The Bible and Science:  Can I Keep My Faith and My Brain?

        “It was a dark and stormy night.”  There's nothing like a good opening line. But opening sentences are tough for me. I probably spend more time on the opening paragraph then any other single part of a sermon.

       God doesn't have that problem. As opening lines go, this one’s hard to beat: "In beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."

       That, of course the opening sentence of the book of Genesis. It is therefore the opening sentence in the Bible and the opening line in the drama of God's relationship with human history.

       Here's how The Living Bible paraphrases this opening: "When God began creating the heavens and the earth, the earth was at first a shapeless, chaotic mass, with the Spirit of God brooding over the dark vapors. And God said, 'let there be light.'"

       Now listen to this description: "When time began, perhaps as long as 20 billion years ago, all mass and energy were compressed almost to infinite density and heated to trillions upon trillions of degrees. A cosmic explosion rent that featureless mass, creating a rapidly expanding fireball. It has been cooling ever since. At first the universe was an impenetrable haze.  The universe cleared and everywhere blazed with light.

        It sounds like a paraphrase of Genesis, doesn't it? But it's not. It comes from National Geographic. 

       Last fall I asked you to write down questions about the Christian faith for the sermon and small group series during Lent. You can tune in next week for the apparent differences between the Old Testament and New Testament pictures of God.  But here are the questions I am going to answer today in about twenty five minutes.  People say they want to know if they need to check their brains at the door to come to church. 

       That’s how they say it – which is what the sermons title is what it is. But I know that nobody here has checked their brain no matter where they are on the question. Everyone has reasons for what they do and don’t believe – which will make for some lively discussion in our small groups as iron sharpens iron. 

       Read cards    

       Pray for me.  Then pray for yourselves as you take this up in you small groups.

       A former president of the New York Academy of Sciences uses a fairly elaborate mathematical model to make it clear that creation of higher life couldn’t have happened by chance.  He says that the existence of our world and humankind defies all mathematical calculations of chance.  Other scientists – even those who don’t believe in God—agree.

      Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking made this observation in A Brief History of Time, “It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us.”  He writes: "the odds against a universe like ours emerging out of something like the Big Bang are enormous. I think there are clearly religious implications."

       Dr. Francis Collins, former director of the Human Genome Project and now the director of the National Institute of Health wrote a book about DNA called The Language of God.  Collins writes:  “We now know what Darwin couldn't imagine, nor could his theory have begun to explain: DNA stores information in the form of a four-character digital code, with strings of precisely sequenced chemicals that transmit detailed assembly instructions. DNA builds protein molecules, the intricate machinery that allows cells to survive.

        Collins continues: “Scientists once likened the components of living cells to simple LEGO blocks. Now they know that "cells have complex circuits, sliding clamps, energy-generating turbines, rotors, stators, O-rings, U-joints, and drive shafts." 

        Now the crucial point.  “None of those tiny engines work unless all parts are present. Hence, they must have coexisted from the beginning. That's what biochemist Michael Behe calls "irreducible complexity."   Cells couldn’t have gradually evolved to be what they are.  They wouldn’t have survived unless they were that way from the beginning.  That is what Behe means by "irreducible complexity."  

       A non-Christian physicist Paul Davies writes, "We now know that the secret of life lies not with the chemical ingredients as such, but with the logical structure and organizational arrangement of the molecules. . . . Like a supercomputer, life is an information processing system. ... It is the software of the living cell that is the real mystery, not the hardware. . . . How did stupid atoms spontaneously write their own software?. . . Nobody knows."

       Dr. Collins comments, “I think there's a better answer than "Nobody knows"; namely, the atoms didn't write their own software. God did.”

        I believe that Genesis 1 and science are telling the same truth but in different ways.  I know there are some here who won’t agree with me that’s okay. I hope it’s okay with you too.  This is one of those “Non-essentials” or “disputable matters” Paul talks about in Romans 14:1 where we are called to cut each other a lot of slack.  No ones salvation or fellowship depends on our opinion on this.

       But I believe that science and the Bible are describing the same thing in different but complimentary ways. Genesis 1 is clearly written from the point of view of the earth as “the Spirit of God brooded over the surface of the waters.”  Genesis 1 speaks of an empty and formless world with no dry land.  It speaks of the atmosphere becoming translucent to allow the entry of light and the revealing of the sun, moon and stars. It speaks of a process of development as God doesn’t just create directly but says, “Let the earth bring forth.”

        The general outline is the same. But Genesis 1 isn’t just about the facts of creation.  It is about the Who and the why of creation.  In the words of Sir Isaac Newton, the Bible is “more about how to go to heaven than how the heavens go,”   We need to remember what Genesis is about and who it was first written for.  

       Some want more information in Genesis about science.  They lament the lack of specific information about dinosaurs because they’re cool and bipedal primates, among other things.   But their mention (or lack of mention) in the Genesis account makes no significant difference to the story God wants us to know.  It simply wouldn’t have served God's purposes thirty-four hundred years ago to lecture to His people about radioactive decay, geologic strata, amino acid chains and DNA.  He needed a message that was more understandable and went right to the core issues.

      I know how hard I have worked in this sermon to make it both understandable to the whole congregation and also reasonably credible to those with a scientific background.  It’s not easy to do.  Think of the challenge God faced. 

        An English chemist named Frederick Filby notes that “The sciences which probe most deeply into the ultimate facts of matter and life are probably astro and nuclear physics and biochemistry. But these sciences are written, not so much in language as in symbols.”

       He says, “It takes many pages of symbols to discuss the nature of a single atom of hydrogen. It has been estimated that to give a complete account of the position of the groups and bonds in a single virus of 'molecular weight 300 million' would take a 200 page book.”  I’m over my head here as soon as you start to talk abut molecular weight so I’ll have to take his word for that.

       But I do understand Filby’s point.  "If the scientific description of a single hydrogen atom, or of a virus too small to be seen without a microscope, takes a book, what hope is there of ever giving a scientific account of the creation of man and the universe?  Yet”, he writes, “Genesis 1 in its original form uses only 76 different root words. If Genesis 1 were written in absolute scientific language to give an account of: creation, there is no man alive, nor ever has there been, who could understand it. If it were written in any kind of scientific language, only the favored few could comprehend it…Genesis 1 was written for all readers, not for none. ..it establishes that the God of the Bible is also the God of creation— in language simple enough for all people in all time…Only God could write such a chapter, and He did."

        But what about the creation of man?   Do we share a common ancestry with apes?

        I believe the answer is clearly, “yes and no.”  DNA certainly shows a close relationship between us and chimps.  But there is more to us than DNA.  We have a dimension that goes beyond the animal.  We are moral beings with an awareness of right and wrong.   We are aware beings – aware of ourselves and our own mortality.   We are spiritual beings with a longing for God and eternity.  All that is what it means to be made in the image of God. 

       As we talk about the creation of man we need to remember how God works. God doesn’t usually start from scratch to do the new thing.  And even when He is doing something new, He sticks as close as He can to the natural law He has already made. For example, in the story of Christmas is a woman designed to bear children – though a virgin – who conceives and gives birth to a Son.  It wasn’t Joseph who conceived.  It wasn’t a tree.  That would have been more amazing but that’s not what God does.  God uses what he has already created, a woman in a miraculous way to give birth to the new thing He is about to do.     

       In the same way, God could certainly use a template of an existing creature – an upright biped with a large brain and opposable thumb – to breathe Himself into to make a creature in His own image.  The body would look the same, the DNA would still line up, but the nature would be very, very different.            

       It is the joining together of spirit and body which creates the soul so that it begins to function as the bearer of the image of God.  A light bulb is simply some wire and glass.   But if you add an invisible substance, electricity, and pass it through that visible wire, a third function is born: light. Light is different from the wire, and different from the electricity, but it is the product of both.  That’s the soul that expresses the image of God in us – the product of the marriage between the physical and the spiritual. 

       Geneticists have demonstrated through DNA analysis that the present human species is traceable back to one man and one woman who lived less than 100,000 years ago. And the creation of that creature shows up in dramatic ways. 

       Physical anthropologists have determined that only Homo sapiens sapiens (distinct from Neanderthals, Homo erectus, and archaic Homo sapiens) possess the brain structure to support various spiritual activities.  Humanity's, image of God humanity,  arrival brought about the sudden and pervasive appearance of clothing, complex tools, jewelry, music, art, and religious ceremony. The earliest humans were as expressive with their art, music, and spirituality as humans today.  Only the technology is different.

       I really don’t believe there needs to be a war between faith and science.  But there is.

       On the one hand, there are some Christians who insist that the only valid Christian position is that the world is only about 6,000 years old and was created in six literal 24 hour days even though days, as they define them, weren’t even created until the 4^th day.  They reject evolutionary theory as totally of the Devil.  Some of them are proud to call themselves Fundamentalists. 

       But what fascinates me here is that these Fundamentalists actually are rejecting what is written in their own founding document – The Fundamentals.  The Fundamentals was a series of  essays published by BIOLA from 1910 to 1915.  The Fundemantals actually accept and support evolution as a mechanism in God’s creation.  James Orr wrote on Science and Faith, "The facts of evolution do not weaken the proof from design, but rather immensely enlarge it by showing all things to be bound together in a vaster, grander plan than had been formerly conceived.”

        Many Christians agree.  The see a guided evolution, an intelligent design, as a mechanism that God used in his creation.  Even the late Pope John Paul II had no problem with evolution as a mechanism.  He regarded it as God’s way of letting His creation unfold.   

       There is nothing about Christian faith that means that you have to reject scientific evidence. And, equally, there is nothing about true science – science as science, not science as religion - that means that you have to reject God. 

       A survey last year of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science conducted by the Pew Research Center reveals that a majority of scientists say they believe in God or a higher power.  What is also interesting is that scientists today are no less likely to believe in God than they were almost 100 years ago, when the scientific community was first polled on this issue – and young scientists are more likely to believe than older ones. ”

      So why is there a war between faith and science on the science side? 

      It’s because there are some scientists who embrace not only science but a belief system called “scientism.” Scientism is different from Scientology. Scientism is a secular religion which claims that science has all the answers -- that science explains not only what happens but also why things happen.

       Some very loud scientists are its devotees. And the religion of Scientism discards the claims of traditional religions simply because they are religious.

       This was brought out by Maria Vos Savant who writes a column in Parade Magazine. She is billed as the smartest person in the world. Several years ago a reader wrote her this question: “I assume that you, like most intellectual types, are not a religious person. So what do you think of the Big Bang theory?”

        I loved Vos Savant’s reply. She wrote “I think that if it had been a religion that first maintained the notion that all the matter in the entire universe had once been contained in an area smaller than the point of a pin, scientists probably would have laughed at the idea.”

        Vos Savant describes the limitations of the scientific mind very well -- if that scientific mind embraces science as his or her religion.

       And the message of the religion of Scientism is both limited and grim.  It simply states that we are here by chance – that we are the blind result of a blind process.

       If we are going to buy into that, then we need to be honest about where it takes us.  If we are the blind product of a blind process, then life is really pointless no matter how we try to dress it up. If the message of Scientism is true it destroys any kind of rationale hope – and it should. 

       In the words of R.C. Sproul, “If our past history tells us that we have emerged from the slime, that we are only grown-up germs, what difference can it possibly make whether we are black germs or white germs, whether we are free germs or enslaved germs? Who cares? We can sing of the dignity of man, but unless that dignity is rooted substantially in that which has intrinsic value, all our songs of human rights and dignity are so much whistling in the dark. They are naive, simplistic and credulous. And the existentialist understands that. He says, 'You're playing games when you call yourselves creatures of dignity. If all you have is the present, there is no dignity, only nothingness.'" 

       But fortunately there is a whole lot more evidence for intelligent design by a creator than there is for life as a product of chance.  Chance doesn’t do it.  As Sir Fred Hoyle, Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge University wrote “The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in (a random) way is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk yard might assemble a Boeing 747.”  That’s assuming that all the parts are there to be assembled.

       Chance can’t do it.  Only God can do it.

       What do we see in creation? Do we see a closed system? Or do we see that hand of God? It makes a difference what we see. In the words of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Earth’s crammed with heaven and every common bush afire with God. But only he who sees takes off shoes. The rest sit round it and pick blackberries.”

       Well, we aren’t here today to pick blackberries. We are here to see. We are here to take off our shoes. For we are in the presence of the One whom Paul tells us is the very Lord of Creation.

       Some people feel frightened and lonely in the world. They are overwhelmed by the thought of the immensity of space. The stars in the night sky seem to emphasize the brevity and unimportance of human life. After all, those stars are billions of miles away and become farther from us with each moment that passes. The light from them now reaching us may have begun its journey centuries ago, long before we were born.

       But the message of God as loving creator allows us to feel at home in the world. It reminds us that we, like the rest of creation, were fashioned by God. We are here because God wants us to be here and designed a world for us to live in.  We are not alone but are in the very presence of the God who made and owns everything. We are in the presence of a friend who knows us and cares for us. – who came and lived among us and died for us.  Behind the apparently vast and faceless universe is a person who is our friend.