Does the Bible Conflict with Science?
The following is a transcript of the video above, edited for readability.
I think the Bible is not in conflict with true science, but the problem is that science in our day has gotten heavily mixed with what I would call an impersonal list or materialist worldview that says that scientific studies are all there is. And the popularizers tend to carry that worldview right along with their discussions of fascinating scientific discoveries and results. And if I'm a Christian and a parent and watching something like that, it's almost, you have to do a debriefing of saying the science is wonderful, this overlay of the materialism. And there is no God who has brought these wonderful things into being.
That kind of thing is just a philosophy that is driving people to misinterpret what they're seeing in terms of genuine scientific results. The rhetoric that's out there in the world is evolution is established. It's a fundamental theory. Just get over it and accept it. However, that's really sloppy rhetoric and sloppy science because you could distinguish, that the word evolution can mean a lot of different things. And typically the mainstream discussion, and popular discussion doesn't make the distinction.
So you can talk about, for instance, evolution is meaning just change over time. The automobile has evolved. Marxist theory has evolved. That has nothing to do with the Darwinian theory of the evolution of life. And then within the discussion of how did life come to be the way we observe it now, you can distinguish between microevolution, which means you can breed dogs. All right. And everybody's accepted that. Darwin actually used that as a kind of the jumping-off point. He talked to breeders. Everybody knew about that. You can breed dogs. There can be small variations, and you can even direct those variations as a human breeder.
And then the other one is to make macroevolution, meaning can you get whales from land mammals, right? That's a much more difficult question. And if you can by gradual stages, did God do it? Was he involved and using natural processes? So even if it did take place, which I'm not willing to grant, if God is involved, it's a very different picture, a very different worldview than saying this just happened with no purpose.
The third view of evolution is they talk about evolution in terms of the origin of life. But the origin of life is a tremendous problem for people who are materialists, because you have to have so much there, even in the first cell. Nobody knows how to do it, but they sort of gloss over that point. The discussion about evolution is complex because there's a lot of data to take into account. And there are a lot of higher-level assumptions to take into account. I would recommend, sorry to mention my own book, but I wrote a book called Redeeming Science, which has a significant piece that discusses evolution. Jack Collins has a book called Science and Faith: Friends or Foes? Both of those are I think, good introductions. And from there, there are many other books that I think can serve as resources.
(Article first published December 4, 2013)
Do the Bible and Science Contradict Each Other?
Christianity.com: Do the Bible and science contradict each other?-Chris Daniel from christianitydotcom2 on GodTube.
Right. Yeah, that's a big issue in our day. Whether or not the Bible and science contradicts each other is pretty hot. I think, again, the quick answer to that is no, science in the Bible do not contradict each other. But again, it needs some nuancing. And the paradigm that I operate out of, which I think is biblical, is you have God, the revealer, the communicator who has revealed his truth through general and special revelation. So if you think about a graph here, you've got God, and he reveals himself through general and special revelation, scripture and nature. He reveals himself in those two ways. It's impossible for scripture and nature to contradict each other in what they're telling us about the nature of the world we live in. And the reason, of course, is because God authored them both. God is the one speaking through both.
So, no, scripture, the Bible, and nature cannot contradict each other. Of course, it gets a little more complicated than that because science is the human fallible interpretation of nature, just as theology is the human fallible interpretation of scripture. So either one of these theology or science could air because they're fallible human interpretations of an infallible divine communication. And if you think about it it's interesting because then if you ask the question, if you ask the question that you asked originally, can science and the Bible contradict each other? Now that I've nuanced it, I want to change my answer, and I want to say, yeah, they can contradict each other. And if they do, the Bible wins every time. It has to because God's infallible communication always trumps man's fallible interpretation. It cuts both ways.
Now we can ask a different question. Can our theology contradict nature? And to be fair, we have to answer the same way. Yes, our theology can contradict nature. And if it does, nature wins every time. And the reason is the same because God's infallible revelation, in this case, general revelation, what we call nature, always trumps man's fallible interpretation of that divine revelation.
Okay. So it works both ways. We have to be honest about that. But really, where do we live? Where we live is we're always interpreting. So we're really living in the world of theology and science. That's the real question. Man's interpretation of nature and man's interpretation of scripture. So the real question is, can theology and science contradict each other? And certainly they can because man can air on either side. But if they do, the proper thing to do is go back to what God has revealed, both in scripture and in nature, special revelation and general revelation, and ask the question, where have I heard God wrongly, and how can I correct that?
(Article first published April 9, 2013)
Has Science Proven that God Doesn't Exist?
Christianity.com: Has science proven that God doesn't exist?-Chad Miller from christianitydotcom2 on GodTube.
It's interesting to look back at how science is constantly changing. Science is the discovery of reality, if you will, based on things that are provable and verifiable in the minds of scientists. Well, it was provable and verifiable for some time that the world was flat. And it was provable and verifiable for some time that computations, complex computations could never be done by a machine that only a human could do that. We can go on and on at how science constantly... Actually the nature of science is to contradict old science as new discoveries are made and yet the word of God stands intact. Having withstood onslaught for thousands of years, it stands intact and still living sharper than any two-edged sword. It's just incredible to me, the things that constantly invalidate the science that has held itself up as being bigger than God.
Somewhere in scripture, I think I've read the fool that said it, his heart, there is no God. I would encourage folks to pick up a science book from the 1920s, 1930s if you can find some texts from the late 1800s even, and just see how foolish some of that science appears that's held itself up as fact. Consider the source.
(Article first published November 20, 2012)
Photo Credit: GettyImages/kevron2001
