Can I Believe in Natural Sciences and in a Supernatural God?

Scripture: Psalm 147; Revelation 1: 4-8

Sermon: Can I Believe in Natural Sciences and in a Supernatural God?

Topics: faith, science, big-bang, awe, evolution

Preached: October 25, 2009

Rev. Mike Abma

PSALM 147

Praise the Lord!

How good it is to sing praises to our God;

   for he is gracious, and a song of praise is fitting.

²The Lord builds up Jerusalem;

   he gathers the outcasts of Israel.

³He heals the broken-hearted,

   and binds up their wounds.

⁴He determines the number of the stars;

   he gives to all of them their names.

⁵Great is our Lord, and abundant in power;

   his understanding is beyond measure.

⁶The Lord lifts up the downtrodden;

   he casts the wicked to the ground.

⁷Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving;

   make melody to our God on the lyre.

⁸He covers the heavens with clouds,

   prepares rain for the earth,

   makes grass grow on the hills.

⁹He gives to the animals their food,

   and to the young ravens when they cry.

¹⁰His delight is not in the strength of the horse,

   nor his pleasure in the speed of a runner;<sup>*

11</sup>but the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him,

   in those who hope in his steadfast love.

¹²Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem!

   Praise your God, O Zion!

¹³For he strengthens the bars of your gates;

   he blesses your children within you.

¹⁴He grants peace^* within your borders;

   he fills you with the finest of wheat.

¹⁵He sends out his command to the earth;

   his word runs swiftly.

¹⁶He gives snow like wool;

   he scatters frost like ashes.

¹⁷He hurls down hail like crumbs—

   who can stand before his cold?

¹⁸He sends out his word, and melts them;

   he makes his wind blow, and the waters flow.

¹⁹He declares his word to Jacob,

   his statutes and ordinances to Israel.

²⁰He has not dealt thus with any other nation;

   they do not know his ordinances.

Praise the Lord!

REVELATION 1:4-8

John to the seven churches that are in Asia:

Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, ⁵and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.

To him who loves us and freed^* us from our sins by his blood, ⁶and made^* us to be a kingdom, priests serving^* his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

⁷Look! He is coming with the clouds;

   every eye will see him,

even those who pierced him;

   and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail.

So it is to be. Amen.

8 ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega’, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

INTRODUCTION

The question for today is: “Can I believe in natural sciences and a supernatural God?” To tell you the truth, I was tempted to preach a very short sermon. I was tempted simply to say: YES. YES WE CAN.

But I thought, “That answer probably needs a little more fleshing out.”

This is a struggle for people — especially, I think, for younger Christians between the ages of 15 and 25. A recent study by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, found that while in college, students attend religious services less and less – over their college years the drop is about 23 %. They found that between entering college and graduating, students also feel less and less spiritual — 36% less spiritual.^[1]

In other words, college students increasingly act and feel less and less faithful as they become more and more educated.

The reasons for this are complicated.

But one medical student put it this way, “My scientific training makes it difficult, if not impossible, for me to keep accepting the teachings of Christianity.”^[2]

We know this tension.

Newspapers and magazines like to pump up this conflict.

One magazine had this headline: “Science versus Religion — the ultimate smack down.”^[3]

In this kind of winner-take-all context,

we are led to believe you can be an intelligent scientific thinker

or you can be a religious believer.

But you cannot be both.

These tensions between Science and Faith are unfortunate and regrettable. And, to be fair, we believers have to admit that at times the church has made things worse, not better. Back when Galileo started looking through a telescope and was certain the earth orbited the sun, well, it was not particularly helpful for the Church to insist that, no, the sun orbited the earth. And when a science teacher was hauled into court in Tennessee in 1925, all in an effort to keep Darwin from being taught in school, well, that was not our finest hour either.

I think we Christians have learned a few things over the years.

The Roman Catholic Church has even officially apologized to Galileo – only 350 years late.^[4] I think we can safely say that pride often got in the church’s way. We were so sure we were right. But now we have learned to be more humble before the mysteries of the universe. We have come to appreciate just how vast, how elegant, and how inter-connected the universe really is. This has only inspired awe in us.

“Awe” is the language of Psalm 147:

Great is the Lord.

Abundant is his power

His understanding is beyond measure.

Even the philosopher, Immanuel Kant, who was not known to be overly religious, had to admit that there were 2 things that filled him with awe:

The starry heavens without

And the moral law within.

In Psalm 147 we stand in awe at how God is the source of both of these.

God heals the broken-hearted and he determines the number of stars.

He binds the wounds of the broken, and he gives names to all the constellations.

In this Psalm, we stand in awe before the bigness of God.

His incomprehensible vastness in setting the stars in their place overwhelms

us.

But his compassion…his tender-hearted compassion for the lowly and broken, that undoes us.

Psalm 147 puts us in a posture of awe and humility before the one

through whom and for whom all things were created (Colossians 1:16).

BIG-BANG AWE

Is there room for this type of religious awe and humility in the realm of science?

Two books, both published in 2006, give opposite answers.

Richard Dawkins book, called The God Delusion, says no. He writes that you basically need to make a choice: be an intelligent scientific thinker or be a religious believer. You cannot be both.^[5]

The other book published that year was called The Language of God, by Francis Collins, former head of the Human Genome Project and presently the head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Collins writes that a person can definitely be an intelligent scientific thinker and a fervent religious believer. In fact, science has a way of deepening our awe and humility before the Creator of all things.^[6]

I do not have time to rehearse all of Collins’ wonderful insights,

but the way he describes what we know of the origins of our universe,

the way a number of apparent coincidences of that first cataclysmic explosion all converged so that life could develop on our planet,

and the sheer mathematical odds against a universe and solar system like ours emerging out of something like the Big Bang,

well, Collins simply writes that it all cries out for a divine explanation!^[7]

In 2006, TIME magazine actually published a debate between Richard Dawkins and Francis Collins.^[8] Here were two scientists, both highly regarded in their field.

Both men could wax eloquent about this elegant universe we live in.

But Dawkins doggedly refused to entertain the idea of a Creator.

So Collins asked: Yes, but how is your account of the beginning of life incompatible with God’s having designed it?

Dawkins replies: If God wanted to create life, it would be extremely odd for him

to wait 10 billion years for life to get started, and then another 4 billion years to get to humans.

Collins replied: Who are we to say that is an odd way to do it?

Who are we to say?

This is the language of awe and humility.

EVOLUTION and EVOLUTIONISM

The development of life on our planet has been a particularly sensitive topic in this dialogue between science and religion. Just over a month ago, the Grand Rapids Press interviewed my friend, Dr. David Warners, of the Biology Department here at Calvin. They asked him how Calvin College handles the theory of evolution. David replied that Calvin teaches biology within an evolutionary paradigm.^[9]

His comments generated some sharply worded and unfair letters to the editor.

I think it is helpful to keep two things separate: there is evolutionism and there is an evolutionary paradigm.

Evolutionism is what people like Richard Dawkins preach. This goes beyond what science can demonstrate. This is a worldview, a philosophical position, which basically rules out a Creator, or a guiding hand, or a higher purpose.

But to recognize and accept an “evolutionary paradigm” is very different. This is what people like Francis Collins and many other Christians do. It is simply accepting that there are clear patterns of change in the way God created and allowed life to develop on our planet. It is the way God gave food to the animals and allowed them to develop from simpler to more complex life-forms. As Collins persuasively puts it in his book The Language of God, “For those who believe in God, there are reasons now to be more in awe, not less”^[10]

I am the type of person who sometimes wonders what the early Church Fathers would have thought about the wave of scientific discoveries over the past century. Would they welcome them? Would they resist them? What would they do?

Something in St. Augustine’s commentary on the book of Genesis, makes me quite sure he would have welcomed them.

Augustine wrote:

Usually even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world; they know about the motion and orbit of the stars, and even their size and relative positions…..about the cycles of years and seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth…

And this knowledge he holds as certain from reason and experience.

Now it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an unbeliever to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics. We should take all means necessary to prevent such an embarrassing situation.^[11]

Clearly for Augustine, the Christian was obligated to learn his or her science right along with their theology. It is dangerous thing to have the one without the other.

SCIENCE NEEDS FAITH

Faith needs science.

But science also needs faith.

Psalm 147 notes that

God’s delight is not in the strength of the horse

Nor his pleasure in the speed of a runner

But the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him

In those who hope in his steadfast love.

To update the language a bit

we might say that

God’s delight is not in the strength of a telescope

nor his pleasure in the speed of a particle accelerator.

but the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him.

What people like Richard Dawkins are reluctant to admit is that Science, like anything else we do, is not always a cleared-eyed quest for truth. It can be tainted by sin, just like anything else we put our mind to.

In your opinion, what was the most evil regime of the 20^th century?

For many, Hitler and his Nazi regime represent evil at its worst. What we often forget is that Hitler built his regime on science – the cutting edge science of his day. A number of books have been written documenting the direct path from Charles Darwin to Adolph Hitler. Hitler built his Nazi Regime and his dreams of a Third Reich on the foundation of a form of Social Darwinism: that a stronger race would overcome the weaker races.

According to one historian, what ultimately accounted for the intensity of evil in Hitler’s Nazi regime is that Hitler embraced a worldview that denied any personal God or any transcendent moral standards. For Hitler, the cosmos and history were simply the products of impersonal fate.^[12]

Science needs a story.

Science needs a meta-narrative, a world-view, to keep it from running amuck.

The story science needs is the story of Jesus Christ – the Alpha and the Omega:

The Alpha in whom and through whom all things in heaven and earth were created;

and the Omega, the one to whom all time is pointing,

when God will be all in all,

when peace and righteousness will flourish,

when everything will be made new.

Science and religion, nature and scripture, reason and faith have always needed one another. Pope John Paul II put it nicely when he wrote:

Science can purify religion from error and superstition.

Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.

Each can draw the other into a wider world,

a world in which both can flourish.^[13]

CONCLUSION

At the very end of that 2005 debate between Richard Dawkins and Francis Collins, Dawkins finally relented a little and noted,

My mind is not closed….

If there is a god, it is going to be a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more incomprehensible than anything any theologian has ever proposed.”

Perhaps that is something we need to keep in mind.

We must always remember we worship a God

of immense greatness,

and indescribable power.

As the Psalmist notes: His understanding is beyond measure.

Science is a discipline of measurements.

But God’s understanding is beyond measure.

I love that verse.

There is always more that we do not know,

than that we know.

There is the story of an old native American being asked to testify in court.

He did not know English, so a translator was provided.

The judge asked if he was ready to give “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

The translator spoke the words to the elderly man.

He looked confused then finally said something to the translator.

The translator said to the judge,

“Your honor, he says “I don’t know what the whole truth is.

I only know what I know.”^[14]

Isn’t that the truth?

Amen.

OTHER SCIENCE- RELIGION RESOURCES

Deborah & Loren Haarsma, Origins: A Reformed Look at Creation, Origin, and Evolution. Faith Alive, 2007.

Patrick Glynn. God: The Evidence. The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Post-secular World. Forum, 1997.

John Polkinghorne and Nicholas Beale, Questions of Truth: Fifty-one Responses to Questions about God, Science, and Belief.

Francis Collins, The Language of God. Free Press, 2006.

J. Wentzel van Huyssteen, Alone in the World? Human Uniqueness in Science and Theology. Eerdmans, 2007.

1. See Chuck Edwards and John Stonestreet, “Students Abandoning the Faith” in Mission Frontiers, Sept-Oct, 2009, pp. 34-40. ↑

2. Question raised in Tim Keller, The Reason for God, p. 84 ↑

3. The Headline in Wired Magazine, March 19, 2008. ↑

4. The apology was in 1992. Galileo died in 1642. ↑

5. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Mariner Books, 2006. ↑

6. Francis Collins, The Language of God, Free Press, 2006. ↑

7. Collins, The Language of God, p. 67ff. ↑

8. Dawkins and Collins Debate in “God versus Science,” TIME Nov. 5, 2006. ↑

9. “150^th Anniversary of “Of the Origin of the Species” in Grand Rapids Press, September 26, 2009. See the helpful clarification of Uko Zylstra, “Time to Clarify the Stance of Christian evolutionists,” in Grand Rapids Press, Saturday, October 24. ↑

10. Collins, Language of God, p. 107. ↑

11. Cited by David Lindberg in “The Christian Face of the Scientific Revolution – Natural Adversaries?” in Christian History, 21:4 (2002), p. 46. ↑

12. See Richard Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany. MacMillan, 2004, as well as the article, “Darwin’s Graveyard” in Books and Culture, Nov. 1, 2006, which reviews several monographs on this subject. ↑

13. Message of His Holiness John Paul II: Science and Religion, 1990, m13. ↑

14. Story told by the Poet Sydney Lea in Image (Fall, 2007). ↑