Now, it's not often this happens, but I sat through most of the sermon at my church on Sunday night grinning broadly. Anyone sitting near me must have been quite worried as to why I looked so cheerful, but really they didn't need to worry. It was just that it was one of those times when you agree with pretty much everything the speaker says, and just wish that it had been said before. The speaker was a physics professor from Leeds Uni, and he was speaking on "Is there a conflict between science and Christianity?" The answer was a resounding no, of course, but what he said made so much sense that it was just good to hear.
Afterwards, there was a question and answer session. It was easy to predict what questions were going to come up- 7-day creationism and evolution. Sure enough, they did. And it was nice, having felt in something of a minority for a while due to the media's tendancy to only report the headline-grabbing extremists, to know that there are other Christians who believe that the world was created by God, but don't believe in the literal seven-day creationism that is often used by the media as a caricature of Christian belief, especially in North America. Similarly with evolution- believing evolution happened doesn't stop me believing that God created humans "in his own image." The book of Genesis was never written as a science textbook, -the people who wrote it had no concept of ''science'' as we know it today. It wasn't intended to be a literal explanaion of how the world and humanity were created. What it says is: God created the world, humans have messed it up. In view of man-made natural disasters like the food shortages in Zimbabwe or global warming I don't think we can argue with that.
Speaking as someone who's interested in science, even if I haven't studied it academically since A level, I found what he was saying interesting and quite freeing. Sometimes I get annoyed with the general view in society that "science means we don't need God any more, because we can explain everything without the need for a creator." As the speaker said, science and religion actually try to answer two different questions (simplified, science looks at how things happen, religion at why). Few scientists, I believe, would claim that we can- or will ever be able to- explain how and why everything has happened. Even fewer would claim that science has disproved God's existence. That's not the question science is trying to answer.
I quite liked what he had to say about the origins of "science" as we know it today (the historian in me coming through!) Science (meaning knowledge) is quite a recent word, and previously the study of the physical world was known as natural philosophy, which according to the speaker, means "the love of wisdom about natural things". And that theme really chimed in with the passage from the book of Job, chapter 38, that he looked at, where God answeres Job by reminding him of the wonders and complexity of creation:
"Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand."
"Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep?"
"Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail?"
"Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades? Can you loose the cords of Orion?
Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons or lead out the Bear with its cubs?"
"Do you know when the mountain goats give birth? Do you watch when the doe bears her fawn?"
Selections from Job 38-39
The appropriate response to the world, he suggested, is wonder and amazement that something so complex and intricate can exist. As a scientist (or a "lover of wisdom about natural things"), studying the world, whether it's the process of DNA replication, the collision of tiny particles or the composition of distant stars can lead to that sense of wonder, even if you don't believe in a God. Wonder at creation, he suggested, brings us closer to the God who made it.
I have to admit at this point to not being an expert on the subject. And as the speaker said (and I agree- I've heard too many preachers mangle philosophical ideas because they don't understand them or take historical texts at face value) one should be careful not to speak about things one doesn't understand, that are outside one's area of expertise. That includes me. So don't be offended if you think I've got something really wrong here- but do think about it.
You can listen to the talk here: (well theoretically you should be able to, it doesn't seem to be there at the moment! Hopefully it'll appear before too long...)
