Sermon from February 14, 2010
"Hasn't Science Disproved Christianity?"
1 Corinthians 1:19-20

Doesn't Science disprove Christianity? In 1953 a German theologian said it did. Rudoph Bultmann (http://homepages.which.net/~radical.faith/thought/bultmann.htm accessed, January 21, 2010): “It is impossible to use electric lights and (radio) and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time to believe in the New Testament world of demons and spirits.”

It still rankles me that a learned man, who professed to be a Christian theologian, capitulated so easily to the skepticism of our age. But he did, and he had plenty of company. Was he right? Does Science disprove Christianity?

Two Different Worlds
The First Great Commandment says: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength – Mark 12:30. Let’s love the Lord our God with all our mind today and answer the question: Does Science disprove Christianity?

Let’s begin by turning the question around. Does Christianity disprove Science? After you have stopped laughing at the absurdity of the question, you need to say why it is absurd. If we can do that, it will help us to see why it’s irresponsible to say that Science disproves Christianity.

The first thing we say is that Christianity doesn’t even claim to study physics and chemistry and botany and biology. How could it possibly disprove Science? The study of trees doesn’t enable you to draw conclusions about human psychology; and the study of human psychology doesn’t enable you to draw conclusions about the migratory patterns of whales. The study of God doesn’t enable you to draw conclusions about the methods of Science and their results.

Yes, but isn’t the opposite also true? Science doesn’t claim to study the Trinity, the two natures of Christ, the atonement, and original sin. How could it possibly disprove Christianity? The methods of Science and their results don’t enable you to draw conclusions about Christianity.

Think about it this way. Science explains Nature. Christianity explains what lies behind Nature. They focus on different parts of reality, and each uses methods that are incompatible with each other. In order to explain Nature the scientist has to ask, “Under what conditions will Nature reveal her secrets?” The short answer is: by theories, experiments, and mathematics. Those are the methods of Science.

In order to explain what lies behind Nature the Christian has to ask, “Under what conditions will whatever lies behind Nature reveals its secrets?” The short answer is: by faith, hope, and love, as they have been experienced by Israel and the Church and borne witness to by the Bible. Those are the methods of faith.

You are attempting the impossible by using the methods of Science and its results to disprove or to prove Christianity.

Let me tell you a story that will illustrate what I mean. In the 1930s archeologists excavated the site of ancient Jericho, made famous by the book of Joshua in the Bible. “Jericho’s walls . . . showed evidence of violent destruction. The outer wall had tumbled down the slope of the mound, and the inner wall . . . had fallen into the intervening space” (Merrill Unger, Archeology and the Old Testament, 148). Those archeologists dated the walls to 1400 B.C., and that seemed to coincide with the time of the story in Joshua.

Later archeologists disagreed about the date, and I presume they are still arguing about it. That doesn’t matter for our purposes today. Let’s assume for a moment that archeologists dug up Jericho and found that the wall had indeed fallen flat as a pancake, and on one of the stones of the city wall they found graffiti that said, “Joshua wuz here. Israel rocks!” Let’s assume they dated that stone to 1400 B.C.

That would confirm as historical the presence of a man named Joshua at Jericho around the very time we believe the biblical story took place; and archeological discoveries have provided evidence like that for many Biblical events and people.

But there is one crucial issue that the graffiti doesn’t help with, and it’s the one that matters most. It can’t tell you that God made the walls fall down. That was and is and always will be a matter of faith. The archeologist might be able to prove that Joshua was at Jericho, but no archeologist will ever prove or try to prove that God was at Jericho and made the walls fall down when the Jews blew their horns.

So, here’s my proposal: Let no one say that Christianity can tell Science what findings it has to reach as a result of its theories and experiments. What Christianity studies and the methods it uses do not enable it to do that. And let no one say that the findings of Science disprove or prove Christianity. What Science studies and the methods it uses do not enable it to do either.

I say to Darwin and Huxley, to Freud and Jacques Monod and Francis Crick and Richard Dawkins: “We laud you for your achievements in Science and your contributions to human understanding and well-being. We applaud you with honors and wealth. But when under the guise of Science you say that God does not exist, we do not applaud you. We say that a homeless man, clutching his Bible or his crucifix and saying his prayers, speak with as much if not more authority.

The persistent habit of some scientists to say that has caused some of the hostility between Science and Christianity. The hostility has also come from a second source to which we now turn.

Our Partial Knowledge
The First Great Commandment says: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength – Mark 12:30. If we are going to love God with all our mind, then we must acknowledge the limitations placed on our knowledge.

If Science cannot prove or disprove Christianity, why do so many people say that it does? Here’s the short answer: because Christians and scientists are not always humble about what they know. Look with me at 1 Corinthians 8:1b-2. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know. The apostle came back to the tension between love and knowledge in the famous love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13:12. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Then he clarified what he meant. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

I know in part. All knowledge is partial. Our knowledge of God is partial. Our knowledge of Science is partial. Humility about our knowledge requires that we always be willing to have our knowledge corrected and enlarged. Scientists are not skeptical about Nature, but they are skeptical about their understanding of Nature. Christians are not skeptical about God, but they are skeptical about their understanding of God. Both know their knowledge is partial. Every time Christians forget that, they do damage. Every time scientists forget that, they do damage. Here are some illustrations of the damage.

First from scientists. Max Planck, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, was discouraged from studying physics by the Professor of Physics at the University of Munich in 1875, because, said the professor, “nothing worthwhile remained to be discovered.” (quoted in Alister McGrath, Nature, 46)

The leading American astronomer, Simon Newcomb, wrote this in 1888: “So far as astronomy is concerned, we must confess that we do appear to be fast approaching the limits of our knowledge . . . The result is that that work which really occupies the attention of the astronomer is less the discovery of new things than the elaboration of those already known, and the entire systemization of our knowledge.” (ibid, 46-47)

In 1847 at a hospital in Vienna 3000 mothers gave birth. 600 of them died in childbirth from diseases transmitted by the doctors who treated them. Ignac Semmelweiss proved that the failure of doctors and nurses to wash their hands was the cause by requiring doctors and nurses on his ward to “scrub with a nail brush and chlorine between patients. The . . . death rate immediately fell to 1 percent.” (Atul Gawande, Better, 16)

However, the medical establishment in Vienna rejected his hand washing theory, in part because Semmelweiss had all the social charm of an enraged rhino. It was another 20 years (and how many more deaths?) before Joseph Lister in Scotland persuaded doctors to wash their hands before treating patients.

The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know. All knowledge is partial, including scientific knowledge, and all good scientists know that scientific knowledge always needs to be corrected and enlarged by later discoveries. When they forget, their arrogance damages people.

Now from Christians. The most famous example of Christianity’s attempt to tell Science what conclusions it should reach was the confrontation between the Church and Galileo. Everyday since man first saw it the sun has risen in the east and set in the west. Obviously, the sun goes round the earth. Copernicus and Galileo said, “No, the earth goes round the sun.” The Inquisition put Galileo on trial for heresy and forced him to recant his scientific conclusions. He lived the rest of his life under house arrest.

Less known is an idea that I daresay most of you won’t know much about it. In the 17th century James Ussher, an Irish Bishop, studied the extensive family trees of the Bible, which often say how long people lived. Using those numbers, he came to the conclusion that God created the heavens and the earth on the night before October 23, 4004 B. C. Astronomers and Geologists dismiss that as irresponsible nonsense.

Here’s the problem. When Christians insist that the sun revolves around the earth and that God created the heavens and the earth in 4004 B. C., it is easy for scientists to conclude, “If that’s what Christianity teaches, then I want nothing to do with it. Science disproves it.” If the scientist is already a hostile agnostic, there’s not much to prevent him from seeing Christianity as a myth. If he is a good writer, as Julian Huxley was a good writer, he will convince thousands of ordinary people that Science has disproved Christianity, that Christianity is a myth, and ordinary people can ignore it.

Biblical Perspective
What is a proper Christian attitude toward Science? Listen to Colossians 1:15-17. Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

You have to picture me, a 19-year-old Sophomore, alone in my room on a winter night reading for the first time the following comment on that passage: “Though in the creed common to all the Churches we profess our belief in Him, as the Being ‘through whom all things were created,’ yet in reality this confession seems to exercise very little influence on our thoughts . . . How much more hearty would be the sympathy of theologians with the revelations of science and the developments of history, if they habitually connected them with the operation of the same Divine Word who is the centre of all their religious aspirations.” (J. B. Lightfoot, St. Paul’s Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, 116) As a result, I have never thought there is a conflict between Christianity and Science. The conflict is between Christians and scientists who forget the limits of their knowledge.

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
Science poses no threat to the integrity of Christianity but some scientists pose a very real threat to the integrity of Science. The theory of global warming is driving a political agenda with billions of dollars at stake.

Last year, hackers accessed e-mails of scientists at East Anglia University in England. Some of the e-mails suggested that scientists manipulated climate data “in order to fit preconceived hypotheses.” (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704398304574598230426037244.html accessed 12-17-09) Other e-mails requested scientists to destroy e-mails to the UN, which were unfavorable to global warming.

That’s bad, and it gets worse according to Patrick J. Michaels, a member of the Cato Institute and for 18 years a professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia. Prof. Michaels claimed in a Wall Street Journal article that a scientist at Penn State and another in atmospheric research in Boulder, CO, have tried to control what is published in the scientific literature. Geophysical Research Letters is a journal that specializes in climate research. The scientist from Boulder wrote the scientist at Penn State expressing concern that one of the editors of that journal was “in the skeptics camp.” He then e-mailed this suggestion: “If we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official . . . channels to get him ousted.” (ibid) All of you who are scientists will be troubled by this. It strikes at the integrity of Science.

Do not fret about the finds of Science. Good Science reveals to us the wisdom of the Creator. Do not be intimidated by scientists, who sometimes talk about God with spurious authority. If the quarrel between Science and Christianity has kept you from faith in Christ, and you’d like to talk further about it, take the communication card from the book rack and check the category that says, “I’d like to talk to a pastor,” and write the word “science” on it. I will follow up with you this week.

The Prophet Jeremiah should have the last word today. This is what the Lord says: “Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,” declares the Lord – Jeremiah 9:23-24.