Is Your Christian Faith Compatible with Science?

On the theme of the compatibility of Faith and Science, and the question of whether or not a scientist can believe in God, I find the article, 'Why Scientists Must Believe in God' to be significantly profound. There has been a fascinating game being played with the scientific facts of our world for a very long time. Extremely brilliant people, who openly reject and mock the notion of a complex creator intelligence, for the sake of logic and reason, spend virtually all of their time and energies studying the complexities and creative genius of every aspect of our reality. These same individuals stake their existential belief systems on the inviolable nature of the laws and principles which govern the universe, which they discovered in their misguided pursuit of the truth. Shockingly enough, they despise the mere suggestion of a universal lawgiver who presides over those very principles. The article vividly points out the folly of this short-sighted thinking by saying, "Scientists describe the regularities in God’s word governing the world. So-called natural law is really the law of God or word of God, imperfectly and approximately described by human investigators." (Poythress, 2003)

These human investigators, however, have once again come to a crossroads in their ability to defend this tendency to escape from the conclusions that should obviously be drawn by the facts before them. That in essence, intelligent designs require an intelligent designer, and that laws and principles by their very nature, require a lawgiver/enforcer and principal architect. In a very recent article written this year, the cracks in this façade were made abundantly clear. It begins by saying, "A new wave of scientists argues that mainstream evolutionary theory needs an urgent overhaul. …and the conflict may determine the future of biology." (Buranyi, 2022) What is the conflict you may ask… the same thing that Bible-believing creationists have been alleging for decades. That evolution is a charade, an anti-creation myth, and a poor substitute for scientific discovery. That, “…the basic story of evolution, as recounted in countless textbooks and pop-­science bestsellers… according to a growing number of scientists, …is absurdly crude and misleading, and that …underneath all this lurks another, deeper question: whether the idea of a grand story of biology is a fairytale we need to finally give up." (Buranyi, 2022)

Look, just because some dudes conducted a few experiments and arrived at some conclusions about their findings; it doesn't follow that they have unraveled all of the mysteries of the universe. Scientists enjoy taking credit for establishing the "Laws of Nature", and what the absolute principles of physics are, but in the end, God always has something more to say about His creation than what our puny minds are privy to. They are after all, His laws and His principles, not theirs! What arrogance we have to think we have unlocked all of the truth this world has to offer in a couple hundred years of trying, using the "scientific method". What is possible and what is not possible? What is natural and what is supernatural? These are not questions we can answer accurately now or ever, this side of eternity. We call them miracles and supernatural phenomenon, but really what God is doing, is showing us that we just don't know all that there is to be known concerning the secrets to His creation, but Jesus (the one who created it), He does! 

The psalmist was so right when he declared,  "Why do the people plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, And the rulers take counsel together, Against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying, “Let us break Their bonds in pieces And cast away Their cords from us.” He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; The Lord shall hold them in derision." (NKJV, Psalm 2:1-4)

So, the fairytale of evolution should be given up, but it won’t be, and these scientists aren’t going to give it up either, at least not until they come up with another theory that is just as massively deceptive as evolutionary thought has been for the last two centuries. This is the case, not because of the scientific facts, but because they refuse to bend the knee and acknowledge that, "...The real laws are in fact the word of God, specifying how the world of creatures is to function. So-called “law” is simply God speaking, God acting, God manifesting Himself in time and space." (Poythress, 2003) This is compatible with faith and very much compatible with true science, but it is not compatible with a worldview that is without faith in the God who has manifested Himself in time and space.

Pastor Glen Mustian

References:

Buranyi, Steven. Do We Need A New Theory of Evolution? https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022.

Poythress, Vern. Scientists Must Believe in God. JETS 46/1 (March 2003) 111–23.