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This is the third in a series of occasional articles I have written on the above topic. Hopefully they provide a bit of illumination on how Science and Christian belief can work together successfully.
Historically, the supernatural has been used as the explanation for what we did not understand. For example thunder and lighting, appendicitis and bubonic plague were seen to be in the realm of the supernatural and were typically interpreted as evidence of the wrath of God. Even today we still refer to disasters and outbreaks of disease as acts of God, an unfortunately popular phraseology. This is an example of the view often called the "God of the gaps" and is not sustainable. As scientific investigation has discovered electricity, internal body function, and the nature of disease, and so on, the God of the gaps has grown increasingly smaller.
A much more sustainable model of God accepts that while God is supernatural, there should be discoverable evidence of God in the natural. Such a model allows God to be both above and through nature. This is the model that C A Coulson develops in his book "Science and Christian Belief -a Partnership", the title of which I have borrowed for this series. Coulson, the scientist who developed molecular orbital theory, tells the story of the development of a physics laboratory at London University. (Incidentally, my first degree is a BSc(Hons) from London University with a Physics/Chemistry double major.)
Because of space restrictions in inner London, this laboratory was built entirely underground and because of its complexity nobody could ever see the whole laboratory at any one time. There were multiple plans, or pictures, each one giving a thin slice of information about one aspect of the laboratory and it was only by combining these views that one was able to get a picture of the whole. Each plan contained within in it something that was essentially "Physics Laboratory".
In an analogous way, nature (and by inference, science) provides us with information about God. Let's illustrate this idea with a discussion about the origin of mankind. The Bible says in its usual paucity of expression that God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul. One is confronted with a picture of God getting his hands dirty, modelling with water and clay and then, with a bit of "magic" the model comes to life. While this picture is not wrong, many of us take this thin slice of information about the creation of man as the total story and say, "Wow, isn't that fantastic!"
Another slice of information comes to us from science that reveals the incredible engineering and awesome biochemistry, that has gone into the design of man. The "dust-to-man" picture provides by Genesis is an abstraction over this intricate design. The Bible tells us who God is and perhaps some of the "why" for creation and a whole lot about His relationship to us, but it says little about the design of creation. God left us to discover that for ourselves and those of us who study this design appreciate the "How" picture that emerges. Even modern atheistic cosmologists are forced to admit that design is evident, and to get around the problem of God, they have developed ideas of an intelligent universe - a universe that supports the existence of intelligent life at its most fundamental level. We should beware however, of saying that scientists have discovered God. While the "design argument" for God's part in origins is a compelling one for us, we must be aware that design in itself is not convincing to others. (We need to remind ourselves that the most compelling argument for Christianity is a life that has been changed by Christ and that continues to live under His influence.)
Of course the collection of pictures or slices of information is complex, not only because they are describing complexity, but because Satan has scribbled over the plans, messing up the pictures and getting them out of order. We have a lot of pictures that make no sense if we do not take into account what an evil power can accomplish. Once again the picture that the Bible gives us of sin's entry into the universe is remarkably brief and abstracts over much of the detail of its antecedents. We have often limited our view of evil to the somewhat childish view of Satan standing behind us suggesting that we do something that is wrong. Evil is written much deeper into the fabric of the observable universe than that and its complexity underscores the need for salvation and restoration.
In conclusion, one must be wary of presenting science and faith as antagonistic. Science can, and in fact should, challenge faith, but faith should not be seen as something that is smothered by science. Both science and faith, when combined give us pictures of God that are illuminating.
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