by Lorinda K. F. Newton
As a high school senior, I took Intensive Biology. This class focused on genetics and cellular biology. All year, I stood amazed at God’s handiwork as we studied the structures of a cell, microscopic pond creatures, and bred fruit flies.
At our shared lab table, Phil, Take (pronounced Tahk ay), and I would cordially discuss our views on the origin of life. Phil clung to the belief in atheistic Darwinian evolution, whereas Take was unsure. I insisted that God created everything, but I had no resources to support my ideas other than the Bible.
Several years later, I discovered creation science materials that explain science from a biblical worldview. Because I didn’t want my children to repeat my experience, I read several books on the topic so I could include this information in science lessons.
We studied astronomy during my son’s second-grade year and used a creation science book and an Usborne book. We’d start with the creationist text, then pick up the Usborne book, saying, “Let’s see what the evolutionists have to say about asteroids.” In this fashion, I helped my kids learn that scientists can view the same data and reach different conclusions based on their worldviews.
Modern Science Rejects Faith
Within a decade of Charles Darwin publishing his Origin of Species in 1859, the world of science became dominated by materialistic atheists.
We often hear “follow the science,” which is code for following the official evolutionary narrative. Yet, many God-fearing or intelligent-design scientists quietly work today. Frequently, the scientific establishment marginalize them, and peer-reviewed publications reject their papers.
For example, Wikipedia states that the Seattle-based Discovery Institute “advocates the pseudoscientific concept of intelligent design (ID).” Using the term pseudoscientific, this publication mocks the idea that this institute employs bonafide scientists. It also rejects the theory of ID simply because it disagrees with it. (See Ben Stein’s 2008 movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed for examples of this type of discrimination.)
Today, our society claims that science has superseded faith. Yet, many things can’t be explained by science, such as the origin of life. Neither creation nor evolution can be reproduced in a laboratory. Dr. Henry M. Morris said that “science cannot either ‘prove’ or ‘disprove such things, and so a scientist can decide for himself whether or not he will believe in them.”[i]
Contrary to what our culture believes, science and faith are compatible. And not only that, science owes its very existence to men’s desire to know God better.
What Is Science?
According to Merriam-Webster, science is “knowledge about or study of the natural world based on facts learned through experiments and observation.”
Aristotle wrote about scientific principles, but he drew his conclusions from logic and philosophy. He never did any experiments. Most early scientists followed this philosophical path. Author Vishal Mangalwadi points out that while the ancients “…observed accurately, they did not model the world. They made no effort to empirically verify their explanations….Without explanation, one can have facts but not science.”[ii]
On the other hand, real scientific study requires a hypothesis that can be tested through repeatable experiments. Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Lord Chancellor of England, was the first to develop a scientific method. He insisted on experimentation over Aristotle’s philosophical deduction.
History of Science
Apologist J. Warren Wallace, the author of Cold-Case Christianity, explains that many scientists throughout history were Bible-believing Christians. In an interview, Wallace stated that the science fathers so frequently wrote about the Scriptures that the Bible could be more easily reconstructed from their writings than from the writings of the early church fathers.
In his video on the same topic, “Why Jesus Was a Catalyst for the Sciences,” Wallace pictorially demonstrates the numbers of Christian scientists from each era, starting from the edict of Milan in AD 313. He discovered that all ancient Roman scientists were Christians, beginning with John Philoponus (490? -570? AD), who criticized many of Aristotle’s ideas by applying Christian theology to physics.
Since ancient times, Christ-followers continued to dominate the field of science until the age of Charles Darwin. Even then, Christians still worked in the science field. Some rejected evolution; others believed in God and evolution. But all the fathers of mathematics, the philosophy of science, and all the modern scientific disciplines were Christians.
Fertile Ground for Science
Why did science develop in Western Europe and not elsewhere?
Throughout world history, brilliant people have made scientific discoveries. But their culture failed to nurture scientific thinking. So their ideas didn’t spread.
For example, Greco-Roman pantheism viewed the world as being shaped by random acts of the gods. Being unpredictable, nature wasn’t worthy of study. Other cultures held similar views. Buddhism and Hinduism teach that the world is an illusion. So, why study what isn’t real?
The Roman Catholic Church’s adoption of Aristotelian thought also hindered scientific pursuits, as did the medieval focus on the hereafter rather than our current lives on earth.
Despite this, even in the so-called Dark Ages, monks and others explored God’s world because they believed they could know God better by understanding his creation. They recognized two books of God: the Bible, special revelation, and the “book of nature,” general revelation. They worshiped a reasonable and orderly God, and, therefore, believed his creation would follow rational patterns.
The invention of the printing press, the Reformation, and the translation of the Bible into vernacular languages motivated Western Europeans to learn even more about God’s world, and this launched the Scientific Revolution. The Protestant Church developed the doctrine of dominion, that God expected mankind to rule benevolently over the earth. Contrasting the Indian worldview to the biblical worldview, Mangalwadi explained that:
“The scientific pursuit started with the assumption that people were created as stewards of creation, not that fate or gods bound human beings. By understanding nature, we could manage and control it to benefit our future and us.”[iii]
Scientists Speak on Faith and Science
Most scientists intertwined their faith and scientific pursuits.
- Johann Kepler (1571-1630) referred to his research as “thinking God’s thoughts after Him.”[iv] He wrote in his journal:
Since we astronomers are priests of the highest God in regard to the book of nature, it befits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the glory of God.[v]
- Robert Boyle (1627-1691), in his last words to the Royal Society, said, “Remember to give glory to the one who authored nature.”[vi]
- Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) often wrote about God. “I followed His footsteps over nature’s fields and saw everywhere an eternal wisdom and power, and inscrutable perfection.”[vii]
- William Thompson, Lord Kelvin (1824-1907), a contemporary of Charles Darwin, said in 1903, “With regard to the origin of life, science…positively affirms creative power.”[viii]
- Wernher von Braun (1912-1977):
Science and religion are not antagonists. On the contrary, they are sisters. While science tries to learn more about creation, religion tries to better understand the Creator. While through science man tries to harness the forces of nature around him, through religion he tries to harness the force of nature within him.
~ Wernher von Braun
The Return to the God Hypothesis
There have always been scientists who have followed Christ. Nevertheless, since Charles Darwin published his works on evolution, his worldview has dominated the world of science. Some atheist scientists have fabricated fanciful theories to avoid God as a creator. These include punctuated equilibrium, panspermia, and the multiverse.
However, at this point in history, three significant discoveries now challenge scientific materialism. Stephen Meyers of the Discovery Institute lists the following.
- The universe and time had a beginning.
- The finely tuned universe against all odds.
- Information in a basic cell points to an information giver.
He said that he knows of scientists who have had intellectual conversions because they could no longer deny the facts make evolution impossible. For more information, see Meyers’s new book, The Return to the God Hypothesis, or listen to Carrie Abbott’s two-part interview (part 1 and part 2) with Stephen Meyers.
When teaching your children about the difference between mammals and birds, how plants use photosynthesis, or what causes the wind to blow, consider studying the scientists behind the scientific facts. Your children will be surprised to learn that most science fathers (and a few mothers) were not atheists but Christians.
Lorinda K. F. Newton began homeschooling her children in 2004, and her family joined Academy Northwest in 2014. Her family lives on beautiful Whidbey Island north of Seattle, Washington. She writes about faith, culture, and governing from a biblical worldview at Lorinda’s Ponderings. ©2022 by Lorinda K. F. Newton.
[i] Dr. Henry M. Morris, Men of Science, Men of God, (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 1982), vii.
[ii] Vishal Mangalwadi, The Book That Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2011), 227.
[iii] Mangalwadi, 222.
[iv] Morris, 13.
[v] Ibid.,13.
[vi] Dan Gaves, Scientists of Faith: Forty-Eight Biographies of Historic Scientists and Their Christian Faith, (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 1996), 63.
[vii] Ibid., 82.
[viii] Morris, 66.
