Are science and faith incompatible?
Friday, 5 March 2010
| Ethos: EA Centre for Christianity and Society
First, many scientists are people of faith. They are far from being so rare as to be, according to Dawkins “a subject of amused bafflement to their peers in the academic community”. A survey of 1000 U.S. scientists in 1916 showed that 41.8% believed in a God who answers prayer. This percentage had not fallen significantly when the survey was repeated in 1996, despite the enormous growth in scientific knowledge in fields as diverse as cosmology, quantum theory, genetics, neurobiology and so on. If science disproves God or is incompatible with faith, there should be no scientists who are religious, or if there are, they must be very dysfunctional individuals. But consider just some of the prominent Christians who are also scientists. Alister McGrath started his academic life as an atheist, but became a Christian while doing a doctorate in molecular biophysics, and has written extensively in the area of the relationship between the natural sciences and Christian belief, including The Dawkins Delusion. John Polkinghorne resigned his professorial chair in Mathematical Physics at Cambridge to study for ordained ministry, and is a founding member of the International Society for Science and Religion. Francis Collins, Director of the Human Genome Project, became a Christian while working with the dying, and in 2009 founded the BioLogos Foundation to "contribute to the public voice that represents the harmony of science and faith”. These are not dysfunctional or unthinking individuals, who keep their science and their faith separate or haven't thought through the implications of their science for their faith, and vice versa.
Psalm 19 is sometimes called the Psalm of God's Two Books, because it speaks of how God expresses Himself through both the Book of nature, and the Book of scripture. God does not contradict himself. The study of the natural world can never disprove God. All truth is God's truth. The person who is open to truth will not be drawn away from God by studying the world God has made. On the contrary he or she may be drawn towards God by the beauty and wonder of the world that reflects its creator. “The heavens are telling the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech and night to night declares knowledge”.