Has Modern Science Proven That There Is No Need Anymore To Believe In God?
Anglican clergyman Nicky Gumble, who heads up the international ministry called ALPHA : a program open to anyone who is looking for answers to the big questions of life and who has some interest in understanding what biblical Christianity is all about. Nicky’s chapter is very well written and covers all the major areas of discussion, so I saw little purpose in trying to “re-invent the wheel“. Any additional comments are my own, and have been noted as such.
Is There a Conflict Between Science and Christianity?
The theory portrayed by the mass media, for whom any confrontation is news, is that science and Christian belief are in direct conflict. There are two main reasons for this:
First, there have been times in the history of Christianity when the church has opposed the results of scientific study. Galileo, the seventeenth-century Italian astronomer, found himself in conflict with the Roman Catholic Church over his discovery that planets revolve around the sun. He was tried by the Inquisition in Rome, ordered to recant, and spent the final eight years of his life under house arrest.
Persecution of scientists did not end in the seventeenth century. As late as 1925, John T. Scopes, a high school teacher from Dayton, Tennessee, was prosecuted for violating the state law by teaching the theory of evolution. He was convicted and fined a hundred dollars. On appeal, he was acquitted on the technicality that he had been fined excessively.
(There were many irregularities with this trial, the so-called ”Scopes Monkey Trial“, which have become the subject of many books and commentaries: The commonly held opinions about what happened are primarily based upon a play (1955) and later a movie (1960), Inherit the Wind , which blatantly distorts and misrepresents the actual trial. RST)
Second, it is thought by many that modern scientific study explains everything that was once explained by belief in God, so that such belief is now redundant. Further, it is argued that the assured results of modern science are in direct conflict with the teaching of the Bible. Some would say, for example, that modern science shows that miracles do not happen, whereas the Bible is full of miracles. Others claim that the scientific theory of the gradual evolution of humans and other organisms by natural processes is inconsistent with the account of creation in Genesis 1. The English biologist and agnostic philosopher, T.H.Huxley (1825-1895), for example, said, ”The doctrine of Evolution, if consistently accepted, makes it impossible to believe the Bible.“
