Fossilized Faith - Part 2: Science is a Friend, Not the Enemy

As I have wrestled with these issues over the past few weeks, I have come up with some things I think we need to keep in mind as we wrestle with these ideas.

1. Science is a friend, not the enemy.

Christians have had a shaky relationship with science ever since Copernicus[1]. Copernicus was a Polish Priest by day and an astronomer by night. In early 1543 Copernicus, published a book with the shocking idea that the earth was not the center of the solar system.

This really ticked the church off, both Catholic and Protestant! Even Martin Luther was upset about this. He said “Joshua commanded the Sun to stand stil, not the earth!”[2]

Fifty years later Galileo picked up this same thought and in 1663 got into even bigger trouble for it. He was told he would be excommunicated if he didn’t recant, and spent the last 8 years of his life under house arrest. In fact, it was just in 1993 that Pope John Paul II admitted that the Catholic church made a mistake when they condemned Galileo for believing and teaching that Copernicus was right![3].

So science and religion haven’t always gotten along. But the truth is that virtually every branch of modern science was pioneered by Christians who embraced a creationist world view[4]. In fact, their scientific studies were often inspired by their biblical faith. They believed that because the world was created by intelligent, purposeful designer, it would display evidence of that design. King Solomon, one of the earliest recorded scientists said in Proverbs 25:2 “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.”

As I mentioned, Copernicus was a priest from Poland. Galileo saw nature and the Bible as “two books from God” He said “God is known by Nature in his works, and by doctrine in his revealed word.”[5]. Sir Isaac Newton was born the year that Galileo died and was possibly the greatest mathematician and physical scientist of all time. He discovered the law of gravity and invented calculus, but considered his writing on theology most important. He also looked like a rock star.

We could talk about other scientists like Micheal Faraday, James Maxwell, and Loui Pasteur, or we could talk about contemporary scientists like biochemist Michael Behe who has looked at what he calls the 'irreducible complexity of life' and says that the odds of this happening by chance as evolution says are so minuscule there has got to be a better explanation!

We live in an incredibly complex world. It doesn’t matter if you look with a telescope or microscope. Before invention of telescope, astronomer couldn’t count stars. but it was estimated that there were about 10,000 of them. With today’s telescopes we still cannot count the stars. There are too many – estimate 10 million billion billion (10 to the 25th power)[6], and they exist in billions if not trillions of galaxies.

If you just look in one small part of the universe, you will find a galaxy called the Milky Way. It has only 200 billion stars, though some say 400 billion and others up to a trillion. If you look in one far-flung spiral arm of the Milky Way, you find our solar system. If you look in that solor system you will find a planet that seems to be unique in the universe. It has life on it. It is called ‘Earth.’

As scientists have examine our galaxy and solar system, they have identified hundreds of characteristics that require exquisite fine-tuning for life to exist[7]. There are complex issues of quantum physics and astral physics. I would love to talke about these things, but I’m just not smart enough!

But lets talk about something we can get our head around - our closest star, the Sun, and just some of the issues involved with getting the earth the right temperature for us to live. As humans we live in a very limited temperature range. Last week we were cooking in the heat. This week we’ve been complaining that it is too cool. What is the difference? Only 20 degrees Celcius!

If the earth was any different distance from the sun, or if the earth didn’t rotate on it’s axis or orbit around the sun and the precise speed it does, or if the earth didn’t have an atmosphere that diffuses the sun’s energy and protects us from cosmic radiation, we would either bake or freeze and human life would cease to exist. I think the psalmist had it right when he sang in Psalm 19:1 “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

But if you think physics is complicated, you should do some biology! Richard Dawkins, a British ethologist and leading evolutionary biologist from Oxford University puts it like this. The objects and phenomena that physics describes are simpler than a single cell in the human body, and you have one hundred trillion cells in your body. Many of them different from each other, but all are organized with intricate architecture and precision engineering to make your body work.[8]

Every cell in your body has a nucleus that contains a digitally coded database that has more information than all 30 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica put together. It is called DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid)[9]. DNA contains the unique information that determines what you look like, much of your personality, and how every cell in your body is to function throughout your life.

If the DNA segments in one of your cells were uncoiled, connected, and stretched out, it would be about seven feet long. If all the DNA in your body were placed end-to-end, it would stretch from here to Moon more than 500,000 times! Yet if one set of DNA (one cell’s worth) from every person who ever lived were placed in a pile, the final pile would weigh less than an aspirin!
Understanding DNA is just one small reason for believing we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” (Ps 139:14) The telescope and the microscope proclaim the greatness of God!

[1] Cindy Dyson: Father’s, Faith, and Fossils, New Man Magazine, July / August 1996, p.54
[2] http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast161/Unit3/response.html
[3] Charles E. Hummel; Making Friends with Galileo, Christianity Today, January 11, 1993, p.14-15
[4] Williams and Hartnett, p.34
[5] Hummel, p.14
[6] Williams and Hartnett, p.247
[7] Scientists are Getting Warmer: An Interview with Dr. Hugh Ross, New Man Magazine, September / October 1999, p.32-36
[8] Phillip E. Johnson; Defeating Darwinism, p. 77
[9] http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/PartI3.html accessed July 19, 2007