Does Science Deny God?
Is It a Threat to the Christian Faith?

Does science deny God? And is it a threat to the Christian faith?

The answer depends on who you ask. If you survey the literature from the dens of North American fundamentalists and conservatives, you will see them constantly agitating about science—because of its materialist or naturalistic bend—denying God and being a threat to the Christian faith. For them science is a threat, and in particular, when the question of evolution is concerned.

My daughter is a professional biologist, and she has made for herself quite a reputation when it comes to snakes. Where people will run away from snakes, she runs after them. If she can she would try to catch them, examine them, tell them how beautiful they are, and then release them back where they belong. Her life has taught us that, very often, threats are what you make of them. The more we understand a 'threat' the less of a threat they become. And when you fully understand what it is and what we are doing with it, it can cease to be a threat and become a source of immense possibilities. Let's see what this means for science and the Christian faith.

Let me begin with the charge that science denies God. This is a strange charge, because anyone who reads the major publications in the sciences—Nature and Science for the professional scientists, and New Scientist and Scientific American for the 'interested' (in both categories, the first are British and the latter north American)—will quickly discover that God is hardly evermentioned at all.1 One could say that science, as represented by these publications, ignore God, but it is hardly fair to charge it with denying God. But, if what is meant by "denying God" is that scientists do not take God's action into consideration in their philosophy and research protocols, we have then to ask, which God/god should they call as their reference? Hindus worship ten thousand gods. Buddhists do not believe in any god, nor do atheists. Must Buddhists be banned from the sciences? Who is to decide that, e.g., it should be God's action as understood from the biblical-Christian perspective as the standard of reference? Keeping God out of their reckoning, scientists are able, therefore, to communicate their findings in the simplest language (simple to them, i.e.,) to one another so that their findings and conclusion may be criticized for any lack, further fortified with additional evidence if needed, and refined by further investigation. In this way God's name is not abused by being invoked to prop up an explanation that is lacking in evidential or intellectual rigour, and not blasphemed if it turns our wrong.

By Keeping God out of their reckoning, God's name is not abused by being invoked to prop up an explanation that is lacking in evidential or intellectual rigour, and not blesphemed if it turns our wrong.

For my part, as someone trained in the sciences before I came to know Jesus as my Saviour, I am glad that science and scientists do not invoke God in their business. Taking just Christians alone for consideration, we have already made talking about God so confusing, we who are all supposed to know personally and intimately as our Father. Can you imagine what chaos will ensue if scientists get into the act as well? Imagine the following conversation in a clinic somewhere.

Dr Kanna: Mrs Otofi, the test results have come back, and they show that God has put a golf-ball-sized tumour in your uterus.;

Mrs Otafi: Why would God do that? I love Him and I know He loves me. How do you know that it's God who put it there? Maybe it is Satan.

Dr Kanna: I am so sorry this upsets you. I'm sure it is God because, as far as I know, only God has such creative powers, and Satan does not. I can schedule an operation for you to have the tumour removed.

Mrs Otafi: But if God put it there, what right have you to remove it? How can I say yes to your proposal? It will make me an accomplice to your sin in undoing what God has done.

Apart from the point just made, I think it speaks well of science (I am hypostatizing science here) that it leaves God out of its reckoning; it shows modesty. By sticking to naturalistic answers scientists say, in effect, "Look, we don't know everything. We are not supermen. We can only do so much. So we are sticking to just this." In doing so, they also prioritize their efforts but also enlarge their vision. "This is all that we can do with this, but this is also suggests this, this and that, that perhaps you can explore." This is how science has gotten to be such a powerful and useful discipline. It is truly universal in its appeal and in its approach. No one can say that a Fijian or a Tibetan cannot participate in its endeavour simply because of her creed or colour. If a Croat can bring a Croatian perspective that enhances his investigation, he is welcomed to it, provided he speaks intelligibly and intelligently without appealing to sectarian resorts which not everyone can embrace. That "Croatian perspective" may even include his dreams, as illustrated by Kekule (though he was no Croat), the chemist who discovered the structure of the benzene ring. While struggling to make sense of his data, he had a dream in which he saw a snake curled into a ring as it bite its own tail. He still had to explain why the the structure of the benzene molecule is a ring. He cannot, however, expect anyone else to embrace whatever other significance his dream may have for him.

To be sure, there are scientists, men like Francis Crick and Richard Dawkins, who behave badly and think they know so much they can dictate terms to others. But is it almost universally recognized, even in the scientific community, that they are renegades.

After all these that has been said it is, of course, still possible to accuse science of denying God. I was once, while waiting for my wife to finish an errant, deep in thought when this lady broke my reverie and took me I was rude for staring at her. But I wasn't even aware of her until she took me on. My 'staring' was in her eyes rather than mine. Christians who complain about science denying God may be seeing things like that lady, no more than a reading (or misreading) of what is really not there. Take Michael Faraday, e.g.. He never found such a denial. He understood the need and wisdom in not invoking God in his sciences but he served as teacher and elder in his church. Neither did Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, who could write an entire book praising God for the wonders he found in the genes. Or Denis Alexander, or #####.

It is, however, not difficult to understand why north Americans do feel threathened. The north American cultural context, I suggest, has a great deal to do with it. In Britain, there is no separation of state and religion; subjects like religion and science (even evolution) are freely taught in their schools. In north America, the Second Amendment guarantees the freedom of religion, which is translated at a practical level as an iron-clad separation of state and church. Religion cannot, therefore, be taught in schools.2 Belatedly, it seems, north American Christians discovered the terrible mistake this was. Instead of challenging this interpretation of religious freedom, they first took to banning the teaching of evolution in the schools, which resulted in their humiliation in the Scopes' Trial in 1925. In the ninety-five years since, they have continued going to court. Changing strategy, they changed the name of their understanding of creation into Creation Science hoping that that would change public perception about its true nature and get it admitted for equal time in schools. That has not worked.3 In the face of such disappointments how can they not see science as a threat when those whom opposed them in the courts are that ones who point out that what Creation Science is not science at all?

If that is not bad enough, they also keep seeing their own children abandoning their brand of Christian faith for science. Edward O. Wilson is one of the most outstanding scientists alive today. Famous for his work on ants, he is best known for his work on the social behaviour of animals. Wilson grew up in a Southern Baptist background.4 So what happened? Wilson hasn't told his side of the story. Others have. Stephen O'Brien is the head of the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity at the National Cancer Institutes, National Institutes of Health, USA, and is internationally renowned for his contribution to the advances made in molecular genetic research. He provides us with a good example of such tragic parental 'good intentions' that backfired. In his riveting and heart-stirring book on the wonders of the genetic 'back-stories' of animal species, Tears of the Cheetah, he tells us something of the stuff he was nurtured on while growing up:

The Old Testament, as interpreted by the esteemed seventeenth-century archbishop James Ussher, tells us that the earth is 6,005 years old and that Noah boarded his ark 4,348 years ago. As I grew up in the Christian religion of my parents and theirs, I was taught to accept on faith these and other biblical truths. Although my questions would be answered sincerely, there was peril in being too querulous, in not being convinced of the accuracy of the tenets of theological history. The danger was to be branded a heretic, an apostate, a pariah.5

Now it is unfortunate that Dr O'Brien failed to distinguish between the "interpretations" of James Ussher and the "other biblical truths." When parents insists, however, that "interpretations" should also be accepted "on faith" as "biblical truths," and hanging over our children "the peril of being too querulous, in not being convinced" of what they are told, the child cannot be blamed for confusing them, or for rejecting them when they can make up their own minds.

Science does what it does. Scientists, unless they are driven by ulterior motives like Dawkins, do not bother with God for good methodological reasons. Or with Christians. Those who do are few. When they do speak up agitatedly they do so in response to what they perceived to be Christian threat to their realm of work. Given these fact, perhaps it is necessary, certainly wise, to look again at how we bring up their children in the faith. We may discover to our own good where the true threat lies.

In conclusion let me reflect on the fact that the early Christians never worried about the threat that society posed to them. They often suffered grievously. But they prevailed not because they fought back. They couldn't. They prevailed because they knew what they have believed, loved their neighbours and showed a better way. That may be a tack worth trying.

Resources

☰ Alister McGrath, "Has Science killed God?" Faraday Paper No 9 (Apr 2007). 4pp. pdf

Low Chai Hok
©Alberith, 2020