I once filled in for a friend and colleague of mine who teaches astronomy. Before the class began, I was in the lecture hall early, shooting the breeze with the students who arrived early. Somewhere in the course of the conversation, I mentioned that their professor’s parents had been missionaries. One student laughed, then said “Wow, they must be hating this. Here they are, all Christian and stuff, and their son became a scientist!” Slightly confused, I told him that, not that it matters, but the professor was, in fact, also a Christian. The student assured me that this was a rarity.
In one of my first semesters teaching geology, on the first day of class, I gave an overview of everything we’d talk about that semester. After class, a student stopped by to introduce himself, then punctuated his introduction with, “Well, I’m a Christian, so I really don’t believe in any of that stuff you were talking about.”
On Charles Darwin’s birthday, the college where I work celebrates his accomplishments and the continued work in the field of evolutionary biology. This past year, when my boss sent a mass email announcing the workshops and lectures that would take place in Darwin’s honor, he received at least one email in response lambasting our celebration. The writer felt he needed to “take a stand for Jesus”, and that meant rejecting the idea of evolutionary biology.
Last year when teaching historical geology, I noticed two students who regularly sat in the back of the room, facing away from me. They never took notes, never had their geology texts out, simply spent each lecture period on their phones or studying for other classes. I never called them on it; I’m not their mom. If they don’t want to listen I’m not there to make them. But later, when one student was concerned about her failing grade, she explained that she never listened during class because she was a Christian and didn’t believe in what we were discussing in class.
There is a problem here. Some of us—some Christians—have propagated the rumor that science and traditional faith are inherently at odds. This is absolutely incorrect, and damaging for people of faith who wish to study the workings of our universe.
Let's get this straight right off the bat: a basic tenet of science is not the attempt to disprove God, religion, or anything relating to the supernatural realm. Science does not even address such things. Why? Because science is strictly the study of the natural realm, not the supernatural. Concurrently, science cannot and should not be used to attempt to prove the existence of God. Why? Because science is strictly the study of the natural realm, not the supernatural. Does that put my faith and my professional interests at odds? Not at all. Science does not address my faith. That’s what’s actually so great about it; I can practice science with people of different faiths, or of no faith at all, and it doesn’t affect the science!
This is a complicated topic, but one about which I feel strongly. I hope to address it in three different posts, each considering a different aspect:
Why I Believe
It doesn't make much sense, does it? Why would someone who has devoted her entire profession to studying and teaching processes for which we have physical evidence also believe in something for which we have no scientific evidence?
I guess the easiest answer is: I just do. I believe that as enormous and fantastically complex as this natural universe is, there is also a supernatural realm. I have believed strongly in the existence of God since I was very young, and if I’m being completely honest I feel I have a connection with Him; a relationship, if you will. I love Him. I talk to Him regularly and rely on Him for strength. I fully believe that He has spoken back to me. I have no data for this, no proof beyond my own experiences. I know that there is no concrete proof of God’s existence, nor is there concrete proof that He does not exist. I just believe that He does. I have friends who also have faith in God, some of whom also say they have experienced Him in a very real way, and of course the Catholic tradition is full of accounts of people who have witnessed miracles or had visions. I believe them and am delighted by them, but they are not the basis of my faith. When I marvel at the natural world, I do think to myself “The heavens proclaim the glory of God”, but this is also not the basis of my faith. The basis of my faith is my own relationship and personal encounters with Him whom I believe to be God.
Proof of God
Some people try to create scientific evidence for God or for the supernatural realm in general. These people have good intentions. They think they're helping others find faith by providing solid evidence for God, but they inadvertently make a distortion of science and, in my opinion, a mockery of faith. I've listened to my fair share of lecturers presenting "scientific" evidence for God, and they’ve all been abysmal. Most that I have seen play on the general ignorance of geology, biology, or anthropology of the general public. I’m not calling the general public ignorant in general; I’m alluding to an ignorance of specific topics, just as I have complete ignorance of car mechanics and anything related to a computer. Often presenters will bring up “evidence” in the form of geological features or cave paintings for which the presenter will argue there is no possible explanation, except for a very young Earth, cataclysmic flood, and/or an intelligent Creator. Some of my favorites are:
- A river could not have formed the Grand Canyon, because the elevation of the land at the headwaters of the Colorado River is lower than the elevation of the land downstream in the canyon, and rivers don’t flow uphill. Scientists are just making up the whole river erosion thing to detract from the idea of Noah’s flood. (True; the land around the Colorado River does go up in elevation once you reach the Colorado Uplift. That’s because the land in the uplift is being pushed up [uplifted!] around the river. There is no evidence there of a flood large enough to cover the Earth.)
-If a giant river carved the Grand Canyon (instead of a flood), then where is its delta? (I don't understand this question at all. Do a Google search, folks.)
-Carbon dating is completely unreliable for dating fossils. I’m going to give you multiple examples of its shortcomings for dating dinosaur bones and also rocks. This is further proof that scientists are lying to you all and trying to convince you the Earth is older than it is. (Yep, carbon dating is useless for most fossils and rocks. That’s why scientists don’t do it. We use radiometric dating on crystals in rocks, but not radiocarbon dating in most cases. We use relative dating on fossils. This is another one that confuses me as to why people are still confused…)
These lectures make me ill whenever I sit through them. Partially because the speaker is so horrendously distorting science, but also because so much effort is being put into creating a conflict between science and faith. Honestly, do we really have such a surplus of peace in the world that we are now creating conflicts where there should be none? I'm embarrassed to be human sometimes.
As I mentioned earlier, these attempts to scientifically prove the existence of God anger me because they distort science and make the faithful look foolish, but there’s something even worse. They go against scripture, in my humble opinion. In Hebrews 11:12, the apostle Paul tells us that faith is "an assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things unseen...". In John 20:24, Jesus admonishes Thomas, who refused to believe in the resurrection of Jesus until he saw the risen Lord himself: "You believe because you have seen, but blessed are those who have not seen, but believe." (emphasis mine) Faith in God is not supposed to be based upon what we see in the physical world. That wouldn't be faith; it'd be science!
In science, we only accept as viable science that for which we have solid evidence. Accepting something with no evidence is bad science. In the same way, faith is meant to be faith. The assurance of something we cannot see. Trying to support our faith with physical evidence is bad faith.
I mentioned at the beginning of this post that I certainly see God's work when I marvel at nature. I see God in nature because of my faith in His existence, though; not the other way around. In other words, I do not believe God exists because of what I see in nature.
Explaining the Universe
Dr. Stephen Hawking horrified many Christians when he asserted that the working of the universe can be explained without invoking the efforts of an intelligent Creator. The fact is, he’s right. We can and do explain the workings of the universe without giving credit to a Creator. This doesn’t mean that the scientist you’re talking to doesn’t believe a Creator is out there. He’s just not including that belief in his scientific studies. Think about this: a baby is born. Going back to my seventh grade science class, I can give you a pretty thorough, non-religious explanation for how that baby formed. We have a decent understanding of sexual reproduction, embryonic development, and childbirth. Does accepting these natural processes as fact mean we’ve rejected the idea of God? Or does belief in God as a Creator of life mean that we don’t believe in sexual reproduction as a means to create offspring? That would be absurd! No one accuses a teacher of being an atheist for explaining the birds and the bees without saying “And then God does this or that…” The same should be true for any scientific endeavor. Scientists study the natural processes driving the universe and life in it, and should not be assumed to be anti-religion when they don’t include references to God in their conclusions.
Intelligent Design
The most popular movement seeking scientific evidence for God is commonly called the Intelligent Design movement. According to intelligentdesign.org, “the theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.” Intelligent design supporters use the scientific method of “observation, hypothesis, experiment, and conclusion” to promote their idea. According to intelligentdesign.org, “Intelligent design begins with the observation that intelligent agents produce complex and specified information (CSI). Design theorists hypothesize that if a natural object was designed, it will contain high levels of CSI. Scientists then perform experimental tests upon natural objects to determine if they contain complex and specified information. One easy testable form of CSI is irreducible complexity, which can be discovered by reverse-engineering biological structures to see if they require all their parts to function. When ID researchers find irreducible complexity in biology, they conclude that such structures were designed.”
There are a couple of problems with this movement from a scientific perspective. First of all, the idea of CSI has been discredited and is not accepted by those in the fields of biology, information theory, or systems theory. The very starting point of ID research, in other words, is incorrect. Second, the progression of the scientific method is, in this case, flawed. As described in the introduction quoted earlier, the theorists “hypothesize that if a natural object were designed, it will contain high levels of CSI.” The next step should be to perform experiments which test that hypothesis; in other words, the next step should be to see if designed objects do, in fact, have high levels of CSI. That’s not the case, though. ID researchers move on to looking for evidence of CSI, before ever reaching a consensus of its validity. As mentioned earlier, the general consensus among scientists and mathematicians is that the idea of CSI is actually not valid. Third, one of the common indicators of CSI cited is “irreducible complexity.” Researchers look for some complex natural phenomenon (the eye is a favorite example) and assert that without every component of that phenomenon in place, it would be worthless. Therefore, they say, that organ must have been created as-is, without evolution causing a bunch of worthless transitional organs. After all, what is the use of an eye that cannot see as ours do? What is the use of wings that don’t fly? People who ask such questions are doing so only from the perspective of a modern human. This makes sense, of course! But we should not assume that what we use certain body parts for is what all creatures have always used them for. For example, there are creatures who do not need the advanced vision we enjoy; eyes that can simply detect light and dark are sufficient. Some birds use wings simply to help them gain a little extra speed when running. Do you know why limbs were initially advantageous? It wasn’t for walking. Most paleontologists think that the earliest creatures with limbs could not walk on them, but used them to navigate through clogged waterways, such as you might find in swamps or marshes. The logic behind the use of “irreducible complexity” as evidence against natural selection falls apart quickly as one investigates paleontology and biology.
As a scientist, I am frustrated by the ID movement because it is not following the scientific method, as I just explained, though it certainly is a good imitation. Its researchers use scientific terminology well enough to convince the average non-scientist that actual scientific research is being done, which unfortunately is not. This leads to confusion for people like my students, who are interested in processes driving the planet and don’t understand why we don’t discuss Intelligent Design in class. The answer is simple: it’s truly not a science. I do not mean this as an insult, and I do not say this to imply that ID researchers or supporters are not intelligent people. I am simply stating a fact; this is not true science, and the “research” is severely flawed, being based upon a widely discredited idea.
As a Christian, I am beyond frustrated with the ID movement. I am sickened. If you are an ID supporter and I’ve just offended you, I apologize for the offense. But, please allow me to explain my objection to this movement from the perspective of a woman of (imperfect) faith.
First, if you strip away the scientific-sounding vocabulary and summarize the idea of looking for CSI, it would go something like this: “Man is intelligent. We can tell if something was created by an intelligent human because we will find a certain order and complexity to it. Therefore, we will look for evidence of the work of an intelligent creator by looking for those same markers in nature that one would find in objects designed by man.” This makes the assumption that the intelligent creator in question (can I just go out on a limb here and call him God?) is roughly at the same level of creating things as we are. We ought to see the same fingerprints in His work that we do in ours. Does this not strike anyone else as incredible arrogance? The Bible does tell us that we are created in His image and likeness, but nowhere is it said that we are created with his knowledge and capabilities. When compared to His handiwork, ours should seem crude and rudimentary. Why would we think that our (mankind’s) creations could be used as a reference tool when attempting to look for the fingerprints of God? It doesn’t seem to me that ID research allows for the full magnitude of our God and His power. If we fully grasped it, we would never try to quantify it.
Second, ID is a direct affront to the Biblical definitions of faith I mentioned at the beginning of this post. We are called to have faith in God even without seeing the evidence. Why, then, is there such a movement to search for the evidence? Jesus said, “Blessed are those who have not seen, but still believe”, and here we are saying “Yeah I totally get that, but if you don’t mind I’m still going to try and find something to see.” We’re acting like petulant children who don’t want to open ourselves up to actually experiencing God, so we’d rather just look for signs of God. How sad!
Finally, I worry about the long-term effects of the attempt to intermingle scientific study with matters of faith. The ID movement, and other movements like it, attempt to quantify God. To say, “Here you go, here is some hard and fast evidence that God really exists, so you don’t have to doubt.” What happens, then, when people learn that the evidence, perhaps, was flawed? What happens when students (like mine) learn that the natural processes driving the universe and life can be explained in non-religious terms? If they have based their entire faith on the assurance that certain things simply cannot be explained without invoking the work of a creator, they will have lost the very foundation of their faith. Another philosophy I still hear occasionally, though it has declined slightly in popularity, is the idea that “Science can’t explain phenomenon XYZ fully. So right there, that mystery that eludes all these great minds, that’s where God was at work.” Fantastic. First of all, you’re saying that God is in one aspect of nature, but not all of it, and secondly, what happens when scientists do explain that part of the mystery?? Where is God then? I am frequently guilt-stricken when I realize that one of my lectures has caused a student to question his or her faith, but the truth is I’m not the one at fault. No one should ever be taught to base their faith on things like CSI and irreducible complexity. Faith must be based on something much more powerful and enduring.
So now what?
So, where do we go from here? How can religious people reconcile their faith with science? Fortunately for them, the two never separated. In my next post I will discuss the history of the conflict of science and faith in our society, but the fact remains that it was our society that promoted the idea of the schism. It is not an innate component of scientific research or of Christian theology. My dad was a very wise man, a biology professor and devout Baptist, and he once said to me, “I always figured that God created everything, and the job of scientists is to figure out how He did it.” If you’re a Christian and a scientist, that’s what it boils down to. There should be no need to search for evidence of a creator; you already believe one exists. Now, try and unravel the processes He uses to create. If you are not a person of faith but are a scientist, how should you deal with people who are religious? Again, the two are not innately opposed to one another. Unfortunately for all of us, a smear campaign preaching otherwise has been propagated for the past century. Hopefully, the religious person with whom you are working recognizes this.
As I said when I began this post, I am interested in how our world works. I look for the physical, natural explanations for its processes and know those explanations can explain phenomena from why toddlers have an endless appetite for chicken nuggets to how life diversified on our planet. I also believe, with no physical evidence that would stand up to a peer review panel, that a supernatural realm exists. I believe in a Trinitarian God, angels, Heaven, the works. So, have I completely suspended my intellect, my ability to think rationally, in order to believe in God? No. Faith is not supposed to exist in place of reason. It's meant to be beyond reason. This interview with Bishop Robert Barron explains this beautifully (click the hyperlinked sentence!).
If you lack knowledge of the history and workings of the universe and wish to learn, don’t be afraid of science! Take a course, read a textbook. Enjoy it! If you lack faith and wish to have it, seek it! Start by simply asking God for it. It’s a beautiful gift, I assure you.
In one of my first semesters teaching geology, on the first day of class, I gave an overview of everything we’d talk about that semester. After class, a student stopped by to introduce himself, then punctuated his introduction with, “Well, I’m a Christian, so I really don’t believe in any of that stuff you were talking about.”
On Charles Darwin’s birthday, the college where I work celebrates his accomplishments and the continued work in the field of evolutionary biology. This past year, when my boss sent a mass email announcing the workshops and lectures that would take place in Darwin’s honor, he received at least one email in response lambasting our celebration. The writer felt he needed to “take a stand for Jesus”, and that meant rejecting the idea of evolutionary biology.
Last year when teaching historical geology, I noticed two students who regularly sat in the back of the room, facing away from me. They never took notes, never had their geology texts out, simply spent each lecture period on their phones or studying for other classes. I never called them on it; I’m not their mom. If they don’t want to listen I’m not there to make them. But later, when one student was concerned about her failing grade, she explained that she never listened during class because she was a Christian and didn’t believe in what we were discussing in class.
There is a problem here. Some of us—some Christians—have propagated the rumor that science and traditional faith are inherently at odds. This is absolutely incorrect, and damaging for people of faith who wish to study the workings of our universe.
Let's get this straight right off the bat: a basic tenet of science is not the attempt to disprove God, religion, or anything relating to the supernatural realm. Science does not even address such things. Why? Because science is strictly the study of the natural realm, not the supernatural. Concurrently, science cannot and should not be used to attempt to prove the existence of God. Why? Because science is strictly the study of the natural realm, not the supernatural. Does that put my faith and my professional interests at odds? Not at all. Science does not address my faith. That’s what’s actually so great about it; I can practice science with people of different faiths, or of no faith at all, and it doesn’t affect the science!
This is a complicated topic, but one about which I feel strongly. I hope to address it in three different posts, each considering a different aspect:
- The nature of faith vs. the nature of science (the post you are reading now)
- Interpretation of Genesis
- Theories (Big Bang, Solar Nebula, Evolution)
Why I Believe
It doesn't make much sense, does it? Why would someone who has devoted her entire profession to studying and teaching processes for which we have physical evidence also believe in something for which we have no scientific evidence?
I guess the easiest answer is: I just do. I believe that as enormous and fantastically complex as this natural universe is, there is also a supernatural realm. I have believed strongly in the existence of God since I was very young, and if I’m being completely honest I feel I have a connection with Him; a relationship, if you will. I love Him. I talk to Him regularly and rely on Him for strength. I fully believe that He has spoken back to me. I have no data for this, no proof beyond my own experiences. I know that there is no concrete proof of God’s existence, nor is there concrete proof that He does not exist. I just believe that He does. I have friends who also have faith in God, some of whom also say they have experienced Him in a very real way, and of course the Catholic tradition is full of accounts of people who have witnessed miracles or had visions. I believe them and am delighted by them, but they are not the basis of my faith. When I marvel at the natural world, I do think to myself “The heavens proclaim the glory of God”, but this is also not the basis of my faith. The basis of my faith is my own relationship and personal encounters with Him whom I believe to be God.
Proof of God
Some people try to create scientific evidence for God or for the supernatural realm in general. These people have good intentions. They think they're helping others find faith by providing solid evidence for God, but they inadvertently make a distortion of science and, in my opinion, a mockery of faith. I've listened to my fair share of lecturers presenting "scientific" evidence for God, and they’ve all been abysmal. Most that I have seen play on the general ignorance of geology, biology, or anthropology of the general public. I’m not calling the general public ignorant in general; I’m alluding to an ignorance of specific topics, just as I have complete ignorance of car mechanics and anything related to a computer. Often presenters will bring up “evidence” in the form of geological features or cave paintings for which the presenter will argue there is no possible explanation, except for a very young Earth, cataclysmic flood, and/or an intelligent Creator. Some of my favorites are:
- A river could not have formed the Grand Canyon, because the elevation of the land at the headwaters of the Colorado River is lower than the elevation of the land downstream in the canyon, and rivers don’t flow uphill. Scientists are just making up the whole river erosion thing to detract from the idea of Noah’s flood. (True; the land around the Colorado River does go up in elevation once you reach the Colorado Uplift. That’s because the land in the uplift is being pushed up [uplifted!] around the river. There is no evidence there of a flood large enough to cover the Earth.)
-If a giant river carved the Grand Canyon (instead of a flood), then where is its delta? (I don't understand this question at all. Do a Google search, folks.)
-Carbon dating is completely unreliable for dating fossils. I’m going to give you multiple examples of its shortcomings for dating dinosaur bones and also rocks. This is further proof that scientists are lying to you all and trying to convince you the Earth is older than it is. (Yep, carbon dating is useless for most fossils and rocks. That’s why scientists don’t do it. We use radiometric dating on crystals in rocks, but not radiocarbon dating in most cases. We use relative dating on fossils. This is another one that confuses me as to why people are still confused…)
These lectures make me ill whenever I sit through them. Partially because the speaker is so horrendously distorting science, but also because so much effort is being put into creating a conflict between science and faith. Honestly, do we really have such a surplus of peace in the world that we are now creating conflicts where there should be none? I'm embarrassed to be human sometimes.
As I mentioned earlier, these attempts to scientifically prove the existence of God anger me because they distort science and make the faithful look foolish, but there’s something even worse. They go against scripture, in my humble opinion. In Hebrews 11:12, the apostle Paul tells us that faith is "an assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things unseen...". In John 20:24, Jesus admonishes Thomas, who refused to believe in the resurrection of Jesus until he saw the risen Lord himself: "You believe because you have seen, but blessed are those who have not seen, but believe." (emphasis mine) Faith in God is not supposed to be based upon what we see in the physical world. That wouldn't be faith; it'd be science!
In science, we only accept as viable science that for which we have solid evidence. Accepting something with no evidence is bad science. In the same way, faith is meant to be faith. The assurance of something we cannot see. Trying to support our faith with physical evidence is bad faith.
I mentioned at the beginning of this post that I certainly see God's work when I marvel at nature. I see God in nature because of my faith in His existence, though; not the other way around. In other words, I do not believe God exists because of what I see in nature.
Explaining the Universe
Dr. Stephen Hawking horrified many Christians when he asserted that the working of the universe can be explained without invoking the efforts of an intelligent Creator. The fact is, he’s right. We can and do explain the workings of the universe without giving credit to a Creator. This doesn’t mean that the scientist you’re talking to doesn’t believe a Creator is out there. He’s just not including that belief in his scientific studies. Think about this: a baby is born. Going back to my seventh grade science class, I can give you a pretty thorough, non-religious explanation for how that baby formed. We have a decent understanding of sexual reproduction, embryonic development, and childbirth. Does accepting these natural processes as fact mean we’ve rejected the idea of God? Or does belief in God as a Creator of life mean that we don’t believe in sexual reproduction as a means to create offspring? That would be absurd! No one accuses a teacher of being an atheist for explaining the birds and the bees without saying “And then God does this or that…” The same should be true for any scientific endeavor. Scientists study the natural processes driving the universe and life in it, and should not be assumed to be anti-religion when they don’t include references to God in their conclusions.
Intelligent Design
The most popular movement seeking scientific evidence for God is commonly called the Intelligent Design movement. According to intelligentdesign.org, “the theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.” Intelligent design supporters use the scientific method of “observation, hypothesis, experiment, and conclusion” to promote their idea. According to intelligentdesign.org, “Intelligent design begins with the observation that intelligent agents produce complex and specified information (CSI). Design theorists hypothesize that if a natural object was designed, it will contain high levels of CSI. Scientists then perform experimental tests upon natural objects to determine if they contain complex and specified information. One easy testable form of CSI is irreducible complexity, which can be discovered by reverse-engineering biological structures to see if they require all their parts to function. When ID researchers find irreducible complexity in biology, they conclude that such structures were designed.”
There are a couple of problems with this movement from a scientific perspective. First of all, the idea of CSI has been discredited and is not accepted by those in the fields of biology, information theory, or systems theory. The very starting point of ID research, in other words, is incorrect. Second, the progression of the scientific method is, in this case, flawed. As described in the introduction quoted earlier, the theorists “hypothesize that if a natural object were designed, it will contain high levels of CSI.” The next step should be to perform experiments which test that hypothesis; in other words, the next step should be to see if designed objects do, in fact, have high levels of CSI. That’s not the case, though. ID researchers move on to looking for evidence of CSI, before ever reaching a consensus of its validity. As mentioned earlier, the general consensus among scientists and mathematicians is that the idea of CSI is actually not valid. Third, one of the common indicators of CSI cited is “irreducible complexity.” Researchers look for some complex natural phenomenon (the eye is a favorite example) and assert that without every component of that phenomenon in place, it would be worthless. Therefore, they say, that organ must have been created as-is, without evolution causing a bunch of worthless transitional organs. After all, what is the use of an eye that cannot see as ours do? What is the use of wings that don’t fly? People who ask such questions are doing so only from the perspective of a modern human. This makes sense, of course! But we should not assume that what we use certain body parts for is what all creatures have always used them for. For example, there are creatures who do not need the advanced vision we enjoy; eyes that can simply detect light and dark are sufficient. Some birds use wings simply to help them gain a little extra speed when running. Do you know why limbs were initially advantageous? It wasn’t for walking. Most paleontologists think that the earliest creatures with limbs could not walk on them, but used them to navigate through clogged waterways, such as you might find in swamps or marshes. The logic behind the use of “irreducible complexity” as evidence against natural selection falls apart quickly as one investigates paleontology and biology.
As a scientist, I am frustrated by the ID movement because it is not following the scientific method, as I just explained, though it certainly is a good imitation. Its researchers use scientific terminology well enough to convince the average non-scientist that actual scientific research is being done, which unfortunately is not. This leads to confusion for people like my students, who are interested in processes driving the planet and don’t understand why we don’t discuss Intelligent Design in class. The answer is simple: it’s truly not a science. I do not mean this as an insult, and I do not say this to imply that ID researchers or supporters are not intelligent people. I am simply stating a fact; this is not true science, and the “research” is severely flawed, being based upon a widely discredited idea.
As a Christian, I am beyond frustrated with the ID movement. I am sickened. If you are an ID supporter and I’ve just offended you, I apologize for the offense. But, please allow me to explain my objection to this movement from the perspective of a woman of (imperfect) faith.
First, if you strip away the scientific-sounding vocabulary and summarize the idea of looking for CSI, it would go something like this: “Man is intelligent. We can tell if something was created by an intelligent human because we will find a certain order and complexity to it. Therefore, we will look for evidence of the work of an intelligent creator by looking for those same markers in nature that one would find in objects designed by man.” This makes the assumption that the intelligent creator in question (can I just go out on a limb here and call him God?) is roughly at the same level of creating things as we are. We ought to see the same fingerprints in His work that we do in ours. Does this not strike anyone else as incredible arrogance? The Bible does tell us that we are created in His image and likeness, but nowhere is it said that we are created with his knowledge and capabilities. When compared to His handiwork, ours should seem crude and rudimentary. Why would we think that our (mankind’s) creations could be used as a reference tool when attempting to look for the fingerprints of God? It doesn’t seem to me that ID research allows for the full magnitude of our God and His power. If we fully grasped it, we would never try to quantify it.
Second, ID is a direct affront to the Biblical definitions of faith I mentioned at the beginning of this post. We are called to have faith in God even without seeing the evidence. Why, then, is there such a movement to search for the evidence? Jesus said, “Blessed are those who have not seen, but still believe”, and here we are saying “Yeah I totally get that, but if you don’t mind I’m still going to try and find something to see.” We’re acting like petulant children who don’t want to open ourselves up to actually experiencing God, so we’d rather just look for signs of God. How sad!
Finally, I worry about the long-term effects of the attempt to intermingle scientific study with matters of faith. The ID movement, and other movements like it, attempt to quantify God. To say, “Here you go, here is some hard and fast evidence that God really exists, so you don’t have to doubt.” What happens, then, when people learn that the evidence, perhaps, was flawed? What happens when students (like mine) learn that the natural processes driving the universe and life can be explained in non-religious terms? If they have based their entire faith on the assurance that certain things simply cannot be explained without invoking the work of a creator, they will have lost the very foundation of their faith. Another philosophy I still hear occasionally, though it has declined slightly in popularity, is the idea that “Science can’t explain phenomenon XYZ fully. So right there, that mystery that eludes all these great minds, that’s where God was at work.” Fantastic. First of all, you’re saying that God is in one aspect of nature, but not all of it, and secondly, what happens when scientists do explain that part of the mystery?? Where is God then? I am frequently guilt-stricken when I realize that one of my lectures has caused a student to question his or her faith, but the truth is I’m not the one at fault. No one should ever be taught to base their faith on things like CSI and irreducible complexity. Faith must be based on something much more powerful and enduring.
So now what?
So, where do we go from here? How can religious people reconcile their faith with science? Fortunately for them, the two never separated. In my next post I will discuss the history of the conflict of science and faith in our society, but the fact remains that it was our society that promoted the idea of the schism. It is not an innate component of scientific research or of Christian theology. My dad was a very wise man, a biology professor and devout Baptist, and he once said to me, “I always figured that God created everything, and the job of scientists is to figure out how He did it.” If you’re a Christian and a scientist, that’s what it boils down to. There should be no need to search for evidence of a creator; you already believe one exists. Now, try and unravel the processes He uses to create. If you are not a person of faith but are a scientist, how should you deal with people who are religious? Again, the two are not innately opposed to one another. Unfortunately for all of us, a smear campaign preaching otherwise has been propagated for the past century. Hopefully, the religious person with whom you are working recognizes this.
As I said when I began this post, I am interested in how our world works. I look for the physical, natural explanations for its processes and know those explanations can explain phenomena from why toddlers have an endless appetite for chicken nuggets to how life diversified on our planet. I also believe, with no physical evidence that would stand up to a peer review panel, that a supernatural realm exists. I believe in a Trinitarian God, angels, Heaven, the works. So, have I completely suspended my intellect, my ability to think rationally, in order to believe in God? No. Faith is not supposed to exist in place of reason. It's meant to be beyond reason. This interview with Bishop Robert Barron explains this beautifully (click the hyperlinked sentence!).
If you lack knowledge of the history and workings of the universe and wish to learn, don’t be afraid of science! Take a course, read a textbook. Enjoy it! If you lack faith and wish to have it, seek it! Start by simply asking God for it. It’s a beautiful gift, I assure you.