Science and Religion

Origin of Species is not the first to cause Christians to wonder how they reconcile their faith with other forms of knowledge, like the insights science provides into the natural world.

 

Over the centuries controversies have given rise to wide-ranging and animated discussions of the proper way to relate science and religion.

 

There are no theological problems created by scientific explanations of why the sky is blue or grass is green. Much of science is independent of religion and, other than being grateful to God that the world is orderly there really is very little engagement.

 

But there have always been points of contact, especially when new information about the natural world has forced reconsideration of biblical texts. Augustine and others of his generation were uncomfortable with reports that there were people living below the equator---the "anti-podes," so called because their feet pointed in the opposite direction from the people in the northern hemisphere, where Augustine lived. The problem arose because of the claim in the New Testament that the apostle Paul had preached to "every creature under heaven"  and he couldn't possibly have traveled to the anti-podes.  So as reports of such upside-down people became more and more common, Christians had to think about what those reports of Paul's teaching ministry were really saying.

 

Centuries later, Christians had to rethink what David meant when he wrote that the earth "can never be moved" reprising the same sort of challenge that confronted Augustine. Eighteenth-century Christians had to deal with the problem of extinction and the growing awareness that entire species had lived and died before humans came along. And then nineteenth-century Christians had to wrestle with Darwin and twentieth-century Christians with the big bang, and twenty-first-century Christians with DNA evidence for the relationship between humans and other species.

 

Because our understanding of nature is an ongoing revelation, constantly adding new conclusions and revising existing ones the conversation will not end soon.