This was originally written as a talk for a Relay training day. Hope you find it helpful and decipherable. Any questions or suggestions let me know.

This is the 21^st century, the age of science, rational thinking, technology and discovery. Admittedly it hasn’t so far lived up to the hype of the 90’s, when we were told as kids that by this time we’d be living in space and be taking our jetpacks off to work. However we can see that, as progress marches on, religion has been consigned to the past, as civilization, discovery and human progress march on.

Religion apparently belongs to an earlier age of humanity, when we couldn’t explain anything properly and made up stories to comfort ourselves that there was some meaning to everything. However as humanity grew up, we realised that we don’t need it anymore, and that we should become fully mature by getting rid of ‘superstitious’ religion altogether.

But is this really the case? Has better science really decreased adherence to the Christian faith, and has better education really caused the downfall of religion in modern society?

What is science?

Science is a commonly misunderstood entity. It is viewed as the exclusive and obtuse preserve of people in lab coats. Occasionally it is extended to be the grand authority and philosophy of all existence. Strictly however, it is neither of these things.

Science is all about finding ways to explain how things we see around us work, and in many respects we are all scientists. For example, it means that if we watch something happen, like an apple falling to the ground, then see the same thing happen again in the same way, we can make a generalised statement that apples tend to fall downwards when unsupported by anything else. If we observe other objects falling then we can apply this same statement to a vast number of things, and if we measure how fast it falls under different conditions we can make laws to calculate and predict how future experiments should turn out. A good scientific theory is one which best fits observation, and the best test of a scientific theory is like the best test of a tailored suit: put it on and walk around in it. Does it fit? Does it make accurate predictions of the world around you? Does it need adjusted, or just torn up?

There are a few problems we encounter here however. It would be a false conclusion to say after watching an apple that ALL apples fall, or that tomorrow the same apple will fall in the same way as it does today. Also, are our minds reliable enough to make these predictions, or even do we trust out senses to report reliably about the event outside of ourselves. This leads to an important point about science, that it is unable to state definite facts about things, only theories of probability and estimates of the certainty of its findings. This does not mean that scientific method cannot produce reliable conclusions, but it is a far cry from the ‘grand authority in everything’ proposed by scientific naturalists today.

In the great birth of modern science in the renaissance, these real issues were not ignored. Instead the scientists at the time made a remarkable assumption based on their belief in a creator God. Knowing that it was in Jesus that all things are created and sustained they postulated that all created things should progress in rational, predictable patterns. As Augustine stated, ‘Nature is what God does’. Also if we are ‘made in the Image of God’ and told to subdue and have stewardship over all things under God, it would be logical to say that God Himself has given us the mental and physical capacities to carry out investigations into nature.

So, armed with this new knowledge and confident that God’s workings in creation could be fully probed and eventually understood, scientists set out to investigate and construct laws and principles to explain natural phenomena, convinced that the very comprehensibility of nature pointed to and glorified the creator God.

Modern march of scientific discovery

So where has science gotten us to today?

Science is doing what it’s supposed to – generating laws and theories to explain the events and objects we see around us. Unfortunately over the course of this many philosophical ideas have become attached to scientific theories, including the idea that modern scientific findings prove the non-existence of God. But why is this?

Many modern writers analysing scientific facts point to the logical nature of cause and effect to show that there is no need for a creator and sustainer in the Universe. This does of course disprove many failed apologetics movements that used ‘gaps’ in scientific understanding to show that a god must be involved in filling them, a view that was rejected as dangerous and theologically unsound even then. They use these mechanistic explanations of everything to show logically that there is no such transcendent being, as there are no ‘gaps’ in the laws of nature.

However there are still ‘gaps’ in our understanding, and a crude ‘science of the gaps’ apologetic has sprung out of it, seeking to deny problems rather than explain them. There is no reason to assume that the whole universe is rational and predictable, apart from the optimistic and faith based ‘Oh I’m sure science will explain it all someday’ approach. Added to this is the other problem of doing science, that we have very little reason to rely on our logic and senses to investigate and discover the world. Indeed evolution has shown that our thoughts, senses and emotions are for nothing more than surviving and mating in the grand scheme of things.

So modern atheism, having abandoned the assumptions that made science possible, seems to have come to a philosophically sticky end point. Adding to this, it has elevated supposedly infallible logic (of course carried out by brains that are an ‘accidental misfiring of something useful’ during evolution), above human experience, consciousness and even our senses. Taken to its logical conclusion this atheism denies our very existence as persons, instead asserting that we are machines made to pass on genes, and that intelligence is an illusion created by our self-observing minds. Questions of common human experience, such as ‘what is the meaning of life?’, ‘why is there suffering?’ and ‘is there any reason to be moral people?’ are ignored as non-questions. What faith they have! To trust in logic despite showing that it contradicts our very experience of personhood? Certainly many atheists have a much stronger faith than I do!

The Bible provides a ‘better fit’

So where does this leave us? A good theory provides a ‘good fit’ of the available evidence, and atheism fails to live up to its hyped up explanatory power for life and human existence. So is there a theory which is a ‘better fit’? I would like to suggest that the Bible points us such a theory.

As I explained before, early scientists were convinced that the uniformity of nature confirmed their belief in a Creator, and their belief in a God who is intricately and providentially involved in all aspects of His creation. In the Bible it describes a God who makes the grass grow, feeding the birds and hunting food for the lioness. Of Jesus it says that He is the ‘creator and sustainer of all things’. Nature is indeed what God does.

Not only this but the Bible tells us that we were created in the image of this God, and given dominion and stewardship over all things. Those scientists proposed that God intended us to investigate the world and gave us abilities to do so, even if the results of our ‘stewardship’ through scientific investigation have been a bit mixed. It shows us that our human experiences are real and meaningful, and that our person is not an illusion.

But the Bible doesn’t end there. In a song written in the Old Testament, the writer remarks that the ‘heavens declare the glory of God’, a bold claim that the existence of a god is evidenced by the wonder we experience at creation. From this though the writer paints a bleak picture of a God too high to be knowable, and too beyond us to be with us. But his words are turned to pure joy when he receives the very words of Yahweh, the personal name God uses when He enters into a close, personal and intimate relationship with His people in the Old Testament. By this name He speaks to them about Himself so that they may know Him and know His purpose in creating them.

In the New Testament however, we are told that God now speaks to us in a very different way and His great words of self-revealing have been shown to be a person, the person of Jesus Christ. Here then is the elusive ‘evidence for God’ that is claimed doesn’t exist. To millions stubbornly waiting for God Himself to come down and introduce himself, God did, in the person of Jesus 2000 years ago, who became human, died and miraculously rose from the dead. He then charged others to write and speak about Him for future generations, and left His Spirit to empower us to do so.

Here is the real challenge then. Does the witness of the Bible fit our experience better? Is the God we meet there more reliable and authoritative than human ‘logic’? And does Jesus of Nazareth seriously challenge our thinking, search out our hearts and satisfy our human experiences and longings when we meet Him, through the Scriptures and through His Spirit? Having tried on the tailored suit of naturalistic atheism, dare you try on the suit of Biblical Christianity? We are all scientists, and these are important issues. Maybe you’d better start investigating.