Christians can’t afford to be unprepared to address claims that Science has disproved Christianity or the Bible. While Christians who are “old in the faith” may be comfortable not addressing this, younger generations will see this avoidance as an admission that Christianity is an outdated relic of our religious past, fit for being discarded like last year’s phone.

Three quick points on science.

First, we must point out that science doesn’t “say” anything; scientists do. They are fallen people like us who have biases, agendas, make mistakes, and sometimes intentionally bury data or interpret it to suit their presuppositions. This says nothing of the massive inability of many scientific studies to be able to reproduced. It’s really hard to do science well.

Second, we must address what science is. Science, as a tool, is a way to know about the natural world. Many science textbooks will state this. We need to remember the “natural” part of that. Science has no direct ability to prove or disprove the existence of something supernatural. Though, it can provide evidence that could be used in such a proof (like to support the second premise of the Kalam cosmological argument—that the universe began to exist).

Third, we must be able to identify “scientism,” the idea science is the only way of knowing. If science is the only way of knowing (or the highest form of knowing), then we can’t know that scientism is true, since the truthfulness of scientism is not able to be deduced based on science itself (and if it could it would be circular). This is a philosophical position. While many scientists are saying philosophy is dead and we don’t need it, this simply shows their ignorance of their own philosophy.

In summary, as Christians, we must be firm in our resolve to stand on the infallible truth of Scripture. Science is a great tool, and it was Christians who were initially many of the pioneers in the field. But if we can’t trust the Bible when it comes to its claims about the natural world, how can you trust it when it says that: Jesus Loves you, murder is wrong, or Jesus rose from the dead?

The God who speaks through scripture also speaks through nature, and as much as science “hears” that speech correctly, it’s helpful, but its claims should always exposed to the revealing light of scripture.

One thought on “Three Quick Points on Science

  1. First: Yes scientists, like all people, make mistakes. But your point here rests on suggesting something much worse – that there’s either pervasive incompetence among scientists or some sort of conspiracy to "bury data or interpret it to suit their presuppositions." This is a textbook example of the Cancelling Hypothesis (a.k.a. Conspiracy Theory) logical fallacy.

    Second: 100% spot on. But this only helps to prove 1% of Christianity: that there is some sort of first cause to the universe. We Christians must remember that relying on proving this point does us very few favors when trying to convince someone that that Creator is the Judeo-Christian God.

    A lot of effort in the Christian apologetics world is put into the Theist vs Atheist debate when in reality there are very few "pure" Atheists or Theists. Nearly all Theists believe in a specific god (in the West, it’s mostly the Christian God), not just some god/Creator. Similarly, nearly all atheists don’t flat-out reject even the possibility of some god existing; they usually just have the position, "I don’t believe in x, y and z gods and anyone claiming anything supernatural better have hard evidence." I think both sides misrepresent each other and it’s extremely damaging to the hope of making any sort of progress in the debate.

    Third: This point isn’t really worth much either since you could level the same accusation toward Christianity: the idea that the only way of knowing truth is reading something in the Bible rests on the position that the truthfulness of the Bible is deduced from its divine author. But how do we know it was divinely written? The Bible itself says so. There’s your circular argument. Of course this isn’t of much significance either way. As Creation.com puts it in their "Not circular reasoning" article:

    "All philosophical systems start with axioms (presuppositions), or non-provable propositions accepted as true, and deduce theorems from them. Therefore Christians should not be faulted for having axioms as well, which are the propositions of Scripture."

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