Creation versus Evolution.
This single title card for the longstanding battle is all I need to begin. I would guess that, with only a mention of the juxtaposition, you already have a litany of opinions, feelings, and memories sprouting from the ideas. I remember the massive creation versus evolution debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham in 2014, an event that still brings up emotions I can best summarize as “a little sad and a little annoyed.” I do not ascribe the reality of such conceptual opposition to that specific debate, but I do see it as a traceable marker of our culture’s misplaced worldview. Far too many of our students, and often their families and perhaps even our teachers, believe there is competition between “science” and the Bible.
Science, properly understood, does not contradict the Bible. Science can, however, help inform how we best live in certain arenas with a worldview that is holistically biblical. Moreover, the Bible, despite rightfully superseding the discipline of science in truth and authority, need not eliminate the utility of the sciences altogether. While this is a discussion that will need to continue over a long series of posts, I will begin by providing a brief and generalized overview of the relationship between science and a holistically biblical worldview in the classroom.
The Bible, despite rightfully superseding the discipline of science in truth and authority, need not eliminate the utility of the sciences altogether.
The process of hypothesis, experiment, study, and discovery is the very process by which our presuppositions are revealed or dismantled. The fallacy of competition is itself a principle that can take this journey, but there must still be a foundational metric for assessing truth. That foundational truth, for Christ-followers, is and should always be the Bible. As one worldview scholar writes, “The framework of Scriptural thinking creates the structure for addressing the whole world and all of life from God’s perspective.”[1] Science by itself does not operate under its own prerequisite logic as that essential, observable, foundational truth by which all physical and metaphysical truth can be measured.[2] Thus, it can (or should) be reasonably presumed that science and the Bible do not explicitly cover the same epistemological realms.
The Lord “makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters” (Isaiah 43:16), a biblical statement oceanographer Matthew Fontaine Maury took literally; he then mapped what we now know as ocean currents. We read in the Bible, “For he draws up the drops of water; they distill his mist in rain, which the skies pour down and drop on mankind abundantly” (Job 36:27–28). We can easily see, now, that this is an accurate description of the hydrological cycle. Many such examples of prerequisite understanding exist.
These two examples are undoubtedly extraordinary, but let’s also think about the subject of the biblical passages. The first, found in Isaiah 43, comes in the middle of a gracious list of the Lord’s providential and omnipotent sovereignty, of His complete oneness, and of the redemption and salvation that only He has given that should wipe away His people’s fear when properly understood. The second, found in Job 36, follows with the question, “Can anyone understand the spreading of the clouds, the thundering of [God’s] pavilion?” (v. 29). It is an example, held in the physical realm, not of the understandable process but of God's sovereignty and unique omnipotence over them. These passages are about God, not the physical processes or about our observation of them.
The Bible is not a scientific textbook, but it is nonetheless sufficient and comprehensive in the coherence of all things; it speaks into scientific processes, points towards realities that include the natural, and thus guides our interaction with God’s creation. Science, on the other hand, tells us nothing primary about God apart from what God chooses to reveal through science regarding His nature or creation.
I have spent a decent amount of time casually delving into the realm of neuroscience. I enjoy filtering empirical data through a theological lens, and I believe neuroscience specifically to be the perfect example of this noncontradictory relationship. Our studies of the brain can illustrate how knowing happens, how external factors effect internal capabilities, point us to the complexity of design that points to divine involvement, etc. However, studying the brain does not tell us mankind’s chief end. One author logically notes, “Believing that religion is a botched attempt to explain the world [is] like seeing ballet as a botched attempt to run for a bus.”[3] I think that’s funny, and hopefully also clear. I would recommend Bradley L. Sickler’s book titled God on the Brain: What Cognitive Science Does (and Does Not) Tell us about Faith, Human Nature, and the Divine (Crossway, 2020) to anyone interested in the ideas mentioned briefly in this post.
It is God who designed all we observe and who orchestrated the revealing of all knowledge.
I firmly believe that Christ “is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:15–17). Thus, it is my prayer that any Christian educator instructing in scientific disciplines would begin with these concepts, that it is God who designed all we observe, who orchestrated the revealing of all such knowledge, and who through Christ graciously reconciles all things on heaven and earth (Colossians 1:20).
[1] Mark Eckel, “Interdisciplinary Education Within Biblical Theology: A Scriptural-Philosophical-Educational-Practical Overview,” Christian Education Journal 12, no. 2 (2015): 390.
[2] Bradley L. Sickler, God on the Brain: What Cognitive Science Does (and Does Not) Tell Us about Faith, Human Nature, and the Divine (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 53.
[3] Terry Eagleton, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 50.