In the beginning God - Science and Faith

Without question, the Bible is the most remarkable book in the world.  It has outsold,  and continues to outsell every other book in existence. It's also the most controversial, and no more so than in the so called clash between Science and faith.  This is true even among believers,  and I want to start by saying that we have arrived neither in science,  nor in our understanding of the Bible.  Too many believers confuse what the Bible says, with their interpretation of it!. But Hermeneutics, the theory and methodology of interpretation,  is complex,  and it's not an exact science. Concerning the non-arrival of Science, there is an interesting book by Thomas Kuhn called “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.”

The church is often cited as being the least progressive when it comes to accepting the results of science.  But Kuhn's book shows it's not just the church that's resistant, but humanity in general,  and the scientific community in particular. In particular favourite and widely accepted scientific theories resist change, and the debates are not always honest. The ancient Greeks hide the fact that the square root of two is not a rational number.  It contradicted the then current “theory of everything!” One of the Scientific revolutions that needed to take place centres around this mornings scripture from Genesis 1:1a. About a hundred years ago the steady state theory was in vogue and was widely accepted. It postulated that the universe had always existed. That being the case,  there was no need of a creator! The overthrow of this theory was also widely resisted, including by Einstein. It was the redshift in light revealed by the Hubble telescope that finally convinced him in the sixties. Only at that time, was it fully acknowledged, that the universe did indeed have a beginning.

The basic scientific method does not lend itself well to one off, unrepeatable events. One of the underlying assumptions of Science is that every event must have a cause. The method consists of basic observations,  followed by  hypotheses (theories)  as to the cause. Next come repeatable experiments that either confirm or deny the said hypothesis.  Much of modern science either essentially or explicitly throws out the God hypothesis. That God is the cause of anything is ruled out as inadmissible without evidence and without debate.  Most of the time it makes perfect sense.  However, since the beginning of the Universe must have a cause, the only alternative to the rejection of a god hypothesis here boils down to  “In the beginning, nothing created everything that is out of nothing.”  And the person of faith is called irrational!  That the true God is the God of the Bible however,  does not yet follow!

Father, we all need to acknowledge that we are all biased, and that we all operate out of our own understanding of reality, and that that is shaped by a multitude of things. Lord if You are really there, and I believe Your are, it is something of an inconvenient  truth. You tell us we suppress the truth in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18). That is we have this  ability to rationalize what we don't want to believe. But we don't know what we don't know,  and the ratio of what we know to that of what we don't know is of the order of infinity! But we do need to know we have not believed cunningly devised fables. Thank You Lord that You have promised we will find You when we search with all of our hearts (Jeremiah 29:13), in Jesus Name Amen