DO FAITH AND SCIENCE CONFLICT?

By Mark Pinkston

Imagine the perfect summer evening. A cool refreshing temperature, just the slightest breeze, and the buzz of cicadas in the distance. The sun has just set behind mountains that ring a grassy hillside, where you’re seated with friends on blankets laid across the ground. The sky is shaded from deep purple to orange, as the first evening stars emerge from the deep. Some distance below you, at the foot of the hill, lies a large stage illuminated by brilliant colorful lighting, where your favorite music is about to be performed by your favorite musicians. The performers take the stage, the first notes are struck, and a wave of sound blasts your senses. You’re in the midst of a visual and audible feast of pure enjoyment, a perfect moment.

Now, envision the same event if you were blind. Coolness, breeze, cicadas, grass, blanket, conversation, music. Still a great evening, but missing the visual splendor of the mountains, the sky, the stars, and the stage lights.

Suppose you were deaf. You certainly would enjoy the beauty of mountains and sky, the faces of friends, and the illuminated performance on the stage, but miss the elixir of sound offered by the cicadas, the conversation, and of course the music.

This little exercise makes a good analogy of the contrast often perceived to exist between science and religion. Some people insist on drawing sharp lines between science and God, as if there is somehow a dichotomy or incompatibility between the two. As a result, they tend to take-up sides and invest their attention or devotion into one, at the expense or even ridicule of the other. This type of thinking is like attending the concert in the mountains but choosing to be either deaf or blind, failing to enjoy the whole package that is being offered.

I won’t pretend that tensions between religion and science don’t exist. Only in recent years, for example, has the church officially relieved Copernicus and Galileo of the “heresies” associated with their evidences of our sun-centered planetary system. Similarly, some Christians casually dismiss any discoveries of science that challenge their preconceived notions of God, and try to demand similar actions by others among the faithful. And I won’t deny the fact that many scientists are down-right demeaning and hostile toward people of faith, painting them as superstitious wimps possessing far inferior intellectual capacities relative to the enlightened scientific elite.

Sadly, the two camps simply don’t know much about the other’s world. For centuries science and religion were simultaneously pursued and considered virtually one-and-the-same, but more recently they have often become polarized. Today, the sciences are poorly understood by most people in our culture, and that applies to Christians as well. For a majority of believers, their knowledge and training in the sciences is frozen at about a 9th-grade level. And for most scientists, their knowledge and understanding about religion in general, and Christianity in particular, has no more depth than stereotypical portrayals on TV sitcoms. Yet in each case, these same people routinely take it upon themselves to judge the validity and relevance of the other’s expertise.

Blind or deaf, take your pick.

But oh, what thrills await the Christian believer who chooses to enjoy the whole concert, by watching the sciences as well as listening to the Bible. You see, God has given us two sources of revelation, two “books” about Himself: the Bible, and the creation (nature). Both come from the same exact source, and both are descriptive of His character and purposes. Nature reveals the powerful transcendent Creator, outside the boundaries of time and space, while the Bible reveals the personal, near God who chooses to know us with intimacy. Our relationship with Christ and our understanding of the cosmos via a transcendent Creator fit hand-in-glove when we pursue both, leaving the human inquisitor in unspeakable awe of the great God with whom we have to do.

Because we live at a time when both science and religion are prospering, today’s Christians are uniquely postured to intertwine their knowledge of God with the ongoing discoveries of science. As a result, we can revel in a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the universe and our God than either the scientist or theologian has ever approached alone. Duality, not dichotomy.

Expand your own understanding of nature and the cosmos, and be careful not overlook this significant portion of God’s revelation about Himself to you. Enjoy both the sights and the sounds of the incredible concert God performs before us every day.

Mark Pinkston holds a MS degree in Biology, is an amateur astronomer, owns a pharmaceutical communications agency in Lee’s Summit and has been a Christian for three decades. Mark can be reached at markpink@comcast.net.

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