evolutionists’ readings of Genesis will depend heavily on how that person views the genre of this section of the Bible.  If the genre is poetry or myth, as some theistic evolutionists argue, theistic evolutionists’ non-literal readings won’t seem very problematic, but if the genre is a literal, historically factual account, these readings might be much more questionable.

Resources from a conservative theistic evolutionary perspective: Francis S. Collins’s The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief; John Walton’s The Lost World of Genesis 1; Denis Alexander’s Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose?; Biologos website.

 

Theistic evolution (liberal version): Like the conservative version of theistic evolution, the liberal version of this view accepts all of evolutionary theory, but in addition, it also accepts the contingent and unfinished nature of the evolutionary process, which has become an important idea to many contemporary evolutionary theorists.  In other words, liberal theistic evolutionists believe (like their secular counterparts) that evolution is still ongoing and that humans may continue to evolve into another species or become extinct altogether.  They will also frequently accept atheists’ assertion that evolution is random and unplanned; God may have started the process without a full awareness of how it would unfold, they say.  Liberal proponents of theistic evolution tend to be attracted to ideas of open theism (the idea that God does not know the future, because the future has not been determined) or process theology (the idea that the relationship between an evolving creation and God is so close that creation changes God as it progresses and develops).  Liberal theistic evolutionists deny the fall in any historic sense; they say that each of us repeats the fall in our life or that the fallen nature of creation is embedded in the evolutionary process.  Similarly, they tend to downplay traditional understandings of atonement (particularly the substitutionary view) and instead emphasize the incarnation and the cross as manifestations of God’s love entering into creation.

View of Genesis 1&2: Liberal theistic evolutionists usually have a liberal view of scripture as well, since their view of scripture parallels their view of creation – that is, they see scripture as an evolving project of human understandings of God, and they view the church’s understanding of scripture and truth as a progressive, evolving process.

View of evolutionary theory: Except for seeing a spiritual aspect to the universe, liberal theistic evolutionists’ view of evolutionary theory and science is identical to that of secular evolutionary scientists.  For that reason, proponents of a liberal view of theistic evolution almost never encounter much conflict between their faith and contemporary science.

Strengths and weaknesses: Proponents of liberal versions of theistic evolution will no doubt see its central strength as its ability to accommodate all aspects of contemporary secular understandings of the universe, while still remaining open to the existence of God, but the weakness of the theory is that the God that liberal theistic evolutionists believe in does not seem to be the God of scripture.  By denying God’s sovereignty and immutability, the fall, human uniqueness, and substitutionary atonement, liberal theistic evolutionists have created a theology that is incompatible with Reformed (and historic Christian) understandings of scripture.

Resources from a liberal theistic evolutionary perspective: John F. Haught’s Making Sense of Evolution: Darwin, God, and the Drama of Life; Kenneth R. Miller’s Finding Darwin’s God: A Scientist’s Search for Common Ground between God and Evolution.  

 

How should we evaluate these views?  In my opinion, Christians should avoid dogmatism when stating their view on the precise way to harmonize the early chapters of Genesis and the scientific record.  I think that it would be wise for Christian parents to explain to their kids that Christians have adopted a range of views on this question, and that our faith is not tied to one particular view.  However, we should not be afraid to critique some of these views and to recognize their weaknesses and limitations.

I think that any view that attempts to remain faithful to scripture and God’s revelation in the natural world needs to include all of the following:

• It needs to offer a compelling and accurate account of all of the relevant scientific evidence, because the natural world is God’s revelation of himself, and a Christian has the responsibility to respect its truth.
• It needs to present a view of the early chapters of Genesis that is faithful to both their original meaning and to the way that those chapters fit into redemptive history. (The themes from Gen. 1-11 occur repeatedly throughout the rest of the Bible, so any legitimate interpretation of Gen. 1-11 will need to take into account not only what those chapters say but also how the themes from those chapters relate to the rest of scripture).
• It needs to preserve and account for the truths that: a) God is sovereign over his creation; b) God had a purpose for creation; c) humans are made in God’s image and are distinct from the rest of creation; and d) there was a historical fall, and that all humanity sinned in Adam and is therefore in need of redemption.

Christians will differ in their evaluation of whether each of these views meets these three criteria.  For example, critics of YEC will charge that it fails to meet criterion #1, whereas most of those who accept YEC believe that it does account for the scientific evidence.  Critics of the framework interpretation of Genesis 1-2 (an interpretation commonly favored by theistic evolutionists) will say that this view does not meet criterion #2, but advocates of the framework view believe that it does.

The only view that unquestionably fails to meet at least one of these criteria is the liberal version of theistic evolution.  Even the proponents of this view will admit that the view does not meet criterion #3, and they may concede that it doesn’t meet criterion #2 as well.  For that reason, this view is not a legitimate option for Bible-believing, evangelical Christians.

But in my view, Christians can consider the other four views as legitimate interpretive options, provided that they are convinced that the views meet all three of these criteria.  If, however, they are not convinced that a view meets these criteria, they need to abandon it.  A Christian who is absolutely convinced that YEC cannot account for the evidence of general revelation needs to reject YEC, and likewise a Christian who does not believe that the biblical interpretations of theistic evolutionists are valid needs to eschew the view of theistic evolution.  But of course, many Christians see no problem with YEC’s interpretation of the scientific record, and others see no problem with theistic evolutionists’ reading of Genesis, and for those Christians, there might be no reason to reject these positions even though some Christians find the views untenable.  Because our interpretations of both the biblical and scientific evidence are prone to error, we need to be charitable toward Christians whose views on these matters differ from ours, and we need to be open to reevaluation of our position when it is warranted.  Above all, we need to separate our view of the science of origins from our defense of Christian truth claims.  Christians who are convinced of the truth of evolutionary theory should not allow their views of science to call their faith into question; they instead need to continue to pray and study in order to find ways to harmonize their understanding of general and special revelation.