When I was in middle school, I heard my first Ken Ham seminar. It made a lot of sense to me back then, but then again, I was in middle school. It didn’t take long into high school to realize the Answers in Genesis movement is bad science, bad theology, and bad logic. However, it didn’t help that such idiocracy lives in opposition to an equally dogmatic and closed-minded movement: evolutionary atheism. These two ideologies, those who claim to prove God through science and those who claim science disproves God, are two sides of the same coin.
The Most Important Words In Science Are “We Don’t Know”
Science is the discipline of discovering and understanding the world through observation, empirical evidence, and repeatable experimentation. You cannot discover or understand anything if you approach it with an attitude of already having all the answers. Six-day fundamentalists are squelching the scientific spirit of discovery in Christian culture and our youth by claiming to have all the answers.
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However, when secular scientists overreach and claim we know everything about our origins, they are killing our spirit of wonder and discovery as well. If we are going to learn more about how the universe began, we have to start with “we don’t know.” If we are going to understand the origins of life and diversity, we have to start with “we don’t know.” We have clues, yes. We have some discoveries, yes. Do we have all the answers? Not even close.
None Of Us Have All the Answers
Scriptures do not give us all the answers to life, reality, and the universe. It only tells us what we need to know to live as disciples of Christ in the time we have. We need to end our obsession with trying to squeeze Genesis 1-3 for every last drop of “secret divine data.” God told us he created the world, he didn’t tell us how. Also, the Bible was written to us within the knowledge and awareness of the world we had at the time. So basically, not much at all.
For science, evolution is an ever changing theory which is debated, refined, and altered every day. The “big bang” theory is still being re-thought. Heck, we are still debating how the solar system formed. If you, as a scientist or science enthusiast, think science has everything figured out, then just lookup what scientists thought about the world in the 1700s and realize that you will sound just as silly a few hundred years from now as well, if not sooner.
There Is No Conflict Between Science and Religion
…except the ones we invent. Religion is how we make sense of the world as a whole. It is the language we use to express the connections we have to each other, our hopes, our fears, and our dreams. For Christians, our faith defines the context by which we live. We live to serve, to master our own impulses, and to lift up others. Using the scriptures, which were given to us for that purpose, to beat down and try to subdue the thoughts and ideas around us is not only a misuse of our faith, but contrary to it. You will never convince someone to be a Christian by talking them into it. Our job is to inspire the world, not condemn it.
Science, you should be ashamed of yourself too. Bill Nye, I love your work, but you have contributed to this black and white misconception of science vs. religion by placing yourself across from Ken Ham. You are correct, there is no soul, spirit, or afterlife in science. But that is not because science has disproved them, it is because science cannot reach them (at least not yet). If we are to keep science objective and unbiased, then it has to stay objective and unbiased.
There Is No Magic, Only Wonder. God Is an Artist AND an Engineer.
I don’t understand the reaction Christians often have to science. Just because we understand the science behind something doesn’t mean there is no more God in it. To everything in this world there is a scientific explanation and a spiritual understanding. I believe there is no limit to what science, good science, can discover. We are the children of God, and what would a father want more for his children than that they grow to understand the world around them?
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There is no problem with looking for answers, understanding, and explanations. There is, however, a big problem with saying you already have everything figured out and everyone just has to agree with you. Christians and scientists both need to learn to endure mystery, because without enduring mystery we can’t be objective with knowledge. In the end, I believe there wouldn’t be so many anti-religious scientists if there weren’t so many anti-science Christians.