Taking every thought captive for obedience to Christ (2 Corinthians 10.5)

The Question
Hasn’t science disproved the Bible (5)?
One of the great benefits of the scientific method is that it explains so much. Why do objects fall? Gravity. Why does water turn to vapor? Because of the application of heat. And so forth. Because of their strong powers of observation, deduction, and experimentation, scientists are able to discern the workings of the Word of God within the material cosmos in ways that, from a physical perspective, explain many things. The explanatory power of science is truly one of its great virtues.

But that power to explain only extends to material things. The scientific community makes a mistake, and it transgresses into other areas and methods of knowing, when it tries to reduce everything to matter, so that it can posit physical explanations for all things. The members of the scientific community have become so accustomed to operating this way that they are convinced it’s neither necessary nor helpful to consider any other possibilities besides material cause-and-effect to explain everything we need to know.

This hubris leads to certain embarrassing impasses.

For example, two major controversies currently raging within the scientific community are the direct result of this reductionist view of the world, the view which reduces all reality to matter and energy and all explanations to material cause-and-effect. In the area of neuroscience, those who study the workings of the brain are becoming increasingly convinced that the brain operates independently of human will, so that, even before we make choices or decisions, the brain has already determined what we will do. The implications of this kind of thinking, of course, are that human beings do not have a free will. They do what they do and act as they act because of the “wiring” and chemistry of their brains, and the ways those brains respond to various stimuli.

We don’t have to think very hard about what the implications of such a view might be for human morality, or for adjudicating criminal proceedings.

In another vein, the attempt to account for human altruism has foundered on the rocks of recantation. The current scientific explanation of why humans act with compassion and generosity toward others – contrary to what “the survival of the fittest” might indicate – is that it’s a kind of “species response” or, more locally, a group or tribe response, designed to ensure the survivability of the local gene pool. The scientific community breathed a huge sigh of relief a few decades back when that cause-and-effect explanation of this puzzling tendency was floated.

The problem today is that the very scientist who first articulated that explanation, Dr. E. O. Wilson, has now repudiated it as unworkable. As a result, his colleagues in the scientific community have vilified and ostracized him, determined as they are to cling to their materialistic explanation of this uniquely human characteristic.

Science can explain much, but science can’t explain everything. And the harder science tries, sometimes the more foolish it can appear. Is it any wonder that, increasingly, people mistrust the scientific community?

The Bible, meanwhile, also offers explanations for many things. It explains both why people can be so kind and compassionate, and why they are also self-interested and violent. It explains why the cosmos continues operating in an orderly and fruitful manner. The Bible explains the nature and meaning of love, and why such an affection should exist at all. The Bible explains why people act willfully, why they are charmed by things beautiful, and why, society by society, certain kinds of behaviors are universally regarded as wrong.

Science has not disproved the explanatory power of the Bible. Its own explanations of the workings of the cosmos are largely true, as far as they go. But the Bible goes on to explain why the cosmos is orderly, knowable, and able to be mastered and put to so many good uses. Science cannot explain this. Moreover, the Bible explains why human beings are driven to know the cosmos, to make sense of it, to find a place and calling within it, and to contribute something of good to the world. Science, as we have seen, because of its reductionist worldview, only stumbles over its own feet when such questions are in the air.

Science has proved a good bit about the workings of the cosmos. But it has not and cannot disprove the explanatory power of the Word of God in Scripture. The Bible is always there, picking up the pieces of human speculative folly, putting the course of life back on the rails.

Honest scientists, even honest unbelieving scientists, understand both the limits of science and the explanatory power of Scripture. As Robert Jastrow, an agnostic, who headed the Goddard Space Lab for a time, observed, “At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

We’ll look at part 6 of this question next Sunday. Now here’s a recap from this week at The Ailbe website.

Weekly Review
Tuesday’s ReVision column examined the time God grants us, and concluded that it’s not really our time at all, but His. All the more reason to put it to the best possible Kingdom use (you can download the entire series on Time for the Kingdom by clicking here).

Our Monday, Wednesday, and Friday Crosfigell column features insights for spiritual growth from Scripture and the period of the Celtic Revival, ca. 430-800 AD. This week we drew from the insights of Celtic Christian poetry, preaching, and catechesis to explore the deep desires of our souls, our calling as servants of the Lord and one another, and the workings of the conscience within our souls.

Our Scriptorium daily studies for this week followed the unfolding drama of the breakout of the Gospel from the confines of Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria into the larger Gentile world of Rome. Peter’s faithfulness at each step of the process is instructive for us in working our own Personal Mission Fields. You can watch the brief video introducing Acts 10 by clicking here (scroll down to Lesson 9), and the free PDF of all the week’s studies in Acts 10 is available for download by clicking here (scroll down to Part 9).

In our Thursday The Week column, we considered why the scientific community seems to be losing trust among the public in general, and suggested that a little more humility might be in order concerning the limits of science and the possibilities of knowing by means of other methods and disciplines.

Finally, in our Saturday In the Gates column we are considering the “first principles” essential for learning to live under the rule of God’s Law. We continued looking at the importance of giving our minds to the task of understanding and learning God’s Law as part of our daily disciplines of growth in the Lord. Only by knowing and obeying God’s Law can we find our way into His precious and very great promises.

Visit our website and bookstore to discover additional resources and publications to help you in your walk with and work for the Lord.

T. M. Moore

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