Understanding Science in a Secular Culture

Michael W. Goheen

Trinity Western University

Escaping Margaret’s world

I just sort of accept the way the world is and then don’t think about it a whole lot. I tend to operate on the assumption that what I want to do and what I feel like is what I should do. What I think the universe wants from me is to take my values, whatever they might happen to be, and live up to them as much as I can.

Scientific Revolution (16th-17th c)

• Christian and humanist vision• Christian vision to steward nature• Humanist vision to dominate nature

‘. . . one of the beliefs that rule our scientific and technological civilization’: ‘To put the answer simply, it is the boundless will toward domination which has driven and still drives modern men and women to seize power over nature. In the competitive struggle for existence, scientific discoveries and technological inventions serve the political will to acquire, secure and extend power. Growth and progress are still gauged by the relative increase of economic, financial, and military power.’ (J. Moltmann)

Descartes’ (1596-1650) and Bacon’s (1561-1621) craft modern vision

• Knowledge is power: Scientific knowledge of world enables humankind to build better world

• Scientific knowledge of nature’s laws enables humanity to predict how nature would respond

• This would give power to control• Nature manipulated in a quest for a secular

paradise• Basis for knowledge: autonomous rational

person and law-governed nature• Need for a new method to get scientific

knowledge

Methodological Reason

DescartesRational Method

BaconEmpirical Method

Newton (1643-1727)

ScientificMethod

“Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night; Godsaid ‘Let Newton be!’ and all was light.” -Alexander Pope

Scientific Revolution (16th-17th c)

• Christian and humanist vision

• Christian vision to steward nature

• Humanist vision to dominate nature

• Triumph of humanist vision—why?– Conflict with church

He sets the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved (Ps. 104:5).

O sun, stand still... so the sun stood still (Josh. 10:12f.).

The earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises (Eccl. 1:4f.).

“So it goes now. Whoever wants to be clever must agree with nothing that others esteem. He must do something of his own. This is what that fellow does who wishes to turn the whole of astronomy upside down. . . . I believe the Holy Scriptures, for Joshua commanded the sun to stand still and not the earth.”

-Martin Luther

The Copernican theory undoubtedly contained a challenge for the Catholic theology. But instead of accepting the challenge and reflecting on faith in a new perspective, the Church opted for an easy conservatism, keeping the enemy at bay by means of its anathemas. This failure to accept the challenge of a new world picture was a great loss to the Church and to Christianity.

-Max Wildiers

Scientific Revolution (16th-17th c)

• Christian and humanist vision

• Christian vision to steward nature

• Humanist vision to dominate nature

• Triumph of humanist vision—why?

– Conflict with church

– Religious wars

Triumph of humanist vision

Conversion ofEurope

Success in Newtonian Paradigm ofPhysics

Religious Wars

‘Science unites’

‘Gospel divides’

Paradigm shift in wake of scientific revolution

C h u rc h

E u ro p ea n

S o c ie ty

S c ie n t ificR e a s o n

E u ro p ea n

S o c ie ty

Assumptions about science

• Science is opposed to Christian faith

• Warfare thesis

• Not Christian faith but paganised Christian faith

• Christian faith played large role in rise of science

Assumptions about science

• Science is purely objective

• History and philosophy of science since 1960s has shown it is deeply shaped by beliefs

Assumptions about science

• Science has power to save us from our problems (Messianic)

• Science:– Good gift of God to give us a certain kind of

knowledge of our world– One more cultural activity given by God to

develop creation

Assumptions about science

• Science is secular and naturalistic

‘. . . science, secularised and isolated, has become a satanic power, an idol which dominates all of culture.’ (Herman Dooyeweerd)

God’s Creating Word

word

response

Creating words of God

‘Let there be . . .’ (Gen. 1)‘By the word of the LORD were the heavens made,

their starry host by the breath of his mouth.’ (Ps. 33.6)

‘For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.’ (Ps. 33.9)

‘By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.’ (Heb. 11.3)

Word of God

• Creating word: Word that creates wise and good order of creation

• Upholding word: Same word continues to bring order (2 Peter 3.7; Ps. 147, 148)

God’s Upholding Word

God has called the universe into being out of nothing, and hence at every moment it ‘hangs’ suspended, as it were, over the abyss of non- existence. If God were to withdraw his upholding Word, then all being . . . would instantly tumble back into nothing and cease to exist. The continuation of the universe from one moment to the next is therefore as great a miracle and as fully the work of God as is its coming into being at the beginning.

- Bruce Milne

How did science get secularised?

• Augustine’s Platonic dualistic Christianity

Dualism of Augustine (354-430)

Spiritual realm Heaven God/angels

Soul Church Christian life

____________________________________

Material realm Earth Creatures

Body Society Cultural life

How did science get secularised?

• Augustine’s Platonic dualism

• Recovery of Aristotle in 12th century produces extreme tension between otherworldly Platonic Christianity and this-worldly Aristotelianism

How did science get secularised?

• Augustine’s Platonic dualism

• Recovery of Aristotle in 12th century produces extreme tension

• Aquinas resolves tension

Two Storeys of Thomas Aquinas

Spiritual realm GRACE Supernatural

Soul Church Christian life

Faith Revelation Theology__________________________________________Material realm NATURE Natural

Body Society Cultural life

Empirical reason Natural law Science

From dualism to secularism

“. . . in connection with the history of his influence the fact cannot be overlooked that the Christian mediaeval synthesis presented by Thomas is one of extreme tension, and in the dynamic of historical development had effects which were to prove self-destructive: there was to be an unprecedented and all-embracing movement of secularization and emancipation ‘at the lower level.’” (Küng)

Historical results

• Creation separated from presence and word of God

• Natural laws built into creation

• Can be discerned by autonomous reason

• Method developed to discern laws

• Controlled to harness laws for social uses

• Technology and rational organisation of society

Creation according to Scripture

GODword

response

Non-human HumanLaws of NormsNature

Deistic world devoid of God’s presence

GOD

Natural order

Non-human Human

Secular world devoid of God’s presence

Natural order

Non-human Human

Teaching science as a Christian means . . .

. . . resisting secularism that teaches about God’s world as if his presence did not matter.

God’s presence permeates the world

“In Him we live and move and have our being.” (Paul, Acts 17.28)

God “has so implicated Himself with [the creation], and taken it into His very bosom, by His presence in it, His providence over it, His impressions upon it, and His influences through it, that we cannot truly or fully contemplate it without in some aspects contemplating Him.” (Cardinal Newman)

God’s immanence in creation

“There is not an atom of the universe in which you cannot see some brilliant sparks at least of his glory.” God is immanent in all creation. The pure of heart see God everywhere. Everything is full of God. “I confess that the expression, ‘Nature is God’ may be used in a pious sense by a pious mind!”

(Herman Bavinck, quoting John Calvin)

Charged with the grandeur of God

The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil.Crushed . . .

(Gerard Manley Hopkins)

Crammed with Heaven

Earth’s crammed with Heaven,

And every common bush afire with God;

But only he who sees, takes off his shoes

The rest sit around it and pluck blackberries.

 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

God’s presence and knowledge

He is One who is sovereign over, operative amidst, independent of, the appointments which He has made; One in whose hands are all things, who has a purpose in every event, and a standard for every deed, and thus has relations of His own towards the subject-matter of each particular science which the book of knowledge unfolds; who has with an adorable, never-ceasing energy implicated Himself in all the history of creation, the constitution of nature, the course of the world, the origin of society, the fortunes of the nations, the action of the human mind . . .

- Cardinal Newman

Teaching science as a Christian means . . .

. . . resisting naturalism that teaches about non-human creation as if God’s word and activity does not matter.

“Law” is God speaking

“The real laws are in fact the word of God, specifying how the world of creatures is to function. So-called ‘law’ is simply God speaking, God acting, God manifesting himself in time and space.”

Scientific Law and God’s Rule“The Bible shows us a personalistic world, not impersonal law. What we call scientific law is an approximate human description of just how faithfully and consistently God acts in ruling the world by speaking. There is no mathematical, physical, or theoretical ‘cosmic machinery’ behind what we see and know, holding everything in place. Rather, God rules, and rules consistently.”

Three uses of word ‘law’

• Word God speaks to give creation order

• Lawful regularity we experience in creation

• Attempt at scientific, analytical formulation of these regularities

E. D. Fackerell

Faithful science teacher . . .

• Live more and more deeply in biblical story – where God orders creation– where God is everywhere present– where creation is theatre of God’s glory– where creation awesome display of God’s

handiwork

• Gratitude, wonder, joy, praise will spill over• Kids will learn to live in very different ‘world’

than contemporaries