A CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE OF SCIENCE
A review of "Unnatural Enemies" by Kirsten Birkett
(Matthias Media, Sydney. 1997)
Few doubt that there is a battleground involving science and religion. In his book River out of Eden (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1995), Richard Dawkins expresses the conflict thus:
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"Science shares with religion the claim that it answers deep questions about
origins, the nature of life, and the cosmos, but there the resemblance ends.
Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence, and they get results. Myths
and faiths are not and do not" (p.33).
In this short book, Kirsten Birkett, who is a historian of science, sets out to explore the relationship between Christianity and science. First, she considers science: its methodology and philosophical foundations. Second, she reviews aspects of Christianity that impinge on science: God as the author and upholder of everything, man's place in creation, wisdom and its limits. These two sections establish the fundamental compatibility of Christianity and science, to the extent that a commitment to science becomes a natural expression of Christian discipleship.
"This is a world which we might well expect to be able to study and investigate; a world we might come to understand, and therefore to manipulate technologically; a world ripe for 'science'" (p.77).
The issue, for Birkitt, is not that Christians necessarily make better scientists, but that Christians are able to integrate science into a unified worldview.
"We now have a framework for understanding the world as a whole, for we understand what it is for and where it is going. This may not affect the mechanics of how we gather data (apart from informing our ethics), but it will provide a conceptual basis for interpreting and devising theories. It may not mean that Christians will make better scientists – for there are many things that go into making a good scientist – but it does mean that Christians will have a coherent framework for making sense of scientific discoveries, and their application to life in the world" (p.100).
Birkett's final section addresses the claim that Christianity and science are at war, and that conflict is inevitable. Having established that the claim is vacuous, Birkett is able to refocus attention on why it is that people have made this false claim and why so many are taken in by it. The explanation is ultimately a spiritual one:
"There is a conflict between science and Christianity, for there is a conflict between humanity and God. It starts with Adam and Eve, but that is only the start. The story of humanity is the story of our rebellion against God and his ways. Rather than ruling the world as his representatives, as his vice-regents, we want to displace God, and run things our own way" (p.135).
Science is, according to Birkett, a "method for investigating natural causes" in a Cosmos that is created by God and sustained by his power. But man, in his rebellion, has substituted naturalism for Christian theism. Instead of material things being created by God, the physical universe is considered to be all that exists. Instead of God upholding all things by his mighty power, naturalistic scientists suggest that natural causes are the only causes and, if there is a god, he is irrelevant to the functioning of the Cosmos.
The "warfare" thesis came to the fore towards the end of the 19thCentury when many factors came together to make it almost an inevitability. At this time, there was a growing acceptance of Darwinian evolution, a theory of origins which was "entirely naturalistic" (p.121). There was an unstable balance of power in society: the intellectual and social leadership of the aristocracy and the established church was widely perceived as burdensome and inhibiting. The nettle was grasped by Thomas Huxley. He devoted much of his time and effort to social reengineering – breaking down the exclusivity of the intellectual leadership of his time.
"This was the battle to see science – not just technical science, but science as an all-embracing naturalistic philosophy – take the place of Christianity as the dominant ideology in society. Huxley wanted scientists to be the intellectual leaders, and that meant they had to depose church leaders. He wanted scientists, as professional intellectuals, to have social power." (p.121).
"There is only one kind of knowledge, he insisted, and one way of acquiring it; the scientific way. His commitment to scientific naturalism was, in fact, almost a new religion.… Huxley did not merely want scientific technique and knowledge taught; he wished naturalism to become the dominant ideology in society – and for theology to lose its place amongst intellectual leadership." (p.123-124).
Huxley's lead has been followed by many others. They can claim victory, for they have achieved success. However, these have been at the expense of truth and to the detriment of science. Naturalistic science imposes itself on the physical world, deducing what creation should be like because of its a prioriassumptions. Birkett describes naturalistic science as a contemporary Tower of Babel:
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"[Babel] is a story of humanity trying to build, through its own co-operation
and ingenuity, a challenge to heaven. We are still trying to do it.
Instead of seeing science as the noble pursuit that it is, investigating
God's world, we try to make it our means of becoming god ourselves. And
because we are very good at science, we feel some measure of confidence
that one day, ultimately, we will succeed… The Tower of Babel warns
us that we will not become God". (p.136).
For example, miracles are considered on pp.70-73 and the common misconception that miracles are God "interrupting the laws of nature" is rightly corrected. But the link between miracle and creation is never developed (for example, as identifying the Person of Christ, who, by miracles, displayed his authority over creation). Comments such as this one do not hit the target:
"In fact, we have no particular reason to suppose that any of the miracles lack a cause we would describe as 'natural'. It may be that God did all of the miracles by using some natural process which is not reported." (p.73)
Birkett clearly distinguishes between creation (out of nothing) and providence. Implicit, but not spelled out, is the thought that creation belongs to the past, not the present. This is of crucial importance when we come to address origins. Those aspects of the Cosmos, whether animate or inanimate, that were created, should not be explained in terms of the operation of God's providence (commonly described in terms of natural causation). This brings us to a fundamental methodological divergence: those who consider that natural causes only should be employed to account for living things, and those who consider that the first generation of living things were specially created and that natural causes are inappropriate in any explanation of their existence. On the one side of the divide are naturalistic scientists and theistic evolutionists; on the other side are creationists. Since Birkitt does not provide resources for readers to handle this divergence, the issue of origins will very likely become a stumbling block to readers new to these issues. The foundation that is provided, good though it is, is not robust enough to build a consistent Christian approach to origins.
David J. Tyler (December 1998)
