ARE CHRISTIANS OPPOSED TO SCIENCE?
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The hostility to Christianity is intense, even snowballing. In Can Science Explain Everything, John C. Lennox mentioned a conversation he had with an esteemed Cambridge professor of science - and he had invited two others to witness his shaming of Lennox - 50 years ago:
• “Lennox, do you want a career in science?” “Yes, sir,” I replied. “Then,” he said, “in front of witnesses, tonight, you must give up this childish faith in God. If you do not, then it will cripple you intellectually and you will suffer by comparison with your peers. You simply will not make it.”
Evidently, his faith hasn’t crippled him intellectually. Instead, Lennox points out the double-standard. Had it been a Christian professor pressuring an atheistic student to reject his atheism in favor of his career, the Christian would have been brought up on charges.
Is the Christian faith opposed to science? Lennox observes that it couldn’t possibly be:
• If science and God do not mix, there would be no Christian Nobel Prize winners. In fact, between 1901 and 2000 over 60% of Nobel Laureates were Christians.
According to Lennox, there are many others who share his observations:
∑ C.S. Lewis sums it up well when he says, “Men became scientific because they expected Law in Nature, and they expected Law in Nature because they believed in a Legislator.”
∑ Recent historians of science, like Peter Harrison, are more nuanced in their formulation of the way in which Christian thought influenced the intellectual landscape in which modern science arose, but they reach the same basic conclusion: far from hindering the rise of modern science, faith in God was one of the motors that drove it.
Lennox also cites the fact that the “great pioneers” of modern science were “convinced believers in God” – “Galileo, Kepler, Pascal, Boyle, Newton, Faraday, and Clerk-Maxwell…” It didn’t seem that their belief had crippled them intellectually.
Instead of a conflict between Christianity and science, Lennox claims that the conflict is actually between two rival worldviews – atheism and Christianity. Lennox cites physicist Sean Carroll, as a prime example of the former:
• We humans are blobs of organized mud, which through the impersonal workings of nature’s patterns have developed the capacity to contemplate and cherish and engage with the intimidating complexity of the world around us ... The meaning we find in life is not transcendent…(The Big Picture)
However, this battle isn’t being wagged with scientific evidence but with denunciations and contempt. Lennox cites physicist Stephen Weinberg as one example of the many bullies:
∑ The world needs to wake up from the long nightmare of religion. Anything we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done, and may in fact be our greatest contribution to civilization.
Is Christianity a threat to science and civilization? If so, where is the evidence? Instead, it seems that wherever the Bible has gone, it has bequeathed both of these gifts. The late theologian B.B. Warfield had observed:
∑ Hospitals and asylums and refuges for the sick, the miserable and the afflicted grow like heaven-bedewed blossoms in its path. Woman, whose equality with man Plato considered a sure mark of social disorganization, has been elevated; slavery has been driven from civilized ground; literacy has been given by Christian missionaries, under the influence of the Bible.
The impact of the Christian missionaries has also borne witness to this principle. However, Western culture often associates missionaries with the imperialists, who had wanted to stamp out native cultures, and the colonialists who economically exploited them. However, new research has exposed the fallacies of these many stereotypes.
Robert Woodberry, professor of sociology, University of Texas, had devoted 14 years to investigate why certain countries had developed thriving democracies, while neighboring countries became failed states. Andrea Palpant Dilley writes that:
∑ Woodberry already had historical proof that missionaries had educated women and the poor, promoted widespread printing, let nationalistic movements that empowered ordinary citizens, and fueled other key elements of democracy. Now the statistics were backing it up: Missionaries weren’t just part of the picture. They were central to it. (Christianity Today, Jan/Feb 2014, 38)
To his amazement, Woodberry was discovering that a long denigrated ingredient – the missionary – was actually central to the creation of successful states. He writes:
∑ “Areas where Protestant missionaries had a significant presence in the past are on average more economically developed today, with comparatively better health, lower infant mortality, lower corruption, greater literacy, higher educational attainment (especially for women), and more robust membership in non-governmental associations.” (39)
∑ Pull out a map, says Woodberry, point to any place where “conversionary Protestants” were active in the past, and you’ll typically find more printed books and more schools per capita. You’ll find too, that in Africa, the Middle East, and in parts of Asia, most of the early nationalists who led their countries to independence graduated from Protestant mission schools. (41)
Woodberry’s thesis has been gaining support. Philip Jenkins, professor of history, Baylor University, claims:
∑ “Try as I might to pick holes in it, the theory holds up.”
What doesn’t hold up are the assertions of its detractors. They have to explain why the Christian West, while it was still strongly influenced by the Bible, had forged ahead of all the rest of the world educationally, scientifically, and in many other ways.
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