One of the first things that come to mind when I think of Science is a scene in Star Trek 4 after the crew of the Enterprise has traveled back in time to 1984. The doctor from the future is walking around a hospital and runs into a lady that is there for a kidney dialysis – a cutting edge modern procedure at the time. Dr. McCoy exclaims “My God, what is this, the Dark Ages?” He then hands her a pill that grows a new kidney – something modern science in 1984 said was impossible.
Science is always evolving… meaning that in 100 years we will look back at our knowledge now and laugh at how misguided we were.
So you always have to take Science with a large dose of humility. One of my degrees is in Geology (from a college that teaches evolution if you are curious), so I say that with a large amount of fear on my part. It’s not exactly en vogue to admit to the limitations of Science.
Those that use Science to explain or deny religion will eventually run into many problems. Not that this means we shouldn’t try… it just means we need to acknowledge the limitations and not let those limitations become proof of anything. That would just be bad science. Lack of evidence usually only proves that you lack evidence, not that anything is a fact.
The Bible is clear that it is only through faith that we will find God. This basically means that there is something that will prevent us from finding Him any other way. If we could prove scientifically that God exists, faith would be eliminated. So would a huge chunk of free will – because who could argue with scientific proof? I’m not sure what that road block is – some have speculated that maybe God created barriers in the scientific world to block absolute proof. Seems kind of mean to me. After all, the Creator of the universe would never have anything to fear from us exploring His creation. Personally, I believe God is just so much more complex than human beings that we could just never create anything big enough to prove Him scientifically.
Of course, Christianity is not the only religion like this. Many world religions have similar beliefs that would make God or Truth impossible to find solely through scientific methods.
So how do we find God? Through the cliché “religious experience”? Or something very subjective and open to interpretation like emotions? Scientists sometimes can’t accept this because you can’t quantify these means scientifically. And thus lies the rub of the “Science-only” route. If you can’t lay it on a lab table and dissect it, it can’t be real. But the Bible tells us that you can’t put it on table and dissect it. You have to have a religious experience, a personal revelation of God, in order to know if He is real or not. You have to have faith first, which is kind of backwards if you think about it.
Many scientists will tell you that religious experiences aren’t real because people from all religions experience them and therefore they are just human experiences. That is a weird idea to take, especially since I have never heard of a dog claiming to have had a religious experience. Therefore, by default all religious experiences ARE human experiences because we only know of humans that have had them.
Many people like to discount religious experiences because people from all religions have them. If non-Christians can have a religious experience, then that means Christianity is false and probably also all religions. God would only speak to members of His real religion, so the fact that all religions have some kind of hard-to-explain “religious experience” component proves they are all false. But the Bible describes a few stories where non-Christians and non-Israelites had genuine religious experiences, like in the story of Balaam & the Angel. So the Bible clearly explains that God speaks to anyone regardless of whether they picked the one “right” religion to follow.
Of course, the fact that we can’t prove or disprove God with Science is scary to some, and reason to hate Science for others. I would suggest to take neither path, but to explore all avenues to finding truth. Science, truth, emotion, and religious experience are all part of the picture and none are to be feared. But none should be left out, either… or your picture will be incomplete.
Tags: Science