Science and Faith

Introduction

Have you ever heard someone say something like this:

“I don’t believe in God. I believe in science”

“Faith in God made sense when we didn’t understand how the world works. But now we have science we don’t need faith in God anymore.”

Reflect on this cultural assumption because it underpins future points.

This morning, I’d like us to look at what the relationship between science and faith is really like. And we’ll see that Christianity and science are not, and have never been, in tension.

Faith

Firstly, though, I’d like to touch on what faith is. What would you say faith is? It involves believing in something.

“There is a God”

“There is no God”

Both of these statements are claims to know something and to believe something. They both require faith. There is an idea that Christians believe in something, where atheists believe in nothing. But actually, atheism is a belief system too! To say “I believe God does not exist because of science” is a statement of faith, just as much as “I believe in God and science”.

History of Science and Faith

Did you know: many of history’s leading scientists have been devout Chritians.

Issac Newton - the famous apple falling from the tee; he helped us understanding what gravity is, and how it works; laws of motion; invested calculus - he spoke of science as discovering the wonders of God. Refelcing on some of his scientific research, he said that there is “the supreme God who is eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect”

Franics Bacon - Scientists who believed in God is not a thing of the past. Who knows the name of the current president of the United States? The president has a scientific advisor, it is the most important role you can image for a scientist, advising the presdient of American on matters of science. The scientific advisor is a man called Franics Collins. He is arguably the greatest science of our generation, and has won every award and honour you can imagine, including the Presdiential medal of freedom. Who knows what DNA is? A huge amount of what we know about DNA came from this great Francis Collins. And you know what, he is a committed Christian. His most famous book is actually not a scientific textbook, it’s a book called: “The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief”.

Conclusion: This idea that science and faith are in conflict is what we see in the media, and it’s a sterotype. Of course, there are scientists who are atheists, but there are also world class scientists who are Christians. That’s worth clearing up. If you were to say to Franic Collins, who is arguably the world’s greatest scientist: “I don’t believe in God, I believe in science”, he would be totally baffled, because to him, his scientific discoveries only serve to strengthen and highlight his belief that this world must have a designer.

Different Questions

Many thinkers have pointed out that Christianity and science can’t be in disagreement, becuase they’re not answering the same questions. At school you might remember your different types of questions: who, what, where, when, why.

Science is interested in answering how and when questions.

How did this thing work?

When did thid things happen?

The Bible is interested in answering who and why questions.

Who am I?

What is my purpose?

Why am I here?

Science cannot answer these questions, and it doens’t even try to. Science simply does not care about these sorts of questions.

Kettle analogy. Why is the kettle boiling?

A how answer: find the science of this.

A why answer: because I wanted a cup of tea.

Both are true. Imagine Mark and I having an argument about why a kettle is boiling, and I’m yelling “it’s boiling because of the chemistry!” and he’s telling “it’s boiling because I want tea!” It would be ridiculous. Science and faith are answering a different set of questions, so it seems silly to pitch them against one another.

One Area of Conflict: The Universe Began to Exist

Having said that, there was one incident last century where people thought science and faith were in conflict, but then it turned out that they werent.

Here’s a question: do you think the universe has always been here, or do you think it had a beginning where it began to exist?

How do you think we know the universe had a beginning? Big Bang

100 years ago, if there was a tension between Christians and atheist scientists, this was it. Atheists were determiend that the universe was timeless, and that is never began. It was just always here. Christians, by contrast, pointed to the first line in their Bible; “in the beginning, God crated the heavens and the earth”. Christians were adament that actually, the universe had a beginning. But then, throughout the last century, more and more scientific evidence started coming forwards which pointed towards the universe having begun to exist. One of the leading figures in this was a guy called Fred - Fred Hoyle. In a radio interview he said that the universe having a beginning was ridiculous. “there is no way” he said “that the whole universe could come to exist from one big bang.” Well, by the 1960s, the final piece of evidence was discovered to put the nail in the coffin, we found conclusive evidence that the universe had a beginning. The atheist scientists announced this: “we have now found evidence that the universe is not eternal, as we once thought, but actually began to exist”. To which the Christians thought “yeah, no kidding, we’ve been telling you this for years!” Christianity 1 - 0 Atheism.

Science and faith were found to be in agreement with the disovery of the big bang: yes, they universe had a beginning!

It’s very strange that today, the Big Bang has become an atheist slogan. “I don’t believe God created the universe,” people say, “I think the unvierse came from the Big Bang.” But all the Big Bang shows us, is that the universe began to exist, and that’s what Christians have always said. The real question is: what could have caused the Big Bang? Who or what is the “big banger”? Because huge big pans tend not to come from nowhere.

Creation and the 6 days

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Can Science Explain Everything

Things science can’t explain.

Science relies on other ways of finding truth: logic and maths

Philosophical questions can’t be answered by science: belief in the external world.

Ethical question: what is good and evil? Moral argument.

Aestheitc judgmenets: the beautiful.

Faith in God

•The fact that we are here gives us faith.

Did you know: science has often been used to support God’s existence? I will give just one example of this. It’s a bit complex, so I won’t spend long on it, but I want to mention it.

There’s a scientific law some of you might have heard of, called cause and effect. (invite someone up and push them over as a demonstration).

Things have a cause. Example; if a horse randomly appeared next to me here in the room, you would all be completed amazed. Horses don’t just appear out of nowhere; that’s not possible. That’s why it’s so impressive when a magician pulls a rabit out of a hat. Things come from somewhere. When there’s an expolosion, there’s always a cause. Gunpowder, perhaps, that someone has put there to make the explosion.Do you see what I’m getting at? What I’m saying is that because everything that exsits has a cause, the universe, which began to exist, must have a cause. A big bang has to have a big banger.

But what could bring the unvierse into existence? Well, to create the universe, the creator must be beyond the universe, outside the universe. The universe is made up of three things: time, space, and matter (or stuff). That means whatever creates the unvierse must be beyond time, beyond space, and beyond stuff. Furthermore, to create the universe, the creator must be ultimately powerful. And to create the universe, the creator msut be personal, because to create a personal thing. Doors and walls, they don’t create stuff, they have no personality, they’re just doors and walls. Personal beings create things. So the beginning of the universe points us towards a timeless, spaceless, maximally powerful, personal creator. We have a word for that, and that word is God.

•That the world works gives us faith.

•That we believe in right and wrong gives us faith.

•That God has revealed himself in creation gives us faith.

•That Jesus rose from the dead gives us faith.

•That we can experience God gives us faith.

Q&A

Allow the remainig time for questions.