Notice: Undefined index: HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE in /home/gcf/public_html/modules/visitor/visitor.php on line 148

January 23 Issue-Is Christianity Anti-Science?

by By Yutaro Kato

 Can Christians be scientists?

 We sometimes hear comments such as "Christians are naïve and brainless!"

This can be the understanding of those who do not believe in Christianity and I used to be embarrassed to tell my friends that I was a Christian.

My view started to change when I learned about Christian scientists such Mr John Lennox, who is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University and a well-known m
athematicianbioethicist and Christian apologist. He has written many books on religion, ethics, the relationship between science and faith (like his books, Has Science Buried God and Can Science Explain Everything), and has had numerous public debates with atheists.

Indeed, there are a few examples of how someone can be a good Christian and a good scientist at the same time.

 Is science the only way to truth?

 Scientism faces many challenges. According to philosopher Bertrand Russell: "Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know."  So, the question is: "Can you prove your statement scientifically?"

I believe that first, scientism is self-contradictory because it cannot be proved by scientific methods. If scientism is true, we should discard history, law, or arts; and many of us will lose our jobs.

 

Second, science does not tell you everything. It is helpful in understanding the mechanism of how things work. But it does not rule out the agent behind the mechanism (or the purpose for which the mechanism is operating). Understanding the mechanism of how a car is built does not lead to rejecting the existence of the founder of the Ford Motor Company Henry Ford, or tell us that cars are for transporting people, not running over them.

In fact, the Christian faith makes sense of the scientific process and the assumptions on which science is possible in the first place. Why we can believe that the universe is orderly? Why we can expect to find reliable, measurable, testable and predictable laws of physics in the first place? Famous physicist Albert Einstein said: "The most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is that it is comprehensible."

Arguments for the belief in God

Moreover, there is more direct evidence that point to the existence of God.

1.    The origin of the univers

       There are three possibilities for the origin of the universe

a) The universe was created by God
b) The universe came out of nothing
c) The universe has always existed

Option c) is challenged by the Big Bang Theory, which points to the beginning of the universe. Option b) is questionable too. Generally speaking, things that came into existence were brought into existence by something. As we know (from the Big Bang Theory), the universe came into existence. Therefore, it is reasonable to postulate that it had a prior and pre-existent cause. Accordingly, option a) is the most plausible understanding of the origin of the universe.

2.    Fine-tuning argument

Dice rolling game: If I roll a dice and get 6, I win. The odds for me to win are 1/6. If I win 7, 8, 9, 10 times consecutively, you will think I am somehow controlling the dice because the odds are incredibly miraculous. It is possible that I am not, but the evidence suggests that I am. That is, it is more likely than I am than I am not.

Scientists discovered how incredibly fine-tuned this universe is for life.

 One such scientist is British mathematicianphysicistphilosopher of science and Nobel Laureate in Physics, Mr Roger Penrose. He is one half of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity.

Mr Penrose calculates that the odds of the formation of the universe that resembles the universe we live in is 1 part in 10 to the power of 10123. He said: “One could not possibly even write the number down in full… Even if we were to write a ‘0’ on each separate proton and on each separate neutron in the entire universe – and we could throw in all the other particles as well for good measure – we should fall far short of writing down the figure needed.”

 If we suspect a being that controls the simple dice rolling game, why not suspect a highly powerful being that controlled the origin of the universe?

3.    Existence of information

If you see words like “John loves Mary” on a beach, you would assume there is an intelligent being who wrote the information. Similarly, DNA is called a blueprint of life and contains highly complex information.

If you assume an intelligent being wrote “John loves Mary”, why not assume that a highly intelligent being gave information through DNA? The complexity of DNA presumes an intelligent source in the same way that the complexity of a dictionary or a mechanical watch or a beautiful painting does. These things simply do not happen by accident. In the same way, it is extremely unlikely that our universe happened by accident either.

 Inviting God into your life

 Although science is useful in many ways, it cannot do everything. It cannot save us from our brokenness and struggles of life. But the beauty of the Christian message is that the Creator of the universe came down to earth as Jesus Christ to save us.


We have been discussing whether science contradicts Christianity and whether there is a God. But the easiest way to know if God is real is to invite Him to your life. If He is real, He will reveal Himself to you.

 

(This is a shortened version of a talk given at Spiren on 26 November 2022)