3 reasons science can never displace Christianity
There’s a very popular and common narrative in our culture about the relationship between science and religion. At its core, the idea is pretty simple: Religion, particularly Christianity, has suppressed and kept humanity in darkness about the scientific world, and science has enlightened us to the realities of it. Religion is blamed for things like suppressing Galileo, a belief in the Earth being flat, a stall in the advancement of medicine during the European dark ages, a belief that all maladies were caused by witches and evil spirits, a refusal to accept modern cosmology, geology, etc. And science is credited with enlightening everyone to the truth about all these things and dispelling religious myths in every area of life.
Of course, this narrative is not true. Galileo was harassed because of politics (and because he made fun of the Pope), no educated person in the Middle Ages believed the Earth was flat, the Dark Ages weren’t so dark and knowledge-starved after all, and nearly all the pioneers of modern science came out of supposedly backwards Christian Europe. Many of them cited their Christian faith as an inspiration behind their pursuit of scientific knowledge, a desire to discover the world God made.
Still, the narrative that science is pushing religion out of the way persists. People perceive science as rational and religion, including Christianity, as emotional and to be accepted on blind faith, and rationality wins the day in one of the most science-centered cultures in history. Scientific progress is new, and religion is old, and in our consumer-driven, individualistic, self-gratifying culture, we can’t get enough of new things that tickle our ears. Science teaches us things we can use immediately to better our condition, while religion teaches us things that no one can prove. That’s the narrative and the perception in our culture, and with that kind of narrative, how could one not be surprised that people expect science to disprove and displace religion? Indeed, a recent Barna group study of Generation Z (born 1999 and later) indicated that the number of professing atheists has doubled from the millennial generation (7% to 13%), and a perceived conflict between science and religion is one of the top reasons they cite.
This narrative, however, is quite simply based on a terrible understanding of science, a terrible understanding of history, and a terrible understanding of faith, all rolled into one. It needs to be understood what the real relationship between science and religion is. So here are 3 reasons why science cannot and will not disprove or displace religion.
1…Science is properly the study of the natural world, and is not qualified to make pronouncements about the supernatural world.
The early pioneering scientists viewed science as the study of the world God created, and they had a great appreciation for how he created an orderly world with natural laws we could discover and apply.
However, the scientific method is limited to exactly that: observations of the natural world. Science can tell us how the body recovers from disease, how the universe expanded from its initial singularity, how storms form and dissipate, how to calculate any number of mathematical formulas, and even what happened after a band of Jewish men claimed their crucified teacher had risen from the dead. However, it cannot tell us whether God set the universe in motion. It cannot tell us whether God would actually raise a man from the dead. It can’t tell us whether or not miracles can occur. It can’t tell us about the supernatural, or lack thereof, at all.
That’s not to say that science can’t point us in one direction or the other. You can use scientific arguments to say that the best explanation of the beginning of the universe is that it was created by God, or you can use scientific arguments to say that most alleged miracles have natural explanations. However, science alone cannot make pronouncements about the supernatural. Science can’t express an opinion on whether God would create a universe with evil, or whether God would engineer living creatures the same way humans would, or whether God would raise a man from the dead, or whether God exists at all. These are not scientific questions — they are philosophical and religious ones, and anyone who attempts to provide an answer to these questions, in the affirmative or the negative, is doing philosophy and religion, not science.
This means that, despite the cultural perception that atheism is the scientific view and theism is the view of faith, atheism is not a scientific view, any more than theism is. Atheism is a religious view — one denying the truth of all religions — just like theism.
2…Science is not the only source of empirical knowledge, and is in fact remarkably inept at explaining the most fundamental aspects of our existence.
A big part of current thinking is that the scientific method is the only reliable source of empirical knowledge, the only way you can actually prove something to be true. Anything else is subjective and only based on our own personal opinions or feelings. Some would even say that science is all we need.
This, of course, is nonsense. Science cannot justify some of the most basic, fundamental beliefs that everyone (or almost everyone) believes to be true. These include:
2a) Objective moral values and duties. You cannot prove by the scientific method that it is evil to torture someone for fun, or that it is good for parents to selflessly love their children. Indeed, the concepts of good and evil are meaningless in the context of the natural sciences. Science only studies what is, not what should be. Hence, it can’t provide meaningful, authoritative answers on whether anything is objectively good or evil, or why we should do good rather than evil.
2b) That we exist. You cannot, by the scientific method, prove that there are minds other than your own, or that you are not just a brain in a jar being stimulated by a mad scientist to believe that what you are experiencing right now is real.
2c) That anything ever really happened. You cannot prove by the scientific method that the world wasn’t created last Thursday with the appearance of age and false memories implanted in our brains to go with it.
2d) That science is a reliable way to know about reality. You cannot prove by the scientific method that science works, because science presupposes the reliability of the scientific method in the first place!
2e) Why anything exists at all. Science cannot explain why there is something rather than nothing.
Yet, we are perfectly justified in believing these things — as justified as we are in believing that 2+2=4 or that the speed of light is about 186,000 miles per second. We need other sources of truth to tell us these things, including philosophy and personal experience.
3…Science, done properly, is in agreement with many Christian teachings.
Although science cannot make pronouncements about the supernatural, there are some religions, such as Christianity, that make claims that are scientifically testable. Science has demonstrated that the universe had a beginning (contrary to previous belief), prior to which there was nothing, something the Bible taught long before science discovered it. Many of the events in the Old and New Testaments have been verified by archaeology. Most importantly, the science of archaeology can also verify the circumstances surrounding the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, enough to compel an acknowledgment that the basic story surrounding the life and death and (alleged) resurrection of Christ is historical fact. Science can take us to the point where we must decide what to do with this information — dismiss it because miracles just don’t happen, search for an alternative explanation, or acknowledge that Jesus really did rise from the dead. None of those responses is any more “scientific” than the other, but one of them is true.
Science can’t displace religion any more than chemistry can replace biology. They answer different questions, use different methods, and have different limitations. We should not perpetuate a false dichotomy by pitting them against each other. Science is not the enemy of faith. We should recognize when we are doing science, and when we are doing philosophy; when we are drawing from experimental evidence and when we are drawing from personal experience. Both are fallible, open to misinterpretation, and can be misrepresented, but both can also be reliable sources of knowledge. We are not obligated to doubt our faith just because it can’t be proven by the scientific method. When we recognize and abide by the limitations of science, we can do science and philosophy and faith a lot better, and see more clearly how they can complement each other.
