Can we be so sure of what we think we know?
In the previous article we looked at one reason for the apparent conflict between science and faith: they have different approaches. Science is concerned to understand the space-time world of matter and energy. It wants to know how things work. Christian faith is concerned to understand more than that. The Bible shows us that there is far more to this world than simply what’s physical: there is a supernatural, spiritual dimension to life. There is a Creator who brought the universe into being and who wants a relationship with the creatures he’s made. There are real angels and a real devil. There really is spiritual warfare (Ephesians 6).
Different levels of explanation
But these things are in principle inaccessible to science. Science cannot study anything that is not part of our physical universe. It can do no more than understand how things work. Ultimately it can make no comment about why. The Bible can and does comment on the why. It is far more concerned with meaning and significance than mechanisms. We may understand that the force of gravity between two objects is F=GMm/(r*r). But if we fail to understand that God is responsible for the very existence of those objects and for the laws of physics that govern them, we don’t understand much of any real value. The two explanations of gravity are not contradictory but complementary. As creator and sustainer of the universe, God stands behind all that we see around us – the laws of physics are his laws. Somehow they are an expression of God. As John Polkinghorne said, “God is the guarantor of the Schroedinger equation.”
Richard Dawkins fails to see that you can explain things at different levels. For him a scientific explanation is all you can have. Asking ‘the why question’ is pointless because there may not be an answer.
Over-confidence in what we ‘know’
But there is a second reason for the apparent conflict and that is human arrogance. People on both sides are guilty of this – Christians (who should know better) as well as atheistic scientists. The problem is that we get very confident in what we ‘know’. We start to assume that what we know is right, and what others think is wrong. We start to say things like:
‘We know what science says about how the universe came to be and it disproves the Bible. Christians are wrong.’
Or
‘We know what the Bible says about creation. Scientists are wrong.’
But how certain can we be about what we know? We musn’t forget that our thinking isn’t perfect. Again, the issue is focused on the origins question.
Imperfect science
Firstly, scientific theories are never complete, final and perfect. The very nature of science means that they are always open to disproof or modification. For instance, Newton’s Laws of Motion stood uncontested for over 200 years. They worked in all the experiments and were generally considered to be the final word on the subject. But then along came a bright spark called Einstein who said, ‘Yes, they’re all very well but …’ and promptly introduced his relativity theory. Newton’s Laws are approximations that work fine in normal circumstances but are no good when you go too fast.
The scientific method involves observation, hypothesis and more observation. David Hulme, the philosopher, pointed out that you never totally prove anything that way. We have a theory that all polar bears are white. But until we have observed every polar bear in the universe we cannot be 100% certain. The ‘all polar bears are white’ theory could be disproved – it’s a theory, not a fact. The fact is that all the polar bears we’ve actually seen have been white. So we don’t worry about it being just a theory – we’ve seen enough to expect them all to be white. We have confidence that all polar bears are white but we don’t have 100% certainty. In practice, we’re happy to say that ‘all polar bears are white’ is a true statement except in nit-picking articles about the nature of science!
It also happens that a certain bias or preconceived idea leads to observations being interpreted in a particular way. There has been increasing interest over recent years in the subjective side of scientific progress – it’s not as dispassionate and objective as we like to believe. In the area of origins, scientists have often been too optimistic about their objectivity – it’s clearly in the interests of anti-Christian scientists like Dawkins to find a complete and indestructible theory which explains the origin and development of life without reference to God.
While few scientists doubt the basic principle of evolution, cladistics (a way of representing relationships and common ancestry) has called into question some aspects of traditional evolutionary theory. Fierce debate is going on between various schools of thought as to how it all works. On one side are the neo-darwinians like Dawkins who emphasise evolution taking place as a result of natural selection of successful genes. On the other are those, like Stephen Jay Gould, who call themselves ‘naturalists’ and who emphasise the whole animal rather than the genes alone. The origins question is far from clear-cut and 100% certain at a scientific level.
Imperfect interpretation
Secondly, our understanding of the Bible is never complete, final and perfect either (not this side of heaven anyway!). The Bible as God’s Word is true and trustworthy but our understanding of it is not. We are finite, fallible and fallen. As a result, our understanding is limited, changeable and flawed. As in science, our understanding has increased over the years – we have a much better idea of what the original texts actually said than we did. And our knowledge of the history and culture of Bible times is growing. This helps us in our interpretation but we are not in a position where we can claim that our understanding of the Bible is infallible.
When we come to the key chapter which talks about God’s creation, Genesis 1, we find that there are at least five different interpretations which are trying to do justice to what is actually written. We’ll come back to this question in the next article. For now it is enough to say that, with so much difference between Bible-believing Christians, we need to exercise a bit of humility with each other and not insist that everyone should see this issue in my way.
So science and faith share a common interest in the origin of the world but although both sides make some grand claims, neither is really in a position to be too categorical.
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