The Limits of Science

Why is there so much faith put into science? Why the certainty of factuality when it comes to what is considered scientific? Science does not tell us how life originated. It doesn’t tell us why life originated or give us insight into our purpose. Science can tell us that if I put strychnine in a well the water will kill those who drink it. But it doesn’t tell us if it is wrong to kill.

G. K. Chesterton quips “Nobody can imagine how nothing turned into something. Nobody can get an inch nearer to it by explaining how something could turn into something else.”

I do appreciate science. I think we are motivated by God given curiosity and desire for knowledge to search out the hidden things with our microscopes, telescopes and other instrumentation. We want to know. We need to know. But why? Science cannot answer that. Notwithstanding, so many have such an unwavering faith in science when it tells us so little about who we are and why we are. Science can give us a complete composite of our biological make up and that is outstanding progress. It can get into the molecular level and tell us so much and give us ways to repair bodies. It can help us explore the oceans, plants, animals, and universe. The scientific advances are astounding wonders of exploration.

When I was watching Dawkins and Lennox debate, Dawkins said that the beauty of creation compels us to want to worship something greater and he said that science can show us how things came to be this way dismantling the desire for worship. Science can break down things and show how they work, but it fails to explain why nature should be so picturesque. It doesn’t explain why our hearts fill with wonder at a sun rise over the ocean or a rainbow over a field of flowers. It doesn’t explain what happens in our soul when we take in this grandeur of the universe. Can it be that it is precisely this wonder that so captures our soul that launched the sciences in the first place? Why now does science in some schools of thought destroy the need for wonder?

Science is an awesome tool for exploring life, but it isn’t THE tool to knowing about life. It falls short in many areas of answering the great questions most of us think about. Some say there is no meaning to life and yet they thought about the meaning of life enough to write about it acknowledging a need for meaning that prompted the negative answer to the question. The great thinkers like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Kant, and Kierkegaard, etc. explored these questions of life. What drove their exploration? There is something in us that cries for answers and accepting defeat to our questions does not make logical sense. If that desire is in us then there is a reason for it. If we haven’t found the reason we can’t give up by denying the question.

Origin of the Moral Sense

I have been expending a great deal of thought regarding the common contentions I hear from atheists, agnostics, etc. regarding the matter of the origin of morality. My concern is that when I hear an atheist give the “Christian” reason for the existence of moral understanding it is not really the Christian argument at all. Then they proceed to give response to this and fail to give a response to our real assertion. I would think if we want to further understanding and dialog we really need to understand each others position much better and fully address it adequately.

Many of the apologists I am familiar with often spend time getting to know real people of other beliefs and seeking out the expert representatives of those beliefs to truly understand their position. Moreover, when they write a book they give a copy of their manuscript to said experts to ensure that they have fairly and adequately presented their beliefs. This way they can give the counter response to legitimately held beliefs without setting up an unfair straw man.

When I listened to The God Delusion Debate, Professor Richard Dawkins summed up why God is not needed to explain morality. One point that he made was that we don’t need a holy book to give us the rules of morality for we are able in and of ourselves to realize what things a book tells us are good and what are not good. So there must be something outside of reading of a book by which we use to judge morality. This is a very good point, and I concede the point. There is indeed something beyond reading a book even if that book is the Bible by which we know right from wrong. Someone who has never read the Bible still has the ability to differentiate between right and wrong.

Next Dawkins asserted that the only reason a God based morality is needed is to create a fear of punishment by God if one behaves badly or to provide a system of rewards for good behavior. I can understand his reasoning. To him it is complete lunacy to believe God exist. Thus his argument assumes God’s non-existence. If God didn’t exist and God was an invention of man it would follow that somewhere in the past the powers that be used this myth to make people behave out of fear or hope for rewards. All very logical, expect there is one problem. He hasn’t answered the Biblical Christian argument for the reason for morality.

Before I present it, let me reiterate that Dawkins admits that humanity universally accepts a moral right and wrong. He said, “its common sense.” His brief explanation of its evolution is that it probably began with the hunter-gather tribes that formed a value of good things and sympathized with suffering passing on this value from generation to generation. He cited that attitudes towards women and slavery have changed to support that morality isn’t fixed, it is evolving. Again, he only had a few minutes to give a response to such a matter and I am sure he has or could write entire books on the subject.

Now let’s turn to the Christian argument for the reason for morality for Biblical Christianity does not teach that one ought to be good to avoid punishment or to earn God’s favor. In fact, the Bible teaches that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. The Bible further teaches that we cannot earn righteousness by good deeds. Nor can we lose righteousness by bad deeds in and of themselves. Our righteousness comes as a gift from God for those who look to Him for eternal life. I am not seeking to insert a salvation message. I am merely illustrating that Christianity isn’t about doing good for the reasons aforementioned.

The Christian argument as best as I know how to state it is this:

A good God exists. He created us good. In actualizing the good into creation, all that is not good became possible, but not actualized into being in creation. For instance, before there was light there was nothing, but when light came into existence darkness became the absence of light. Similarly, the actualization of the good gave that which is outside of the good a potential of becoming something actualized. Moreover, man had freedom to choose between what is good or leaving the good and entering something unnatural so to speak. When the non-good was chosen over the good the non-good came into existences gaining a reality of evil. Thus, man now knew good and evil. This altered the good. This changed the creation, corrupting it, subjecting it to a foreign contaminant so to speak. Now all mankind had in their nature the understanding of a difference between good and evil. It is common sense, as Dawkins says. It is universal. It is in man’s nature. That is why all men, except a few with physiological problems, internally know right from wrong. A struggle between the two natures exists to this day. The good news is that there is a solution to that struggle and it is not found in human efforts to do good things to please a dictator God. It is found in coming back into alignment with our created nature through redemption. God paid the debt to this corruption of sin for us so that we can step forward into a redeemed nature that doesn’t struggle with the corruption of sin. We grow into becoming people who do what is right because of the righteousness that flows through us as one of the many byproducts of knowing the Lord relationally.

To recap, the reason for our knowledge of good and evil is that there is a good God that created a good creation and when by the choice of human will evil entered the picture that knowledge increased to include awareness of what is not good. The struggle in every human between doing what we know in our hearts and minds as good and what is not good is a direct result of the corruption that entered creation. Yet that is not the end of the story, and the way of redemption was provided by God for all who will enter life through Him and the fullness of the glory of creation will be redeemed as well.

I understand that many religions have their own explanation and science has its. I think we need to take a look at them to see if they logically answer these questions of the origin of morality and the reason we have moral understanding. Compare and contrast the different explanations. Scrutinize the atheists’ argument the same as you would the theists’ argument. The truth can stand up to investigation. Most of all be sure you know the position of the one you discount and have researched it fairly and present a response that actually corresponds to the argument given. Don’t set up a non-good God scenario that is not given by theists. Actually respond to what is given. Thank you for your time.

Birth of Science

Science, contrary to popular thought, did not arise out of secularism, but out of Christianity. Moreover, Christianity provided the only stable worldview on which science could develop. I know this may be a shocking statement and there will be those who tell me it’s a completely unsubstantiated claim. However, let me expound.

Historically you have the age of the ancient Greeks and Romans followed by the Middle Ages and then the Modern Era. The Middle Ages are often referred to as the Dark Ages. It is said that because the Church was in power in those days that creativity and human reason was stifled. This is not entirely true. Science is often solely attributed to rise of the secular Modern Era. However before the word “scientist” was coined there were parson-naturalist studying nature during the Middle Ages. Additionally, most all the scientist from the 1500’s to the 1800’s were Christians and many of them major contributors of renown.

Many of the contributors to the foundations of science adhered to the Christian worldview such as:

Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543) established mathematically that the planets revolved around the sun.

Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1627) known for establishing the “scientific method”.

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) a brilliant mathematician and scientist. He came close to discovering the universal gravitational pull before Newton ever came on the scene.

Rene Descartes (1596-1650) a mathematician and scientist known as the “father of modern philosophy.”

Isaac Newton (1642-1727) a genius and great contributor to science and chemistry. Also known as a devout Christian.

Robert Boyle (1791-1867) a scientist known for “Boyle’s law” in chemistry. He is also known as a devout Christian and defender of the faith.

Johann Gottlob Frederick von Bohnenberger (1765 – 1831) gave us the electroscope, commencing the development of scientific electrical devices. He was a learned theologian and Priest.

Christianity provided the firm foundation on which to birth such great scientific discoveries. How so? Christians believe that the natural world is real and orderly. Christians believe God has given humanity sufficient cognitive abilities to learn about the real world including the ability to logically reason deductively and inductively. The ancient Greeks did not birth the sciences because they believed that nature was evil and disorderly. The orient countries believed nature to be an illusion and thus nothing of substance to discover. The pagan societies deified nature giving it a place of awe and respect which did not lend itself to scientific intrusion upon it.

Secularism was not rampant in those days and did not develop as a cultural thought until later in the Modern Era. It may have adopted science as an acceptable means of knowing the world, but it did not birth it as such. However, secularism has produced a view of science that disrobes it from its foundation. Secularists teach that nothing exists outside of nature and all that can be known can only be known scientifically. Thus, the logic, reason, and trustworthy cognitive abilities all are unproven scientifically and the rug is pulled out from under meaningful science.

Christians today often take one of two positions with regard to science. Either we dismiss it as secular and appeal to unsubstantiated “faith” alone or we try and fuse modern scientific theories into our Christian worldview. The former choice communicates that Christianity is devoid of evidentiary substance and must be accepted on blind faith. The second communicates that the Bible is in error and in need of scientific revision.

Let me suggest a third more legitimate position. Science is what needs an overhaul. It needs to be returned to its proper foundations in order to produce adequate science. When one works from a faulty worldview all that follows is tainted. There exist scientists who do have the proper worldview foundation and do produce science that does indeed confirm the reliability of Scriptures, but those scientists are often suppressed and discounted because their worldview is simply not accepted in today’s scientific community. The media and the schools only show the world the science that’s congruent with the culturally prevalent secularism. Do not settle for what you have been taught in school or learned through television.

We cannot substitute the infallible authority of Scripture for the fluctuating scientific discoveries. Exciting discoveries that firmly support Scripture are being made all the time; you just have to do a little digging to find them.

Science Has Become as God

Science has essentially taken the place of God in the western world. Culture esteems scientific knowledge as concrete, verifiable, and the ultimate method to truth. If one cannot prove a thing scientifically it is, most likely, untrue by default. People quickly forget the consistent fluctuation of scientific knowledge. One thing may be certain scientific knowledge for a generation only to be discarded and replaced by the newest scientific technology of the next generation. Science can only be as good as the human doing the experiments and theorizing, however, we act like it has surpassed human fallibility and entered the realm of consistent proof.

People appeal to science to dismiss the notion of the existence of God. Evolution, they claim, is responsible for everything in life. It’s the cause of the existence of complex matter, of even more complex life, of intricately configured genes and DNA. It’s responsible for our mental capacity, our feelings, our desires, our ability to love and to hate, to do good and to do evil. It has been given carte blanca to be responsible for anything science can’t explain, for everyone knows to attribute these things to anything supernatural would be extremely unscientific and barbaric.

Christians are blamed for relegating the unexplained to God and squelching scientific exploration. The truth is that the majority of great scientific contributions were brought forth by scientists who were devout Christians such as Blaise Pascal, Renee Descartes, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, Lord Kelvin, and Francis Collins, to name a few. However, today it seems that secularist are relegating the unexplained to evolution and denying any possibility that there could be a supernatural explanation.

It would appear that science has been given too much credit and scientists too much power. Science ought to be an exploration into the world God created and not an endeavor to oust God from the equation in attempts to find naturalistic proofs at all costs.

If you start with the presupposition that there can be no Designer you will be blinded to any design before you. Likewise if there is first believed to be no supernatural world, scientist are limited to only naturalistic explanations and true knowledge is lost by this limitation.

If anyone dare put forth a theory of design they are forthwith regarded as an old fashioned Bible believer and their science is not taken seriously as science, because it is presumed to be faulty, simply because of the worldview which it suggest.

Science is inadequate to provide answers to the origin of life or the questions about purpose and spirituality. Science can only study the natural world around us and fails when it comes to the metaphysical world. Just because science cannot prove a metaphysical world (a spiritual world) does not mean it does not exist. It just means that science is limited to the natural. We make a grave error when we take a process of knowledge intended for exploration into the natural world and extrapolate it to deny the existence of a world it cannot explore. You cannot prove God through the scientific method. However, there are other ways to learn about Him. Science isn’t the end all measuring of reality as many have been led to believe.