A Biblical Theology of Science

(Rough Draft)

by Raul E. Lopez, MD, MDiv.

Copy Right 2004

The Purpose of Scientific Knowledge

            There are two important reasons for studying God’s creation. The first is to fulfil what I call the First Commission, or what is sometimes called the Social Mandate (?). This mandate is found in Genesis 2:xx, and reads “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth, and have dominion over the ...” Immediately as a result of this command Adam was shown all the animals and instructed to name them. This was the first Scientific research project. It is interesting that Adam was engaged in this scientific instruction before, and as a prerequisite to, receiving his partner, Eve. If most men engaged in a solid scientific education before they married, society would probably have less poverty and less broken homes.

            As we study God’s creation we are better able to manipulate it and our work becomes more effective and more productive. Being more efficient allows us to be more “fruitful” in our labors, and being able to manipulate God’s creation is what it means to “have dominion.” Both of these qualities allow us to meet our own needs, as well as the needs of our family and our neighbors. This is the tool which God has given us for the purpose of fulfilling the second great commandment, the one to “love you neighbor as yourself.” The Christian should stand out among the peoples of the world as the one who best fulfills that command. One important way to fulfill it is through science and technology.

            Technology is simply the ability to manipulate God’s creation for the good of mankind. This is one of the things which is included in the meaning of the Hebrew word translated “wisdom.” God told Moses to separate “Aholiab? For his wisdom (manufacturing skill) in weaving (textile production) and metallurgy (?).” The foundation for this wisdom is, science, the understanding of God’s creation.

            There is a second, even more important, reason for understanding God’s creation. This is to understand God himself. The writer of Hebrews, says that God has revealed Himself most fully through His son. However, in order to understand this revelation it is necessary to understand more basic concepts which are revealed through God’s natural creation. Jesus told Nicodemus “If I have told you Earthly things and you believe not, how shall I tell you of heavenly things.” (John 3:xx). Jesus, in that same conversation was trying to explain the plan of salvation to Nicodemus using imagery from nature. He spoke of being “born again” of being born of the ‘wind’ (spirit) and ‘water.’ He used the illustration of the wind (spirit) blowing and not being able to see the wind but being able to see its effects. He spoke of ‘light’ and ‘darkness,’ of the “only begotten son” of eternal ‘life.’ These are all images from the natural creation used to communicate the most essential of spiritual truths.

            The most unique literary form used by the Lord was the parable. No other prophet, teacher or leader has presented such important truths using such brilliant little stories taken from our daily interaction with God’s natural creation. A classic example is the parable of the sower. “A sower went to sow...”

            It is seems evident that no spiritual truth is presented to us in its pure form. Rather, spiritual truth is like an after image which remains after we look at the physical object which represents it. The physical object acts as a carrier of the truth without being the truth itself. It is similar to the wind, described above, which is apparent only by seeing its effect on visible objects. Plato, the Greek philosopher, described something similar when he said that what our senses see are like the shadows of objects projected on a cave wall by a campfire. We can see only the shadows, but by studying the shadows we can come to understand and reconstruct the true nature of the objects themselves. Surely, a better understanding of the images used to present spiritual truth should help us to understand the truth being presented. For example, if Jesus offers us spiritual life, an understanding of the common structure and universal components of creatures which are biologically alive should help us to better understand the meaning of spiritual life.

            Not only are terms taken from God’s creation used to explain spiritual truths, God’s works tell us something directly about God. The Psalmist says “The heavens declare the glory of God...” Paul states “even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse...” (Rom. 1:xx).

            Therefore, a proper understanding of the structure and working of God’s creation will better help us understand the nature of God as well as of His gift of salvation. It allows us to better fulfill the first great commandment, to “love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thine soul, and with all thine might and with all thine mind” (). It is this better understanding of God’s glory and God’s offer of salvation which is the true Biblically endorsed driving force for pure science. The true purpose of science is to help us understand God so that we can glorify Him. Using science to better understand and glorify God is the central theme of this book.

            God has placed us in a universe created in such a way that it reveals his nature to us. By allowing us to live in and interact with, His creation, He allows us to interact, work, experiment, and even play with these truths so that we can understand Him better and become more like Him. For example, by becoming a Father, I can better understand the Fatherhood of God. By being a son I can better understand what it means to be a son of God. This is an opportunity which even the angels do not share. Let us then look at God’s creation to see what it teaches us about God.

The Scientific Method and The Role of Faith and Logic in the Quest to Understand God’s Creation

            We stated above that the truths which we are seeking are not found in the objects of creation themselves. Rather, these truths are presented by these objects more like a reflection. The Apostle Paul may have had something similar in mind when he said “now I see as in a mirror darkly” (). Truth is arrived at through discipline, diligence and hard work. The writer of Hebrews said that “He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him” (Heb. 11:xx). Solomon said about wisdom “If you seek for her as for hid treasure, then shall you see the knowledge of God...” (). In order for our search to not be useless, it is important to determine what methods and tools have been placed at our disposal to help us mine for these truths as for hidden treasure.

            The first task which God gave to Adam involved naming the animals. This task involves several sub tasks. First of all, Adam did not name every single animal, he had to group similar individuals together to give them a common name. For example, may have come across several individual lions and realized that their common features placed them in a defined group. God Himself probably revealed larger such groupings to Adam when He communicated to Him the account of creation. God created swarming animals (those that fly or swim) on the fifth day, and those that walk, on the sixth day. This Human ability to group things together is called inductive reasoning.

            If we see a hundred lions, we extract common features from the samples we have seen and create an idealized image of the perfect or average lion. We associate the term Lion with animals possessing these features. However, since we do not live in a perfect world, there will be exceptions to these rules, and some of those exceptions will be included in the group of Lions, for example, three legged Lion-like animals which represent a Lion which lost a leg in an accident. However, other exceptions will be excluded from the group. For example, after we see enough Lion-like animals without a mane and with stripes, we will create a separate category for Tigers. This corollary ability to create demarcations is the foundation of inductive reasoning.

            Inductive reasoning creates a category and associates certain traits and behaviors to that category. The first step is to associate certain traits to that category. Lion are large four legged yellow animals with a mane. After coming across several instances where Lions have mauled people to death a behavior is associated to that category. Lions bite hard enough to kill a person. It is this behavior which makes the category useful. If this behavior is verified enough times through experiments it becomes a law of science. Lions are large four legged yellow animals with a mane and they bite hard enough to kill a person. When exactly an observation becomes a law is a matter of personal faith. Most laws have exceptions. Baby lions do not bite very hard. This causes the law to be modified or even discarded by some.

            The next time I approach a Lion I would be wise to assume that it has the capacity to bite me to death. Of course, no law can ever be proven. The next lion might be a sick lion or a baby lion or a dead stuffed lion, none of which bite very hard. It could even be a rare species of weak or friendly vegetarian lion, in which case our law breaks down. We cannot use laws constructed using inductive reasoning to rule out rare or unusual events. This creates a limitation for inductive reasoning. It does not work for one of a kind objects or events. God is unique “The Lord our God, the Lord is one” (). and Christ was sacrificed “once for all” (). God and the plan of salvation are not the best objects for inductive reasoning. That is why God placed images of these truths in creation itself, so that we can study them using inductive reasoning.

Let us see how the law works in a more sophisticated context. The law of gravity says that every time I let go of an object on the surface of the Earth it will fall (if it is denser than air). More specifically, the force of gravitational attraction between two objects has been found through repeated testing to be the product of the masses divided by the square of the distance multiplied by an experimentally determined constant. This has been found to be true every time it has been tested, so it is called the law of gravity. Because it has always been found to be true for all objects tested, an assumption is made that it will work for objects which have not been tested. That is the utility of a law: tests (called experiments) performed on small number of objects can give results which are valid for most objects.

            However, we never know when one might find a truly special condition where the law does not apply. It might not work for very small objects, smaller than any we have tested in the past. Or it might not work for very large objects or for very long or very short distances. It might change in the future or at a different place, or under special circumstances in a special environment, of for objects made of special substances. Science often involves verifying the applicability of laws at the limits. Sometimes, when testing the laws in new circumstances, results are found which seem to contradict previous results. The law then needs to be modified to make it more precise. Often, laws are associated with explanations or interpretations, which help us better understand and visualize the laws. These explanations and interpretations are called models or paradigms. A paradigm is something which stands beside something else to support it (?) a model is something similar to the real thing which we can test and play with. Sometime, if the law needs to be modified substantially, the model no longer fits and must be thrown out. This change in models is called a paradigm shift. Sometimes the model is adhered to more strongly than the law itself. This often prevents serious testing of the limits of the law (which would create results which contradict the model) and prevents the progress of science.

            A classic example is the model which held that the Earth is the center of the universe, a paradigm called the geocentric model. Well, there is a certain truth to that. If we define the universe as that which we see at night, the sky, the ‘heavens,’ then the Earth is the center of that universe. This viewpoint even has Biblical support. (). The Earth truly is the center of the phenomenological universe (that which we see). If we looked at the sky from a planet in the Andromeda galaxy it would look very different. That planet would be at the center of that particular phenomenological universe. One cannot say that that model was wrong. It is very useful in every day conversation. We still speak of sunsets and sunrises, not Earth turns. It also seems to be the model used in certain passages in the Bible, such as the one which states that the sun stayed still. The Earth probably did not quit turning, somehow the image of the sun remained in the sky, the light perhaps deflected by some miraculous phenomenon. It might also be the model used by the passage which says that God created the stars on the fourth day. We will discuss this point later. The geocentric model works excellently for the moon, the sun and the stars. However, there were seven little exceptions to the model. These were called the planets. They seemed to loop around every once in a while. The model was modified to make room for these exceptions and these modifications worked reasonably well. Nevertheless, the modifications were rather arbitrary fits to the data and did not originate from the model itself. Furthermore, new more precise measurements of the (traveling paths) of the planets, and the discovery of moons associated with at least one of those planets strained the predictive abilities of the geocentric model. They made the geocentric model unuseful for helping us predict the future positions of the planets and their moons. A new model was devised which seemed to explain the positions of the planets and their moons using the sun as the center of the planets and the planets as the center of their associated moons. This is a more elegant model, for two reasons, first of all, it was more accurate, and secondly, it was more unified. It was based on a new principle, that celestial bodies seem to rotate around each other, perhaps smaller ones around larger ones. This suggests the existence of a principle such as gravity which has application even for objects on Earth. Therefore, the model was simpler, more accurate, and more all-encompassing. These are the three qualities of a good model. It explains the data using simpler concepts (that is, simpler for humans), it is more accurate, and it applies to a greater number of phenomena. The geocentric model was originally simpler, but in order to accommodate new data it became almost as complex as the data itself and lost its ability to simplify the data. Most importantly, a model is a mental data compression program. It takes large quantities of data and simplifies it into some simple principles. It groups them together by common properties.

            A few paragraphs back we stated that unique events seem difficult to prove through inductive reasoning because this method tries to tie different objects or events together through common principles or characteristics. However, people try to prove or disprove unique events daily. The court system is in the business of proving the reality of unique events. One party says so and so did such and such and the other party says so and so did no such thing. Can inductive reasoning be used in such situations? Even though an event might be unique, events always leave multiple pieces of evidence. Inductive reasoning tries to tie or group together all these pieces of evidence using a simple, accurate and thorough model. A classic example is the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Even though it is a unique event, it has left a large body of evidence. Principal among this evidence is the Bible and the Christian Church. Both the Bible and the Christian Church teach that Jesus Christ was God come down in the flesh; that He lived sinless among us to give us an example for us to imitate, that He was put to death through crucifixion, that this horrible death paid the penalty for the sins of all mankind because it was experienced by an infinite being, Jesus the God-Man, that he was buried but rose from the dead three days later, proving that He is the master over death, and that by accepting the veracity of this account and asking Jesus to credit His suffering to the debt which we owe God because of our sins, we will receive a pardon from our eternal death penalty and will instead receive eternal life which will result in our own resurrection from the dead at some point in the future. The centerpiece of this teaching is the veracity of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. A satisfactory model for the resurrection must explain the origin of the Bible, the origin of the Christian Church, and the origin of its core teachings, in a way which is simple, accurate, and comprehensive. Only the model which accepts the veracity of the resurrection meets these requirements. Many other models exist but they are not simple, nor accurate in their predictions and explanations, nor comprehensive in their explanation of all the pieces of evidence.

            God’s instruction to not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is an example of deductive reasoning???