Science and the Bible

Have you ever wondered why the Bible and science seem to be in conflict with each other.

Christians claim God created the world in 7 days, but then someone says well, what about the Big Bang Theory and the Theory of Evolution?

Many people will say, there is no way any educated, rational, thinking person looks at the scientific evidence and still believes in all that Christianity stuff!

It’s like the little Girl in a 5th-grade science class whose teacher showed the class how, scientifically, the story of Jonah and the Whale could never have happened.  Jonah couldn’t live in a whale.  The throat would be too small to swallow him, etc …  But the little girl had learned in church that the story did happen and so she stood up and began to argue with the teacher.  The teacher said no, it didn’t and she said, yes it did and when I get to heaven I’ll ask Jonah and he will tell me it happened.  The teacher then said, what if Jonah is in Hell?  The little girl responded, then you can ask him.

Many people decide to follow Jesus and begin to build their faith. But one day, they read an article or attend a class where the professor says something that contradicts something the Bible says, or they watch a video on YouTube that seems to contradict the Bible, and suddenly, their belief system begins to crumble because they can’t reconcile what they have just read or were taught with what the Bible says.

Maybe that has happened to you or to someone you know.  That is why in this fifth and final week of our series, Doubting God, Dealing with Questions and Doubts we are answering the question: Can I Believe in God and Science?

__________________________________________

Question: Why does Science seem to be in conflict with the Bible?

Answer: Some see the relationship between science and the Bible as competitive instead of cooperative.  

Around 400 years after the birth of Christ, St. Augustine believed that the relationship between science and the Bible was complementary, not competitive.  

He would have said the conflict between science and faith comes from either misunderstanding science or misinterpreting the Bible.

This was the dominant view for about 1,500 years. That is until the Age of Elightenment, or the Scientific Boom of the 1800s, when scientists made discovery after discovery and people started to believe that science explained everything.

But some Christians began to perceive that science threatened Christianity and said science was an attack on faith!  The result was this competition between science and the Bible.

The problem is that anytime you have a competition, you have winners and you have losers. If it is a competition between science and the Bible, then if science wins, the Bible loses, and if the Bible wins, science loses.

But what if the relationship between science and the Bible isn’t meant to be competitive? What if it’s meant to be cooperative? What if, instead of either/or, it is both/and.

We do this all the time in lots of other areas. If you go to a birthday party, you don’t just have cake; you have cake and ice cream. You don’t eat just a peanut butter sandwich; you have peanut butter and jelly. You have salt and pepper, eggs and bacon, and you watch Batman and Robin.

As Christians, we should be able to embrace the idea of both/and more than anyone else!

Our Faith is defined as both/and.

Rev 22:13 (CSB) – I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.

Jesus isn’t the Alpha or the Omega, the First or the Last, the Beginning or the End.  He is both/and.

Jesus was all man and all God, who came from the Father, full of …

John 1:14 (CSB) – The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Heb 12:2 (CSB) –  keeping our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. For the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (NKJV) – author and perfector

As followers of Jesus, we should be able to embrace both/and.

The Bible and science are two different complementary tools that help us understand the truth.

You have to have the right tools to do the job right.  If you own a metal detector and you are on the beach, what is it that you are going to be looking for?  Things that are made out of metal. A metal detector doesn’t detect everything.  It doesn’t detect sand it detects the metal buried in the sand.  It is a specific tool for a specific purpose.

Science and Scripture are two specific tools that fulfill different functions. Science is a tool that seeks the truth about our natural world.  Scripture is also a tool, but it reveals the truth about our supernatural God.  A God that is outside the natural world but has created the natural world. Science and Scripture both work together but have different functions.

John Kavanaugh was a famous ethicist who was searching for his purpose in life.  He moved to Calcutta to work with Mother Teresa.  One day Mother Teresa approaches him and asks him, “How can I pray for you?”  He tells her how he has been searching for clarity about purpose for his life and that’s what she can pray for, clarity.  She responds by saying, “No, I will not pray for clarity.  Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.”  He says, but you seem to have so much clarity and so much purpose in what you do.  She responds again,

“I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust. So I will pray you trust God.” 

-Mother Teresa

Prov 3:5-6 (CSB) – Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding; in all your ways know him, and he will make your paths straight.

That’s what we need.  Trust.

For many of us, we are constantly looking for clarity for our lives and clarity in our relationship with Jesus.  But when we think that Christianity is more about having all the answers rather than having faith in Jesus we are building our faith on a house of cards.

When our faith has such a flimsy foundation, if one of our ideas about God is challenged, then our entire faith comes tumbling down.

_________________________________________

When you were in Jr. High (I know that was a really long time ago for some of us) you learned something called the Scientific Method. This is how science happens; scientists use the Scientific Method to make scientific discoveries.

The Scientific Method looks like this:  It begins with a question about the natural world.  For example: Why is my lightbulb not working?  The next step is a hypothesis or a prediction.  I hypothesize that the bulb is burnt out. Then comes the test.  To test my theory that the bulb is blown, I will replace it.  If the new bulb lights up, my hypothesis is correct: the bulb is blown.  If the new bulb doesn’t light up, my hypothesis is incorrect, and I have to develop a new hypothesis.

Question—Hypothesis—Test—Draw conclusions

In science, if a hypothesis is disproven, you don’t give up on science!  You come up with another hypothesis and another test.  You keep asking questions and investigating your questions.

As Christians sometimes we encounter challenges to our ideas about God, but that doesn’t mean we should give up God.  That just means another opportunity exists to pursue a deeper understanding of God.  It’s another opportunity to ask new questions and to do some more seeking.

Lee Strobel was an investigative reporter and award-winning legal editor of The Chicago Tribune.  He was an atheist, and he made a decision that he would use his skills as an investigative reporter to disprove Christianity.  Instead, after exhaustive research, he gave his life to Christ and today is an outspoken author and apologist for the cause of Christianity. His most famous book is called The Case for Christ.  In another book called The Case for a Creator, he said this.

“If I had stopped asking questions, that’s where I would have remained.”

― Lee Strobel

Don’t stop asking questions. If you have doubts or you have questions about your faith, if there is something you don’t understand or you heard something from someone that causes you to scratch your head and wonder, pursue that.  Don’t stop asking questions.

Matt 7:7-8 (CSB) – “Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

But even as you seek Him, know that you don’t have to know every answer to every question to trust in Jesus. It will always take faith.

Give away Book

__________________________________________

This morning, just for fun, we are going to look at 3 different areas where Science and the Bible work together to show us the truth about who God is. I hope this is encouraging to you.

Look at the beginning of everything.

The best place to see how the Bible & Science work together is the first verse of the Bible.

Gen 1:1 (CSB) – In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 

More than 3,000 years ago Scripture declared what science has confirmed within the last 100 years, that the universe had a beginning.

Why is that so interesting? Prior to the Big Bang Theory, most Atheist scientists claimed that the universe was eternal and had no beginning point.  

Why is that significant? If the universe had a beginning, that means that the universe had a Beginner. That there was something outside of the universe that caused the beginning of the universe.  As Christians, we believe God said, “Let there be … ”  and there was.

This is a powerful example of science supporting precisely what the Bible said 3,000 years ago.

Another example comes from the very next verse, Gen 1:2

Gen 1:2 (CSB) – Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness covered the surface of the watery depths, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.

Look at the design of the universe.

Everything that we know and see was created with beauty and purpose. A seed drops into the soil, the rain comes and waters the seed, the sun comes and warms the seed and soon the seed sprouts and eventually pops through the soil and begins to grow.  An animal comes along and eats the plant, which causes the animal to grow.  A man comes along and eats the animal (or the plant, personally I prefer the animal), and man grows, and he dies and returns to the dirt.

This process, which we understand through science, could not possibly be the result of random chance; it is the result of a divine designer.

Scientific studies prove that the Universe has around 150 different astronomical constants that are perfectly designed for life to exist on Earth.

If the Earth’s axis tilted a little more or a little less, we die!

If the Earth spins 10% faster, the world would flood, and we die!

If the average distance of the Earth from the Sun was 3/10 of 1% closer at its nearest point, we die!

There are 150 of those constants that we have, through science, discovered.

Sir Roger Penrose, an atheist scientist, calculated the likelihood of the universe having such a precise design by chance is —1 in 10,000,000,000¹²³  (1 in 10 billion to the 123rd power).  

That is 10 billion times a 1 with 123 zeros behind it. The number is incalculable.

If you wrote all the zeros in this number, side by side, the number would stretch across galaxy.

You are more likely to win the lottery 10,000 times in a row (and) be struck by lightning every time you won, than to have of all of the conditions required for life on this planet to happen by chance.

The late Christopher Hitchens (2011), an author and outspoken atheist, said this is the most compelling argument for the existence of God.

But the Psalmist put it this way:

Psalm 19:1-2 (CSB) – The heavens declare the glory of God, and the expanse proclaims the work of his hands. Day after day they pour out speech; night after night they communicate knowledge.

This is another example of science & Scripture working together to show the glory of our Creator and Master Designer. 

Finally …

Look at the Resurrection of Jesus.

Christianity is unique in that it is based upon the evidence of the resurrection of Jesus.

If you prove Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, you disprove Christianity.

The Apostle Paul puts it this way:

1 Cor 15:14 (CSB) – and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation is in vain, and so is your faith.

There are many proofs for the resurrection, but I want to show you what we call “The 6 Minimal Facts” surrounding the resurrection of Jesus. These are facts that even the skeptics agree on.

For a fact to be on this list, Author Gary Habermas compared about 3,400 different sources, both secular and Christian historians. Of all those sources, 90% or more had to agree on the details of the facts. Here are the 6 Minimal Facts.

• Jesus was a real person, and he died by Roman crucifixion.
• Jesus’ followers experienced what they believed to be the actual appearances of a resurrected Jesus.
• Because of those experiences, these followers were willing to die for their faith in Jesus’ resurrection.
• The Christian church started right after Jesus was killed, right where Jesus was killed, in the city of Jerusalem.
• James, Jesus’s brother, did not follow him until after he saw what he believed to be the resurrected Christ.
• Paul, who wrote the majority of the NT, went from killing Christians to starting churches because he believed he had an experience with the risen Christ.

________________________________________

Why do I believe Christianity is true?

Not just because the Bible says so and not just because of scientific facts.

I believe Christianity is true because Jesus has changed me!  Just like He has changed millions of people for thousands of years. Just like he has changed many of you in this room.

“Would it not be strange if a universe without purpose accidentally created humans who are so obsessed with purpose?”

-Sir John Templeton

But it didn’t.  The universe has purpose, to bring glory to its creator and we have purpose, to know God and to glorify Him.

We were designed and created for a relationship with Him.

Even if you still have questions and doubts you can still put your faith and trust in Jesus and grow in your relationship with Him.

Your doubts, questions and struggles do not disqualify your faith.

Doubts and questions are a part of a growing and maturing faith.

Jesus didn’t say the world will know us by the facts we can recite, the textbook answers we can give to hard questions, or our ability to defend the Gospel. He said the world will know us by our love for one another.