E-Book, Englisch, 96 Seiten
Reihe: TGC Hard Questions
Madueme Does Science Make God Irrelevant?
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-4335-9799-2
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection
E-Book, Englisch, 96 Seiten
Reihe: TGC Hard Questions
ISBN: 978-1-4335-9799-2
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection
Hans Madueme (PhD, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is professor of theological studies at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, and an editorial board member for Themelios. He is the co-editor of Adam, the Fall, and Original Sin: Theological, Biblical, and Scientific Perspectives and the author of Defending Sin: A Response to the Challenges of Evolution and the Natural Sciences. Before training in theology, Madueme received his MD and completed his medical residency in internal medicine at the Mayo Clinic.
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A growing number of people believe the earth is flat. No one knows exactly how many people share this belief, but a recent survey showed that 10 percent of 1,134 respondents believe the earth is flat—with 9 percent unsure.1 In 2017, the American rapper B.o.B started a GoFundMe page to prove flat-earth theory by launching a satellite into space. That same year, NBA player Kyrie Irving made waves in a podcast interview defending a flat-earth cosmology. He later recanted and explained how viewing too much YouTube brainwashed him. You can roll your eyes, but an alarming number of people have been converted to a flat-earth view through YouTube disinformation.2
Surely most readers3 will agree that flat-earthism is preposterous (“absolute bonkers,” my son would say). You’re probably not a flat-earther, but if you are an evangelical Christian, you may share some of that view’s skepticism about contemporary science. If you are older, you have seen popular scientific advice about healthy eating, for example, change over the years. At one time, doctors told us low-fat diets reduce heart disease, but now they think some fats have health benefits. Same with eggs—first they were unhealthy; now nutritionists tell us they are healthy. Maybe you have thought, “Scientists change their mind about almost everything if you wait long enough.” In light of how issues have been politicized in North America, many religious people are skeptical about climate change, and in a post-COVID world, Christians concerned about government overreach are often vaccine-skeptical, too.
The trouble with our skepticism is that if we are not careful, we can adopt a warfare understanding of the relationship between science and Christianity. Ironically, the atheist Jerry Coyne reflects the same attitude in his bestselling book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible. The title tells you what he thinks about religious beliefs. Right from the preface, he pulls no punches: “Faith may be a gift in religion,” he writes, “but in science it’s poison, for faith is no way to find truth.”4 Coyne pits science and faith against each other, on opposite sides of the fence. Yes, believers reject his atheism, but we are often tempted to fight the same battle. Coyne fights for science, we might say, and we fight for faith.
Sadly, parents and churches can respond to this perceived war between science and faith by shielding young people from any serious interaction with mainstream science. They recognize that some scientific beliefs contradict what the Bible says about God and the world we live in, so they shut down their kids’ interaction with secular science altogether. While sincere, this protective approach can backfire. It sets up young people who grow to love science as adults to be skeptical about their childhood faith later in life. At the other extreme, many non-Christians like Coyne agree Christianity and science will always be irreconcilable. The biblical view of origins doesn’t count as genuine knowledge, they say, because it opposes empirical science. What’s more, Scripture is full of supernatural events that cannot be proved scientifically: at best, science is agnostic about a world where miracles happen; at worst, science denies such a world exists.
I wrote this book for young Christians who love Jesus and science. Our society keeps telling you science and faith can’t get along, but deep down you hope for an evangelical faith that takes science seriously. My aim in this book is to show you why that hope is entirely justified. Science and faith are intimate friends. The book unfolds in four steps: (1) criticizing the contemporary idea that science and faith have always been enemies, (2) explaining how Christian assumptions make science possible, (3) clarifying the perceived tension between science and miracles in the Bible, and (4) illustrating some ways faith and science can coexist as allies. By the end of the book, I hope you will be able to see how good science glorifies God.
Debunking the War between Science and Faith
Many of us grew up believing science and faith are at war. We absorbed this belief by cultural osmosis. We imagined theology and science on two ends of the spectrum, as enemies in mortal combat. The Joker versus Batman. Sherlock versus Moriarty. Science versus theology. The secular forces lined up on one side; the angels of light, on the other. This is a civil war, a battle to the death, and may the best man win.
We often think about Galileo’s life in terms of this battle narrative.5 Here was a great scientist surrounded by Bible-thumping fundamentalists who believed in geocentrism, the idea that the sun revolves around the earth. Galileo (1564–1642) proved the opposite—heliocentrism—and wrote books defending this truth. His reward? He was captured by the Roman Inquisition, tortured, and then sent to jail, where he spent the rest of his life in disgrace.
If you believe this, I have an oceanfront property in Iowa to sell you! This picture of Galileo is largely a myth; the true story is far more complex. First, Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) and Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) originally had the idea; they gave serious defenses of heliocentrism long before Galileo. Second, some church leaders, including the pope, were initially sympathetic to Galileo’s views. But we often forget that even in 1615 when Galileo went to Rome to defend his views to the Catholic Church, there was no definitive proof heliocentrism was correct (that came decades later with Isaac Newton). Many astronomers and physicists at the time disagreed with Galileo, because other models of the solar system made equally good sense of the data. Galileo’s view wasn’t the only available theory. At that point in history, it was perfectly rational for astronomers and church officials to disagree with Galileo.
The main alternative position was the geocentrism of Aristotle’s cosmology, which the Catholic Church had fully embraced for centuries. Aristotle had become the foundation for Italy’s moral and social fabric. If Galileo was right, then beloved Aristotle was wrong. In the seventeenth century, those were fighting words. That’s probably why a Roman Catholic cardinal allowed Galileo to continue researching his theory so long as he never claimed it was a scientific fact. Galileo had to qualify that he was only speaking hypothetically. He initially agreed to these terms, but sixteen years later, Galileo published a book defending the Copernican view as scientific fact. That got him in hot water.
By now, I hope you have noticed how the warfare narrative oversimplifies and distorts history. Yes, the religious establishment saw Galileo as wrong and even dangerous, but it was not because they saw him as rejecting the Bible or Christianity. He was never tortured, and he did not spend a day in jail. Contrary to popular belief, Galileo was not an atheist, nor was he named a heretic. Galileo the scientist actually cited Scripture extensively to support his views, and he remained a Roman Catholic to the end of his days.
Our assumptions about the Scopes Monkey Trial misrepresent history in similar ways. We have formed impressions based on hearsay and movies like Inherit the Wind, which itself is based on the 1955 play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee. Here is how the film tells the story: John Scopes is the hero, the enlightened scientist from 1920s Dayton, Tennessee, surrounded by ignorant, Southern, Christian dimwits. These people are trapped in old, dogmatic ways of thinking. Scopes comes to the rescue by helping them see the light. He is a beloved teacher exposing his students to evolution.
The town leaders are the bad guys in this story, the religious rednecks. They start protesting that Scopes is teaching evolution in the classroom, and they eventually get him thrown into prison. The case goes to trial. On the side of the angels, we have the defense lawyer Clarence Darrow (1857–1938), an advocate for science, reason, and humanity, a man defending the underdog. On the other side, we have William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925), an ignoramus young-earth creationist and an opponent of reason. Science versus religion, and the winner is . . .
Once again, this picture is more myth than history. The real situation in 1925 begins with Tennessee passing the Butler Act, which prohibits the teaching of evolution in public schools. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) then places an ad in the Chattanooga Times, promising to give legal support to any teacher who will stand trial for teaching evolution. A few enterprising businessmen in Dayton see an opportunity to gain publicity for the town and boost the local economy. They find John Scopes, a math and physics teacher, who volunteers to teach evolution and be arrested for violating the Butler Act. Indeed, he is arrested, all his bills are paid, and he is immediately released on bail. All of this triggers a media frenzy and a high-profile legal battle. The businessmen have executed their plan to perfection. After all, their whole agenda has been to bring national attention and tourism to the small town of Dayton. Mission accomplished.
As for William Jennings Bryan, he was not even a young-earth creationist! He saw the days of...
