Reconciling Science and Faith
Reported by Natalie Amodei
Reconciling science and faith can be one of the biggest struggles a Christian faces.
We are constantly bombarded with new scientific theories that appear to directly counter what the Bible says. Then we are tasked with unifying them.
Before I came to George Fox University (GFU), I held science and faith in two distinct categories. If they couldn’t touch each other, neither one could be proven false. I told myself that I could trust science on evolution and the Big Bang and simultaneously believe a literal translation of Genesis.
College changed that. My professors asked challenging questions and spoke of how they were able to bridge these two worlds; they had encountered these obstacles and made it through.
Todd Curtis, associate professor of physics, said that “keeping God separate from really anything, whether it’s science or some other part of our lives, is dangerous. Our God is the God of everything and… we need to allow Him to invade all parts.”
I wasn’t letting God into science and it was hurting me.
My professors integrated their faith into discussions of evolution and didn’t shy away from the hard topics. They taught me that science describes how the universe was created and continues to exist, but the Bible illustrates why God created. They merge to tell us who God is.
“The vast majority of what I see in the physical world are really reflections… of God’s nature, and the more I study science, and the more I study God, the more parallels I see,” Curtis said. “When I study science, I’m studying how God created the world. And in doing so, I’m actually studying a small piece of who God is.”
I grew up believing that the Big Bang wasn’t possible because it contradicted the story I learned as a child. The origin of the universe is crucial to God as the Creator, and without a resolution, my faith was suffering.
“Even reading through Genesis 1, I can see how I believe The Big Bang can really fit into what is spoken there,” Curtis said. “Historically, it was scientists of faith that believed there was an origin to the universe. There were scientists who came from atheistic worldviews… who said…no, the universe has been in this steady state forever. And once we discovered The Big Bang, it was like this verification of what Christian scientists have been saying all this time, that there was this finite beginning to the universe.”
Curtis continued, saying that The Fall led to the second law of thermodynamics, the tendency of our universe towards disorder, death, and decay.
Today, I am able to say that God created the universe and that we can glimpse acts of creation in our studies of The Big Bang. Both call for a finite beginning in our universe. Why couldn’t God have created in this way?
Evolution remains a tricky topic for many struggling to identify God’s means of creation. While I can’t bring myself to discount what we currently theorize about evolution based off of evidence, I am still searching for answers as to whether or not a literal Adam and Eve existed or if they are a metaphor for the disobedience we all show toward God.
If God is outside of time, couldn’t evolution have existed with God guiding creation to what we see now? Ultimately, science and faith address different aspects of our world, and it’s okay to not know.
Matt Stump, associate professor of biology, said, “I believe in a Creator that is far greater, more creative, than my limited cognitive abilities and imagination. I also believe God desires to be known through the study of the natural world. God is revealed through experiments in the lab or in the field as well as through the study of Scripture. Much of what I know of God comes from studying the beauty, design, and complexity of the created world.”
When asked about real or perceived conflicts between faith and science, Professor Stump said he has grown to be more comfortable without having all of the answers.
“I think that science exists at the boundary of what is known and what is unknown,” he said. “Each discovery or assertion yields new questions that are worth further investigation. I think that my reflective, question-asking nature has actually helped me appreciate the role that mystery and paradox and even doubt have in making my faith alive and real each day.”
The more I study science, the more I am able to see the complexity of the world and how truly incomprehensible God is. Science and faith do not have to be at war and I would encourage anyone struggling to reconcile the two to continue digging. God is bigger than any of your questions.
And regardless of what you believe, in the words of Todd Curtis, “My salvation doesn’t really depend on it in the scope of eternity.”