Exploring Faith in the Context of Science

• Introduction – what is the actual context and how did it develop?

• Brief thoughts on relationship between science and faith

• The findings of science – the Wow factor – the awe and the wonder

• Where does that leave faith?

The Context of Science

• We live in an era when much of modern life makes use of the applications of science – just think through what you’ve done so far today and then think of the science behind some of those things.

• Science itself has become one of the ‘things’ that modern society does. Funding for science embedded in societal budgets.

• This is the context in which we live

What is Science?

• Science – investigation of the natural world; based on human curiosity but has clear societal dimensions

• Science assumes that there is an objective reality to be discovered and seeks to approach that reality by observation, measurement and experiment – ‘empirical methods’

• It is not in itself a philosophy although some claim it to be (‘scientific worldview’)

It’s older than we think

• Investigation of the natural world goes back to pre-Christian times

• Many examples from different cultures

• In the Christian era, science continued (the Church did not suppress science in the ‘Dark Ages’)

• Bishop Robert Grosseteste 1175 -1253

• ‘The real founder of the tradition of scientific thought in medieval Oxford and in some ways, of the modern English intellectual tradition’. (Crombie)

It’s older than we think

• 16th / 17th Centuries – Natural Philosophy

• In other words, this was ‘love of knowledge or wisdom about ‘the natural world’ – does not rule out the existence of other forms of knowledge

• 19th Century - Natural Science or just Science (subtle shift)

Science-Faith Relationships

• Conflict – Science provides the only methods for investigating reality. If it can’t be investigated by science it’s not real – Positivism or Scientific Materialism.

– But this view is actually unscientific

– Those who claim to hold it find it hard to live by it

• Separate but equally valid ways of looking at reality

• Complementary ways of looking at reality

So...

• Science cannot prove or disprove the possibility that there are levels of existence beyond the physical

• It cannot disprove or prove the existence of God

• To say otherwise is non-scientific

When I look up to the Heavens

• Speed of light ~ 300,000 km/sec

• Nearest star - the Sun – light takes 8 minutes to reach us

• Next nearest star - Proxima Centauri – 4.3 light-years

• Furthest ‘naked eye’ object – Andromeda galaxy – 2.25 million light-years

• Bodes Galaxy 12 million light-years

• Limit of optical telescope – 2 billion light-years

• Modern space telescopes – 13 billion light-years

The Starry Heavens

• Our galaxy has 200 billion stars

• There are between 100 billion and 200 billion galaxies

• We have detected 7 x 1024 stars

• The universe is astonishing, mind-boggling, even frightening in terms of its age and size

Initial Conditions

• The starting state of the universe, 13.8 billion years ago, is mind-boggling: Planck’s wall

• ‘Laws of nature’ already in place

• Remarkable precision of physical constants

• These laws of nature allowed the development of the universe – galaxies, stars, solar systems - life

So...

• The universe seems to operate by a set of rules - rules that are so faithfully observed that we can make predictions from them

• Einstein thought this was remarkable:

• ‘The most un-understandable feature of the universe is that it is understandable’ ‘The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility’

“Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that some spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe, one that is vastly superior to that of man.”

Hoyle’s Comments

• ‘Some superior intelligence has been monkeying around with the laws of nature’

• The universe is a ‘put-up job’

Comments from Modern Astronomers

‘The more I examine the universe, and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the Universe in some sense must have known we were coming. — Freeman Dyson

A bottom-up approach to cosmology either requires one to postulate an initial state of the Universe that is carefully fine-tuned — as if prescribed by an outside agency —

or … a mighty speculative notion about the generation of many different Universes… — Stephen Hawking and Thomas Hertog

Stardust

• We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year-old carbon

Joni Mitchell

Video

We need to talk about...

...Biology

DNA –

the stuff of life

Some random DNA facts

• The genetic code is universal – all living organisms read it the same way

• The total length of DNA in one set of human chromosomes is ca 1.8 metres

• The biggest genome known belongs to a plant, Paris japonica. It has 50 x as much DNA as we do (cf Big Ben 96 metres tall)

• The ‘Big Brain’ gene – present in Neanderthals and Humans

Life on Earth

Spot the atheists among these evolutionary biologists

Evolution – some major events...

• Earth is about 4.5 billion years old

• First signs of life at about 3.6 billion years ago - bacteria

• Photosynthesis – oxygen; global cooling

• About 1 billion years ago, life got an upgrade – advanced cells (eukaryotic) – cells of the type that our bodies are made of – appeared

• Multi-cellular organisms

• Invasion of land by plants

• Altered the land – new habitats for animals

How Many Species?

• Probably about 8.7 million eukaryotic organisms

• About 25% of these are thought to be marine

• But only about 14% have actually been described

• And ... Probably about 90% of species over evolutionary time have become extinct

Inter-Dependence in Nature

• Huge numbers of examples

• Photosynthesis and life on earth; oxygen

• Invasion of the land by plants – global cooling

Role of fungi

• ‘Explosion’ of flowering plants linked with pollinating insects (first flowering plants were insect-pollinated)

• More complex relationships

Among the Species

• About 5 million years ago, the great ape lineage branched

• One branch led to the chimpanzee

• The other branch led little by little to modern humans – only 200,000 years ago

• The human brain with its 100 billion neurones is the most complex known object in the universe: the ‘Big Brain’ gene

• Right and wrong; beauty and aesthetics

• Power and responsibility

What About God?

• Does evolution/science in general enhance or diminish our view/understanding of God

Spot the atheists among these evolutionary biologists

What About Faith?

• Unanswered and unanswerable questions

• ‘There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy’

Faith in the Context of Science

• The findings of science induce in many of us a state of awe and wonder

• The way the universe works is consistent with there being a mind behind it

• Humans exhibit qualities, albeit sometimes hidden, that take us far beyond our biological nature

• Many of us are conscious of a different (higher) level of existence – which some call ‘spiritual’

• Science-defying events happen – we often call them miracles – evidence.’

Faith in the Context of Science

• The mind behind the universe is God and it is our experience that this God, awesome in action, can be known

• Above all God can be known through Jesus Christ – and we can use relevant methods to look at the evidence for his life, death and resurrection

• In a relationship with God, lives are transformed – more evidence …

So...

• I reject totally the idea that science and the Christian faith/Bible are in conflict.

So...

• Other types of evidence

• We need the whole truth, not partial truth

Thus...

• True religion and good science have nothing to fear from each other

• The methods of science are incapable of denying the core tenets of religion

• For people of faith privileged to work in science, the findings of science give an awesome insight into the work of the Creator