Saturday, October 30, 2021

ARE FAITH AND SCIENCE INCOMPATIBLE?

 Psalm 19:1-6

For the director of music. A psalm of David.

 The heavens declare the glory of God;

the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Day after day they pour forth speech;

night after night they display knowledge.

There is no speech or language

where their voice is not heard.

Their voice goes out into all the earth,

their words to the ends of the world.

In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun,

which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion,

like a champion rejoicing to run his course.

It rises at one end of the heavens

and makes its circuit to the other;

nothing is hidden from its heat.

                It was dark as I sat down to do my devotions this morning. I opened my Bible and read the Psalm for this week, Psalm 19. The opening line of that Psalm is, “The heavens declare the glory of God.” As I looked out the window, I could see the first rays of the sun shining on the underside of the clouds, casting a red glow in the sky. The words of the Psalmist were being displayed in vivid color before my eyes.

                I have always liked science. From the time I was a young boy, I have been fascinated by exploring the world around us. I remember my excitement when I got my first microscope and was able to look at things in depth. Our drug store at the time had a science section and I would periodically by prepared slides to look at under my microscope. I also accumulated a few “science articles” in hopes of doing my own experiments. This fascination with science eventually led me to get a degree in biology.

                It was in high school that I first encountered the idea that faith and science were mutually exclusive. I could never embrace that notion. It was my faith in God that motivated my interest in learning more about our world. When I was in college, I was introduced to the concept that all truth is God’s truth. No matter what the temporal source, if something is really true, then it comes ultimately from God. Therefore, the study of science is just one more way to explore the wonder and greatness of God.

                As a part of my devotions, I have been reading John Ortberg’s book, “Who Is This Man?” Today I came across the following passage, which I want to pass on.

                “The worldview of Jesus is part of how science came about in our world. In our day, many people think that science and faith are enemies. But Princeton professor Diogenes Allen writes, ‘We have begun to realize from its very birth, science owed a great deal to Christianity.’

                According the Allen, there are attitudes Christianity has that were indispensable for science to be able to arise. Christians, unlike Plato, believe that matter is good, since God created it. So to study it would be good. The world was created by an orderly and rational God, and therefore there is reason to expect not chaos, but order and reason, law, regularity in creation, in nature. On the other hand, since God is free and omniscient, we could never predict ahead of time what it is that he would do, so we will have to investigate. We’ll have to experiment to find out.” (Who Is This Man? Page 68)

                Rather than stifling science, faith in God has been the catalyst for exploration at every level. The prevailing view today that life on planet earth is random and undesigned leaves no foundation upon which to build. Only when we recognize that God created a world of order and design can we truly understand what we are discovering.

                The heavens declare the glory of God! If we will open our eyes and really look at the world around us, we can see the fingerprints of God everywhere. If we take God out of the equation, we are only left with non-descript smudges that lead us to a dead end.

Psalm 24:1-2

Of David. A psalm.

The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it,

the world, and all who live in it;

for he founded it upon the seas

and established it upon the waters.

 

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