science and faith

Has Science Discovered God?

/ kevingdrendel / Leave a comment

Friends viewing the eclipse at a church in Missouri

Gerald Schroeder is a scientist with over thirty years of experience in research and reaching. He earned his Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctorate degrees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He spent the next five years on the staff of the MIT physics department prior to moving to Israel, where he joined the Weizmann Institute of Science and then the Volcani Research Institute, while also operating a laboratory at The Hebrew University. He has Doctorates in Earth sciences and physics.

In this video, he explains how science has discovered God.

Do the Bible and Science Come from the Same Author?

/ kevingdrendel / 1 Comment

The Bible is not a scientific text, and it isn’t meant to be. Yet, we find stunning consistency between the statements about the universe described in the Bible and the facts about the universe revealed by science millennia after the biblical statements were made. In fact, the Bible stands alone among the sacred texts of the world religions in its consistency with modern science, according to Hugh Ross in his book, The Fingerprint of God.

For that reason, Christians (and Jews) should not fear modern science, though many modern scientists may be anti-theistic in their orientation. Modern people of science also should not be ignorant of the Bible. The Bible and science can and do get along. Even if a person ultimately rejects the truths of the Bible, rejecting it from a place of ignorance isn’t very scientific!

From that open-minded perspective, let’s explore some of the things the Bible states about God that are harmonious with what we now know of the universe.[1]

Continue reading →

Giving Religion and Science a Chance to Get Along

/ kevingdrendel / 1 Comment

Christianity stands alone among all the religions of the world in that its religious text is harmonious with the facts about the universe revealed by modern science. That statement may seem incredulous to many who have heard that science and faith are incompatible. Such a sentiment is conveyed by people who don’t understand faith (or the Bible), and they are seemingly confirmed by people of faith who distrust and misunderstand science.

If God is true, His fingerprints should be seen in the universe He created.  So Christians should not be afraid of science. Scientists and people who love science, also, should not be closed-minded about the evidence of God. Close-mindedness should not be characteristic of the scientific community.

Just as many Christians are ignorant of science, many people of science are ignorant of the Bible. As Francis Collins, the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute since 1993,[1] concluded when he realized he was ignorant of the claims of faith, dismissing the Bible out of ignorance is not very scientific.

We can’t possibly prove God, which is why many people of science reject the idea of God out of hand. But scientists accept many things that can’t be proven. They accept the concept of beauty, though science cannot tell us what it is; and they love their spouses and children, though the idea of love eludes scientific analysis.

To the extent that God is super natural, He is not susceptible of being measured or quantified by a study of nature. We shouldn’t expect to find God in nature if God created nature, apart from Himself. As the art on a canvas can tell us something about the artist, the natural world can tell us something of the Creator of it, but the art is not the artist.

Just as the art on a canvas is a reflection of the artist, it doesn’t tell the whole story, and different people see different things in the art. Thus, someone can look at the natural world and focus on death, suffering and seeming futility. While, another person can look at the same natural world and see stunning beauty, unimaginable variety of living and nonliving things and the intricately inter-working, complex processes and structures that speak to a mind of awe inspiring magnitude.

In science, we press on when we don’t understand and things don’t make sense. We strive to understand and fill the gaps[2] in our knowledge. The same approach should be used with our understanding of Scripture. A difference between some people of science and some people of faith is that one group has confidence in science alone and one group has confidence in Scripture alone.

Just as a religious person can stray from truth by relying only on Scripture, without the discipline of grammar, the understanding of ancient cultures and, yes, science, people of science can stray from truth without having some understanding of the metaphysical world of logic, philosophy and, yes, religion.

Continue reading →

Science, Faith and Semantics

/ kevingdrendel / 1 Comment

13726700_10210133472637240_2926152963116705607_n

Richard Dawkins, the famous atheist and author, debated John Lennox, the Oxford mathematician and philosopher of science, in 2010.  This was the first of the Dawkins Lennox debates. Both men were both well-spoken and well-suited for the task.

Aside from the usual issues and points that are made in these sorts of debates about faith and science, some nuances emerge that I thought were interesting to consider. I highlight one particular interchange in particular.

Dawkins asserted, like an axiom, that faith is belief with no evidence (implying that faith is the antithesis of reason). Not surprisingly, Lennox disagreed. With a such a fundamental disagreement on the definition of faith, it seems to me, the focus should have been on the definition of “faith” – but it wasn’t.

Dawkins claimed that faith would not be faith if it was rational and evidence-based. In other words, Dawkins defined faith, in its very essence, as the absence of reason and evidence.

Lennox, on the other hand, described faith as the willingness to repose belief, trust and commitment in something for which there is evidence, but no “proof” (as in mathematical proof). In other words, Lennox describes faith as confidence in reason and evidence.

The way Dawkins defines faith it is the opposite of reason, while Lennox harmonizes them so that one (faith) emerges from the other (reason). Who is right? Continue reading →

Understanding in the Gaps

/ kevingdrendel / Leave a comment

13626393_10210079600970482_4532829291014432804_n

Science and religion, depending on the perspective, enjoy a beautiful (or contentious) marriage or have been the victors (or victims) of a bitter divorce in the modern world.  Debates on science and religion dot the Internet, providing plenty of food for fodder no matter which side of the family one might identify with.

One such debate involves Richard Dawkins, the famous atheist and author from Oxford and his Oxford fellow, John Lennox, the mathematician and philosopher of science. Both men are marvelously well spoken and present their competing views eloquently and  convincingly, though they cannot both be right in their ultimate positions.

The debate, which uses Dawkin’s book, the God Delusion, as the subject matter,  is quite long, not the usual fare in the MTV age of tweets and soundbites, but well worth taking the time to listen and watch. They begin with biographical information and early influences that inform their worldviews. The meat of the debate uses statements from Dawkins’ book as the outline.

Continue reading →

End of Reason: Leap of Faith

/ kevingdrendel / 1 Comment

Gainer 2

I listened to an interesting series of hard questions about Christianity posed to Tim Keller by some heavy hitting interviewers. I got sidetracked by the first question: Are not faith and reason contradictory terms? The question took me back to college when I first began to wrestle with faith in the academic world. Continue reading →