Some atheists say things like “science has fired God” or “science killed God.” What about some who say “science is making belief in God obsolete and incoherent”? Or what about this, “we are getting smarter and we can now explain things without invoking God.”
Just like a previous post, “Reason vs. Faith“, where I argue that reason and faith are compatible, I want to make a similar claim here, science and God are compatible. There is no conundrum.
Most damaging to the “science makes God obsolete” idea, is science is dependent upon Christian ideology, like a child to her mother. Like the rest of life, such as beliefs and cultures, how we interpret the world is based upon the presuppositions that form our worldview. Science is no different. Modern science arose only once in history and in one place, Christian Europe. The culture was saturated with the Christian faith and philosophy.
Logical World, Logical God
Unlike some eastern religions, which promote illogical thought patterns, the Bible presents God as a logical being. In fact, the biblical worldview assumes God is logical, in fact he is the essence of logic. John calls Jesus the Logos in Greek (the word “Word” in English), this is similar to the word logic in English (John 1:1). Jesus would point out logical fallacies, for example a false dichotomy (Mark 12:19-27) and would make logical arguments (John 5:19–46). Paul was also a first rate philosopher, being trained by the best Pharisaical philosophers, he also made many logical arguments, for example his argument in 1 Corinthians 15.
Since Christianity teaches God is the creator of the universe and since he is logical, the universe also should be logical.
Since God is Rational, Nature Must be Too
Christians felt that the universe was created by a rational mind. Since the universe was created by a rational God, using reason we could learn about the world. However, many other worldviews aren’t based upon rationality. Consider materialistic naturalism, rationality has no grounding. Randomness is the foundation of the brain and the world, so who would want to trust a mind that runs on totally random brain networks? Nor are worldviews that teach an eternal universe rational.
However, a universe that was created by a rational mind with purpose and was intelligible could be interpreted and understood by other rational minds. Early scientists were not surprised that the observed was much like the observer, because both were created by God. Our rational minds, however, need to be used in conjunction with observation and experimentation to induce the order in the natural world.
Since We Can Have Knowledge of God, We Should Be Able to Have Knowledge Of Creation
The Christian worldview teaches that we can know God and understand him to some extent (John 17:3). The Bible teaches about his character, his attributes and describes his majesty and magnitude. Since he is the creator and we can understand some of his attributes, his creation should reflect that and we can understand his creation. While understanding and knowing nature may be second thought for us today, it is a quite novel idea, especially if your “god” was unknowable. If so, why would creation be knowable?
God’s Creative Mind Makes Creative People to See Creativity
The Bible teaches that God has a mind (1 Corinthians 2:16) and we were created in his image with a mind that can reason, think and know. Since we too have minds, we can think God’s thoughts after him looking, at the wonders of creation. We can come to understand what makes up the world and how it works. Creativity is one of those attributes of God’s mind which we have inherited as well, so we can understand the world around us and the creativity of the mechanisms around us.
There are more reasons why the Christian worldview incubated the scientific enterprises. Here I only covered four of them. There are more to come. If you want to see some of the other reasons, sign up for future posts by clicking here!
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In previous generations, people could not follow how cause and effect worked in detail.Their answer to everything is that God did it. Science was able to unravel the mysteries and show us cause and effect. Some people reasoned that since we now understand cause and effect, there is no need for God.However, there are many questions that remain unanswered in spite of reason. God still reigns.
Thanks Arnold for your comment. To take your thoughts farther, actually the more we find out, the more problems arise out of the naturalistic worldview. Consider the problem of information within the cell, functional and useful information does not arise spontaneously and arbitrarily! It arises from a mind.
Interestingly, I think it's not wrong to reference to God in general, since if the Christian God exists, then He is constantly working in Creation. So let's say scientists discover how "x" happens in the universe. That's STILL a description of the way God works in Creation. Moreover, we have a BETTER understanding of how He works in Creation.
But like you said, some people have reasoned that because through science one can discover things about the universe, then there's no need for God. I think this reflects a misunderstanding of science and no awareness of the limitations of science. And this reflects a misunderstanding of Christianity at least. For while God may be be referenced, this is not to be taken as an ARGUMENT FOR God's existence, but only EVIDENCE.
Thanks for your thoughts!