Is this can of beans round or square?

The understanding of science and the understanding of faith are equally damaged by 'anti-evolutionism' being permitted to campaign in the name of faith and by 'militant atheism' being permitted to campaign in the name of science.

'Anti-evolutionism' is more concerned with science than faith and 'militant atheism' is religion, not science.

'Anti-evolutionism' and 'militant atheism' are effectively campaigning together against the reconciliation of science and faith.

• They are separate viewpoints and must be kept separate.
• Neither viewpoint has any authority to comment on the other.

• Science, by definition, has no authority to make pronouncements about spiritual matters.
• Scientists are only qualfied to offer personal opinions about such things.
  

• Christianity, similarly, has no authority to make pronouncements about science.
• All Christians believe in creation, but cannot assume they know exactly how it happened.
  

Doesn't science spoil the wonder of it all?

Science grows and beauty dwindles.
Alfred Tennyson

Is this really true?

There is grandeur in this view of life…
Charles Darwin

Hasn’t science solved the mysteries that bewildered our ancestors?

In fact, modern astronomy has shown the universe to be inconceivably vaster than our ancestors imagined…and mind-bogglingly more mysterious.

The sun is Earth's nearest star. Light takes eight minutes to reach us from the sun. Our next nearest star is 4.3 light years away. It seems unlikely that human beings will ever reach it.

A galaxy is the most awesome object in the sky. Andromeda is the nearest galaxy to ours. It is huge. It has as many stars as a beach has sand grains. Its light takes 2.3 million years to reach us. Light takes 200,000 years just to travel across it.

The Hubble Space Telescope tried photographing a tiny patch of "empty" sky, 1/30th of the diameter of the full moon: approximately the amount of sky covered by a sand-grain held at arms-length. The resulting image was staggering…

Astronomers now estimate 50 thousand million galaxies in the visible part of the universe. Galaxies are as numerous as sand grains on a beach! They calculate that some of these galaxies are about 13 thousand million light years away. This image is looking back 13 thousand million years, almost to the beginning of time.

Virtually all cosmologists now agree that the universe somehow burst out of nothingness, about
14 thousand million years ago. But they also calculate that some of the galaxies visible here are about 13 thousand million light years away. This amazing photograph looks back into time, showing the more distant galaxies as they were 13 thousand million years ago, relatively close to the “beginning”.

Science reveals a universe far more awesome and more mysterious than our ancestors ever imagined.

The Big Bang theory?

There was a time when scientists thought the universe had always existed. New evidence has convinced almost all cosmologists that the universe somehow had a beginning.

The Big Bang theory has arguably made it more difficult for a scientist to be an atheist…

From Scientific American, special edition Vol 12 No 2 2002

…Then God said, "Let there be light"; …

… and God divided the light from the darkness.

Isn’t the Genesis creation story…kind of…childish?

The first chapter of Genesis is more subtle and sophisticated than it might appear. There is a remarkably careful and deliberate structure to it.

This diagram shows just one example. Things appearing in each of the first three days appear to be "populated" by things appearing in the next three days. For example light and darkness are the main subjects of day 1, while sun and moon are the main subjects of day 4 … and so on.

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The ancient document represented by the first chapter of Genesis was always specially revered as sacred writing. Probably more than any other parts of the Bible, it is densely packed with hidden, but obviously intentional, number-patterns and symmetries.

It is important to recognise this ancient way of thinking, before making superficial, simplistic comparisons between Genesis and a science textbook.

• The writing is constructed on an intricate framework of poetic and numerical patterns.
• Rather like the New Testament parables, this creation passage is also packed with profound symbolism.

Literal days?

Throughout the Bible the Hebrew word, yom, is often used to mean an extended, figurative period of time.

Also, Peter wrote (2 Peter 3:8):

…with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

Historically, there is nothing unorthodox about interpreting the Genesis "days" non-literally. In a book called Genesis in the Literal Sense, St. Augustine of Hippo (AD 354-430) wrote:

...it is not to be taken in the sense of our day, which we reckon by the course of the sun; but it must have another meaning, applicable to the three days mentioned before the creation of the heavenly bodies.

and

...We must be on our guard against giving interpretations that are hazardous or opposed to science, and so exposing the Word of God to the ridicule of unbelievers.

'Chance' and 'natural processes'

How big is the concept of God? Are events attributed to 'chance' or 'natural processes' out of God's control? This widespread prejudice seems to be a product of our scientific age that has crept un-noticed into modern religious thinking.

For You formed my inward parts;
You wove me in my mother's womb. Psalm 139:13

According to traditional theology, God rules over wind, rain, plant growth and all other natural processes. He is NOT merely a god-of-the-gaps-in-our-scientific-knowledge. Those who conceive of God as an ever-retreating god-of-the-gaps are driven to hunt obsessively (a) for miracles, and (b) for areas of uncertainty in science, especially evolutionary science. It is helpful to recognise that this prejudice is the basis and the emotional root of the anti-scientific 'Intelligent Design' campaign. It is unsupported by traditional, mainstream, Christian theology.

'Chance events' and 'natural processes' are entirely under the control of the traditional God who is also Sustainer (this is important) as well as Creator of the universe. God works freely within His own 'laws' of science and probability. For example, if I toss a coin 100 times, these 'laws' predict how many heads or tails I can expect … but not which coin-tosses will produce heads or tails. From the traditional viewpoint, so-called 'chance' is the Hand of God.

• From the scientific viewpoint, even for the many scientists who are believers, chance is just unpredictable chance. This is how science works.
• From the religious viewpoint, according to traditional Chrisian theology, God is invisibly in control of what appear to us (and to statisticians) as chance events.

So...

• There is no conflict between the faith viewpoint and the scientific viewpoint. Each has a totally different view of 'chance'.
• The traditional faith viewpoint should not feel threatened by 'chance' because it ought to recognise 'chance' as the Hand of God.
• Whether or not a person believes in the statistically invisible Hand of God has no bearing on the working of evolutionary science.

End of argument...

...except for an unholy alliance of religious anti-evolutionists and evangelical atheists

• ...who together (!) disbelieve in a God big enough to control 'chance' invisibly.
• ...who together (!) promote a limited, 'interventionist' concept of God.
• ...who together (!) campaign for the view that mainstream science is opposed to faith.

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