Submitted by: Andrew Fung
Where’s God in South Campus classrooms?
My friend Ping said, “Outside the lab, I can believe in God. Inside the lab, I believe in science.”
He’s a Chinese visiting scholar in developmental biology, but his philosophy reaches across disciplines. In bioengineering, the basis for ethics is drawn from the “selfish gene” theory of renowned atheist Richard Dawkins. Yet he himself asserts that nature holds “nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”
Are we justified in divorcing God from science? The Bible shows a complementary relationship between God and physical science. Christian theology promotes a bold and reverent exploration of the natural world.
Of course, religion doesn’t have a clean record when it comes to scientific discovery ““ just recall the 17th century Inquisition of Galileo. He was indicted for publishing empirical support of the Copernican theory. He put the sun, not the earth, at the center of the universe. Before we admit Galileo as “Exhibit A” to bar God from scientific endeavors, consider some important details:
First, neither the sun nor the earth is the center of the cosmos ““ so both theories were wrong. Second, Galileo faced heavy opposition from Aristotelian and Ptolemaic “scientists,” not just from the institutional Church.
His theories countered millennia of Ptolemaic academics and violated the contemporary understanding of physics. The stellar parallaxes that were required by his system would not be observed for another three centuries. Third, Galileo contended not for God-free science, but that proper interpretation of “The Book of Scripture” would agree with scientific observation, which he called “The Book of Nature.”
Science is the systematic study of the physical world, where knowledge is collected by people through investigation of nature. Scripture concerns the truth and worship of God and is given to people through revelation from God (Romans 1:20).
Galileo affirmed what the Bible plainly says: Science and Scripture are parts of a two-volume work through which God reveals Himself to man.
Never mind Dan Brown and his Illuminati; what is often cast as a triumph of science over the Bible was in fact a due correction of Church doctrine. When properly interpreted, science and Scripture will always be allies because they share a common source. They must be distinguished but never separated.
So consider what Scripture says about the physical world and its maker. At the heart of Christianity is the self-existent, un-derived and non-contingent character of God. He is a unity of three persons ““ the Father, Son and Spirit. This tri-unity, or Trinity, is active throughout creation. The Torah records that God spoke the physical world into existence and that the Spirit was also present, brooding over the then-unformed earth (Genesis 1:2).
In Jewish writing from the first century, Scripture offers further insight on the agent of creation. Referring to the Son as “the Word,” John opens his biography of Jesus: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.”
In the same way that certain attributes of Michelangelo may be discerned from careful study of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, science shows us some of the invisible attributes of the Trinity in the things that were made.
For example, John is explicit that Jesus simultaneously is God, and with God. How could he be both at once? The Trinitarian quality of co-inherence ““ distinct persons who exist mutually internal to one another ““ is unfathomable, yet reflected in the natural order.
For quite some time, scientific communities were in sharp disagreement about the nature of light.
Newtonian scientists theorized light as particles, while Huygens’ followers regarded it as a wave phenomenon.
Now aided by quantum mechanics, physicists describe phenomena such as photons using particle-wave duality.
That is, depending on the observer, a photon can act like a particle ““ being in one place at a time ““ or as a wave ““ being in many places at once.
The Trinity has built His attributes into the nature of things.
To some, these are outlandish claims. Can a scientist take Scripture seriously?
James Clerk Maxwell did, and few physical scientists have graduated from UCLA without encountering Maxwell’s Equations.
This elegant description of electromagnetic waves with a system of differential equations led to a unifying field theory of electromagnetism and light and laid the foundation for modern physics. After a profound Christian conversion at age 22, Maxwell spent the rest of his life weaving a tapestry of science framed by the intellectual expression of his theology.
In his inaugural address as a regent at Aberdeen, Maxwell boldly concluded that the human search for elementary principles in science shows that the laws of matter and of mind “are derived from the same source, the source of all wisdom and truth.”
Maxwell’s “source” is clearly identified in a prayer found among his notes: “Almighty God, Who hast created man … that he might seek after Thee, … teach us to study the works of Thy hands, … that we may believe on Him Whom Thou hast sent, to give us the knowledge of salvation and the remission of our sins … the same Jesus Christ, our Lord.”
By faith, Maxwell elucidated the natural world as the handiwork of a creative God.
There are also Kepler, Leibnitz, Newton, Boyle, Euler, Faraday, Kelvin and Collins, all of whom, through faith, respectively traced the path of planets, invented calculus, founded mechanics, laid cornerstones for electrochemistry and mapped the human genome. They were able to accomplish these feats through their faith and scientific legacy.
In its philosophical roots, science is a search for unity amid diversity, that distinctly human endeavor that forged the term “uni-versity.”
One cannot discover that unity until he looks beyond the “what” of science to the “why.”
Dispensing with God, naturalism inevitably looks at science as an end in itself. Christianity looks through science as a means to see the glory of God and respond in worship.
Sound science must be pursued with fearless reason and reverent wonder.
Tradition holds that when challenged to recant his findings, Galileo invited his inquisitors to simply look into his telescope. They refused.
Today I invite this generation of students, known for tolerance, to look into the Scriptures.
See if the answers are not closer than you think. See if the very words that brought science into existence are already inscribed on the entablature of Royce Hall: Fiat lux.
Fung is a graduate student in bioengineering.