SCIENCE AND CREATION

Benjamin L. Clausen
Geoscience Research Institute

Geoscience Reports 31:1-4 (Spring 2001).

RELEVANCE

    The Geoscience Research Institute addresses the integration of science and faith. How relevant is the discussion?
    The 29 March 1999 issue of Time magazine gave the fourth in a series of the 100 most influential people of the century. It discussed the contributions of 25 scientists and thinkers and the major ways science has shaped life at the end of the century.
    For this issue of Time, Sir John Maddox, the former editor of Nature, wrote a concluding essay entitled "What’s Next?" After commenting that "The pace of discovery is likely to accelerate," Maddox enumerated some of the scientific and philosophical challenges for the century ahead: a theory of everything, life’s beginning, human evolution, human thinking, and understanding life. All seem to be at the interface between science and religion.
    Is it possible to integrate science and faith? to be a believer in God and a world-class scientist? The 3 April 1997 issue of Nature contains an article entitled "Scientists are Still Keeping the Faith." It found that 40% of American scientists believe in a personal God. (We must note, however, that another issue [23 July 1998] had an article by the same authors entitled, "Leading Scientists Still Reject God."
    Christian Leadership Ministries, a division of Campus Crusade for Christ, addresses Christian scholarship through their news journal The Real Issue. It contains a number of articles written by scientists who have integrated their science with their faith: Walter Bradley (mechanical engineer and former chair of that department at Texas A&M), Paul Chien (biologist and chair at the University of San Francisco), Michael Behe (biochemist at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and author of Darwin’s Black Box¹), Owen Gingerich (senior astronomer at the Smithsonian and Harvard), Fritz Schaefer (a quantum chemist at University of Georgia and several-time nominee for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry), and Phil Johnson (law professor at University of California, Berkeley and although not a scientist has written Darwin on Trial²).
    The news section in other journals has also emphasized the possibility of integrating science and faith. The Wall Street Journal (12 June 1998) contained an article, "Faith and Reason, Together Again: Who Says It’s Possible to Believe in Science and God? Scientists Do."
    The Newsweek cover story for July 20, 1998 was entitled "Science Finds God."³ It gave examples of several prominent scientists such as Allan Sandage, John Polkinghorne, S. Jocelyn Bell Burnell, and Charles Townes who are believers. The Newsweek editorial for November 9, 1998 was entitled, "The Gospel from Science" with a subheading of "The news from the cosmos is staggeringly improbable and theologically suggestive."
    Most of these articles emphasize the need for theism without mentioning a short chronology or a worldwide flood; however, one report did that as well. The 16 June 1997 issue of U.S. News & World Report printed an article entitled, "The Geophysics of God: A Scientist Embraces Plate Tectonics — and Noah’s Flood." The scientist is John Baumgardner, a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, who is attempting to model plate tectonics in a short time frame.⁴
    Even scientific journals have joined the discussion about ways to integrate science and faith. "Science and God: A Warming Trend" appeared in the 15 August 1997 issue of Science. It stated, "Can rational inquiry and spiritual conviction be reconciled? Although some scientists contend that the two cannot coexist, others believe they have linked destinies."
    In "Where Science and Religion Meet," the February 1998 issue of Scientific American describes the U.S. head of the Human Genome Project, Francis S. Collins, who strives to keep his Christianity from interfering with his science and politics.⁵
    Another issue (August 1998) reports on renowned scientists who contemplate the evidence for God in "Beyond Physics." Again, these are scientists who believe in God, but not necessarily a literal interpretation of Genesis 1-11.
    The American Scientist (March-April 1998) had an article that emphasizes this point: "Creationism’s Geologic Time Scale." It asks, "should the scientific community continue to fight rear-guard skirmishes with creationists, or insist that ‘young-earthers’ defend their model in toto?"
    In the 1990s several important conferences sought to understand the integration of science and faith. The C.S. Lewis Summer Institute, held at Cambridge in England in 1994, was such a conference. The Mere Creation Conference, emphasizing the evidence for design in nature, was held at Biola University in the Los Angeles area in 1996. The Program of Dialogue Between Science and Religion was sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Templeton Foundation from 14-16 April 1999.

IMPORTANCE

    Why are the issues important, and what difference do they make? Shouldn’t a Christian just believe without the need for study? Doesn’t it imply a lack of faith to study?
    I believe that God wants us to be thinking Christians who study the issues and address the paradoxes. There are a wide range of views on how to integrate science and faith, and the various implications need to be discussed. Following are the issues I believe to be important in integrating science and faith.
    Reason. 1 Peter 3:15 says that we should "be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh [us] a reason of the hope that is in [us] with meekness and fear." God created man with reason and the freedom of choice. Our faith must correspond to real-life experience and be reasonable; God does provide evidence, although not proof. There is the need to think and discuss. Both evolutionists and creationists have their problems, as is illustrated by Del Ratzsch in his book, The Battle of Beginnings: Why Neither Side is Winning the Creation-Evolution Debate.⁶
    Honesty. We must be honest with the data. God is a God of truth. He doesn’t deceive us in nature. We must look honestly at the data in the natural world, not ignoring data that don’t happen to fit our particular paradigm.
    Limitations. Human reason is important, but it has its limits. God is much greater than human reason can understand or imagine from studying nature — or even Scripture. This became obvious to Job after God’s long list of questions to him about nature.

The Lord speaks to human beings in imperfect speech, in order that the degenerate senses, the dull, earthly perception, of earthly beings may comprehend His words. Thus is shown God’s condescension. He meets fallen human beings where they are. The Bible, perfect as it is in its simplicity, does not answer to the great ideas of God, for infinite ideas cannot be perfectly embodied in finite vehicles of thought. — E.G. White7

    Humanity can only have a limited picture of God, as nicely outlined in the little book by J. B. Phillips, Your God Is Too Small.⁸ The human condition is insufficient to understand all God’s activities. Because of incomplete understanding, apparent paradoxes arise.
    From theology, we wonder how Christ can be both divine and human (Creator and creature) simultaneously, and how humanity can have free will if God is omniscient. From science, we wonder how light can be both wave and particle at the same time. And now the origins debate combines both theology and science into an apparent paradox between the revelations of nature and Scripture. Only our omniscient, omnipotent God knows all the answers.
    Time. Humanity is limited by time, unlike God who is eternal and timeless. Time for God doesn’t correspond to human time (Ps. 90:4; 2 Pet. 3:8); God knows the end from the beginning. Cannot God create time, exist outside of time, and move in time? Only for man is time a symbol of limitations.
    It is the creation, not the Creator, that must be concerned about time.

Time is uncontrollable, incomprehensible, indefinable, and shares in these qualities with God.... Time is the stuff of life. Time takes priority over all else. Time is sovereign. As to God so every creature is subject to time — Jack W. Provonsha10

…to attribute the salient features of the theory of evolution to God is to come up with the wrong kind of God! The God of the evolutionary hypothesis, as it is commonly understood, would be Nietzsche’s god, not the Father of Jesus Christ.

PERSONAL STORY

    Several years ago I participated in a nuclear physics experiment at an accelerator in Russia. In the process I made friends with a lady who for many years has worked as a nuclear physicist at Moscow State University.
    On several occasions she had shown an interest in Seventh-day Adventism, had asked about Jacob Mittleider’s famous vegetable gardens at the Zaokski Seminary, had attended the SDA church in Moscow, and knew a little about Seventh-day Adventist beliefs.
    The last time we visited, she asked about the problem of suffering. I was ready to share the Great Controversy story: of God wanting free creatures to love him, of Lucifer choosing not to love, and the results. But before I could begin, she said, "I already know about the fallen angel." That story didn’t satisfy her.
    In reflecting on the incident, I realized that philosophy is excellent for academic debates and answering philosophical questions. This theoretical approach works well for me, because my life has been relatively free of hardships. For her who had lived through many years of oppression, and who, while I was there, was struggling with tending to her husband who was suffering needlessly because proper medical attention was unavailable, philosophy wasn’t good enough.
    What my friend needed was not a philosophical or logical explanation, but to know of a loving personal God, of a Christ who suffered along with us here on the earth, who knows our sorrows as well as our joys. She needed the personal touch of another who was hurting as she was. She needed to see a God who cared.
    We have continued to communicate through e-mail. She needed to see someone she could relate to as a scientist, someone with a reasonable faith and someone who cares and believes in a God who cares.

CONCLUSION

    The integration of science and faith is a relevant issue today and important to an understanding of God and the world. The Geoscience Research Institute as part of the Seventh-day Adventist Church is participating in the discussion. As we develop our understanding of origins, it must include reason based on evidence from both nature and Scripture, but also faith in a loving, omniscient, and eternal God.

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