Are science and faith in the God of the Bible compatible?

I have been asked more than once, “How can you be a born-again Bible-believing believer in Yeshua and a scientist?” – as if these are in some way fundamentally incompatible. 

My answer is usually a wry, “ How can you not!” Because to me, they are fundamentally inextricable. How can I believe in a Creator God and not study his Creation?  Conversely, how can I study His creation and not see the Creator in it?

Is faith somehow opposed to reason? Is faith irrational – a blind leap into belief? I think not. My faith is based on my experience of the world, my understanding of the Universe, my empirical experience of that Universe and a personal revelation of God through a meeting with Yeshua. It is not blind. It is not irrational. It is a reasonable interpretation of the Universe which is borne out more and more as I study God’s revelation by means of science. I would even go so far as to say that belief in God is the most reasonable interpretation of the Universe. Even atheist scientists today, because of some of the new discoveries they are making, are reluctantly having to admit the possibility that the evidence is pointing towards the existence of God. 

The Bible teaches us that God is a person who wishes us to know Him – not just know about Him but to actually know Him intimately. His self-revelation is essentially threefold:

1. The written record - Holy Scripture (the Bible) - through the historical record of God’s dealings with humankind (especially his dealings with the people of Israel), the poetry and music of the Psalms, the wisdom literature and the prophetic words of the Tenach (OT), and the Gospels and the letters of the New Testament. 

2. His incarnation as Yeshua, the Messiah – the living Word (see John 1:1). His personal revelation to each individual believer at the time of the new birth, and the ongoing indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  

3. His nature as revealed in God’s creation

It is this last revelation that I wish to focus on.  The Bible clearly teaches us that nature reveals the glory of God. The Psalmist wrote this:

The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament shows His handiwork.
Day unto day utters speech,
And night unto night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech nor language
Where their voice is not heard. (Psalm 19: 1-3)

Job tells his friends to consult the creation –  the animals and the birds, the fish of the sea and even the earth itself – for they all give witness to the awesomeness of the Creator God:

But now ask the beasts, and they will teach you;
And the birds of the air, and they will tell you;
 Or speak to the earth, and it will teach you;
And the fish of the sea will explain to you.
 Who among all these does not know
That the hand of the Lord has done this… (Job 12: 7-9)

Later, when Job, in his extreme suffering, accused God of injustice (Job 29-32), God replied:

Listen to this, O Job;
Stand still and consider the wondrous works of God.
Do you know when God dispatches them,
And causes the light of His cloud to shine?
 Do you know how the clouds are balanced,
Those wondrous works of Him who is perfect in knowledge? (Job 37: 14- 16) 

And later,

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said:

 “Who is this who darkens counsel
By words without knowledge?

 Now prepare yourself like a man;
I will question you, and you shall answer Me.

 “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Tell Me, if you have understanding.

 Who determined its measurements?
Surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?

 To what were its foundations fastened?
Or who laid its cornerstone,

 When the morning stars sang together,
And all the sons of God shouted for joy? … (Job 38: 1-7)

When confronted thus with God’s majesty and power, Job is silenced. 

Similarly, in the face of God’s self-revelation in nature, we have no excuse before Him. Even if no one has ever taught us or if we have never read the Bible, indeed even if we are illiterate, we can still know God for He is revealed in nature, if we have eyes to see. What's more, we are warned not to suppress this knowledge, 

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. (Romans 1: 18-21)

In ancient times people were much more in touch with nature and much more aware of the majesty and awesomeness of God than we are today. Today we mostly live in cities and have little connection with nature.  Most of us have never even seen the stars in all their glory. There is too much light in our modern world. When I was growing up my playground was the stream, the trees, the ponds around our farm, my playmates were animals, and this intimate experience of nature caused me to contemplate the existence and character of the universe. All this eventually led me to a belief in a Creator God, whose wonder I clearly saw expressed in nature.  Today’s children are largely cut off from nature and many never have first-hand experience of the natural world. I have had students who have never been outside the city! How sad that is. We as a society are thus being denied a powerful revelation of God.  It is even more tragic that many believers suppress that knowledge because of a fear of science and its discoveries.  

It has not always been so. Science as we know it today, grew out of the Christian worldview. Science is predicated on the assumption that the universe is not random or chaotic. There are laws of nature that can be discovered and which can explain phenomena. Technology is only possible because these ‘laws’ are consistent and can be manipulated for our purposes.

You might say, “What about random events like the throwing of the dice, or what about ‘Chaos Theory’?” The throwing of a dice is not random. The way it falls is determined by a number of factors, including how hard it is thrown, the spin of the throw, the weight and construction of the die, the air currents, the temperature of the air, and so on. It is not random. The outcome of the throw is determined by many cause-and-effect relationships, making the outcome just too complicated for us to predict. The same is true of the misnamed Chaos Theory. 

Many of the first scientists were Christian monks. They had the literacy, the education, the time and money to carry out research. So how is it that many believers have come to fear and suspect science? The religious establishment is a conservative force dedicated to preserving the Faith. It is, therefore, naturally suspicious of any ‘new’ knowledge, especially anything that appears to contradict existing understandings. 

For example, when Galileo, in the 16th Century, came out in support of Copernicus’ theory that the earth was not the center of the universe, and the Sun did not revolve around the earth, he was considered a heretic, tried by the Roman Catholic Inquisition and forced to renounce his views. Galileo spent the last years of his life under house arrest, and his writings were banned.

The Catholic Church of Galileo’s day read passages, like that of Psalm 19:4-6 below, literally to support the current theory of the time, that the Sun circled the earth. 

In them, He has set a tabernacle for the sun,
 Which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
And rejoices like a strong man to run its race.
 Its rising is from one end of heaven,
And its circuit to the other end;
And there is nothing hidden from its heat

Before Galileo, people believed the world was flat and the heavenly bodies, the sun, moon and stars circled the earth. From our perspective on earth, they do appear to move around the earth. 

However in our time, we have telescopes in space and we have even sent men to the moon, and we have photographic images of our earth which show us clearly that the earth is not the center of the Solar System but a spherical planet that circles around the Sun. 

We have therefore been forced to revise our interpretation of the verses quoted above. It is now understood by most that these verses are not to be taken literally but are poetic metaphors, as even the grammatical structure of the passage attests, for example, the use of similes (like a bridegroom… like a strong man). It is clearly metaphorical, written from the understanding and viewpoint of the people of its time.  

I doubt there are many people who still believe that the sun circles around the earth. In the mid-19th century, the Roman Catholic Church had to admit its error and it rescinded its ban on Galileo’s published writings. 

We can look back at this incident and shake our heads today, but I believe we are living at a time when many are making similar mistakes.  In our own time, Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and other new scientific theories have challenged our understanding of Scripture and have evoked similar knee-jerk reactions. (More about this in a later article.)

This raises the question, what do we do when science appears to contradict the other revelations of God, especially the Bible? There is a perception that if there is a contradiction then either the Bible is wrong, or the science is wrong.  This generates fear amongst believers that somehow science is a threat to their faith, and this in turn leads to a protective and emotional reaction. However, there is a third possibility. Perhaps it is our interpretation of the Bible that needs revision – just as was the case in Galileo’s time.

 I believe in the Holy Scriptures. I believe they are the unerring word of God, and that every word in the Bible is true. I believe however that though Scripture is infallible, our interpretations of it often are not. There is much symbolism, metaphor, and poetry in the Bible. Some passages are clearly symbolic, some are clearly literal, but others are not easy to interpret. We need to approach these with an open mind and humility and ask the Holy Spirit to help us rightly discern the truth in them. We need to accept the possibility that sometimes our traditional and received interpretations may be incorrect. 

Of course, it may also be that the Science is wrong. Scientific knowledge is not infallible. Our observations and data may be flawed or incomplete. Our interpretations of the data can be wrong or biased. New evidence may overturn our theories. Scientists also need to exercise humility. 

All honest scientists know that scientific observations and measurements can never infallibly prove anything to be correct. It takes only one confirmed, contradictory instance to prove a theory wrong, but it is much harder to prove something to be true, since it is always possible that some new evidence will be discovered that will disprove our theory.  Karl Popper, the father of the Philosophy of Science, gave us the famous raven example to explain this.

We can hypothesize that all ravens are black. We can then go out and test this hypothesis by observing, let’s say, 1000 ravens. If all 1000 ravens are black this tends to support the theory, but if we find even one raven that is not black then our theory is disproved. However, even if all the ravens observed are black, we can never know if the next raven we observe might be ‘non-black’, and therefore we can never know for sure that our hypothesis is correct. New evidence in the future could always potentially disprove it. 

Ironically it has recently been discovered that ravens are not black but have beautiful violet colors which are visible to birds but not to humans, since we cannot see that part of the electromagnetic spectrum.  This is an example of how new technologies can give rise to new evidence that forces us to overturn our theories. 

Not so long ago physicists thought they had more-or-less come to the end of their field. Newton’s Three Laws of Motion adequately explained all observable phenomena and generated accurate predictions.  However, our technology subsequently improved and when scientists started studying the subatomic world, of protons, neutrons and electrons, and the even smaller fundamental particles that make up these subatomic particles, they found that Newtonian physics could not explain the observed phenomena. A new theory had to be developed and Quantum Physics was born. Quantum Physics has led to an explosion of knowledge and understanding about our universe, which we are only beginning to explore, and which has shown us that the universe is much, much more complex and strange than we could ever have dreamed. Today we are finding that even Quantum Physics is inadequate to describe the universe and a new ‘Theory of Everything’ is being developed. 

God has given every human being an insatiable desire to learn and understand our world. We are fundamentally curious.  We ask questions: “Why?” and “How?” and “For what purpose?” Even small babies explore their world by means of science. The tiny baby who discovers her fingers and learns to wiggle them does so by the scientific process. She asks herself, probably unconsciously, “If I think “wiggle,” then they will wiggle. This is her hypothesis. She then goes about testing it. She thinks and they wiggle. She repeats this many times, until she ‘knows’ that she can move her fingers just by thinking it. She has confirmed her hypothesis. All children explore their world this way. It is something fundamental to our being. 

 Science is all about trying to find answers to the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ of our world.  Science does this by uncovering cause-and-effect relationships – this happens because this happens.  Every cause is also an effect, and we can construct cause-and-effect chains (or rather networks). 

For example, if I ask why your boss was mad with you today.  You might say, “Well, I was late for work”. Then I might ask why you were late for work, and you might say, “Because I got a flat tire,” and I could say, “Why did you get a flat tire?” and so on. Every effect becomes a cause in the next step. Phenomena can be explained by cause-and-effect chains. Of course, there are often more than one cause for an event, and more than one effect for every cause.  Cause and effect chains therefore interact, and it is probably better to say there are cause-and-effect networks. 

If we trace cause and effect chains, further and further back toward the primary cause, it is inevitable that eventually we will encounter God.  Today Science is approaching this point. Scientists are in danger of having to admit that the best answer to the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ of the universe is a creator God. 

Science is intrinsically limited because it can only deal with the observable and measurable world. It therefore cannot address the supernatural. With our increasingly sophisticated instruments, we have hugely expanded the part of the universe that can be observed and measured. 

When I was born scientists did not know if there was anything beyond our galaxy, the Milky Way. Now we know that our galaxy, as vast as it is, with its around 200-400 billion stars, is only one of perhaps another 200-500 billion galaxies in the universe. The Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, has sent us back images of deep space, giving us a view of the universe which we now know is much larger, and much older than we formerly believed. More recently launched telescopes and cameras are revealing even more. In the other direction, our microscopes and other instruments have revealed a smaller and smaller world, and we are currently exploring the subatomic world, which is challenging many of our traditional perceptions of the universe. In the last hundred years, there has been an explosion of scientific knowledge, and this is forcing us all to revise our understanding of the world in which we live. 

In articles to follow we will look at some of these new discoveries and their implications for our Faith. I want to put it to you that we have nothing to fear from these new scientific discoveries and theories. Rather we should embrace them, as more and more they point towards a great Creator who upholds the universe by his hand and gives breath to all living beings – just as his Word says. If we approach them with an open mind, we will find that these discoveries are faith-building rather than faith-destroying, confirming Biblical truths and not contradicting them.