Wednesday, March 31, 2010

The Role of Christianity in Fostering Good Science - Dr. Jack Collins


This is a report from the recent Science & Faith: Friend or Foes? Conference held at Westminster Theological Seminary.

The popular view presented by the western media and atheists is that science and religion, or faith, are at war. However, historians of science discredit the warfare motif.

As C.S. Lewis (a favorite of Dr. Collins) pointed out, we really need to refer to modern sciences, not modern science. There are various sciences, each with their own methodologies and assumptions.

Our view of science will be informed by our worldview.

Worldview:
1. Where did I come from?
2. Why am I here?
3. Where am I going?

or, a grand narrative, i.e.,

Where we came from - what went wrong - what has been done about it - what are we doing about it

Christianity provides a way of looking at life and approaching science. Darwinism, another. E.g., George Gaylord Simpson, in The Meaning of Evolution (one might be tempted to add if darwinism/materialism is true, then meaning itself is an absurd concept):

"it is already evident that all the objective phenomena of the history of life can be explained by purely naturalistic or, in a proper sense of the sometimes abused word, materialistic factors.... Good and evil, right and wrong, concepts irrelevant in nature except in the human viewpoint.... because morals arise only in man." (p. 344,346).

In 1940 C.S. Lewis addressed Oxford students. He said, "If all the world were Christian, it might not matter if all the world were uneducated. But, as it is, a cultural life will exist outside the church whether it exists inside or not. To be ignorant and simple now--not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground--would be to throw down our weapons, and to betray our uneducated brethren who have, under God, no defense but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen. Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered. The cool intellect must work not only against cool intellect on the other side, but against the muddy heathen mysticisms which deny intellect altogether."

2 comments:

David Thomson said...

Until some of the crazy Christians stop telling us the world is 6000 years old, that dinosaurs got caught in Noahs flood, that evolution never happened, that everything that has even happened is because of an invisable man in the sky, there can never be a "balance" between religion and science.

Joe said...

Your right David, scientists are being completely unreasonable expecting people to believe that something came from nothing for no reason. It calls into question the concepts behind all scientific endeavour.

"... nothing intellectually compelling or challenging.. bald assertions coupled to superstition... woefully pathetic"