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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781581344301 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Crossway |
| Publication date: | 10/15/2003 |
| Pages: | 448 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.03(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Introduction to the Questions and Survey of the Book
ONE EVENING WHEN my daughter was about two and my wife was pregnant with my son, I gave my wife a break by taking my daughter to the mall. We went to her favorite place, the pet shop, to look at all the animals. While we were there, a clerk was showing a snake — some kind of python — to two teenage boys. As these boys were trying to get up the nerve to touch the snake — all the while needling each other about who was the more manly — my daughter asked if she could pet the snake. She reached up and stroked it gently. The boys were ashamed at being shown up by a toddler girl.
Well, yes, I'm a proud father; but I have another reason for telling you this story. I find in it a parable for the way many Christians approach science: we fear it. We fear it, I think, for two main reasons: first, because we found science classes hard in school. That is something we have in common with everyone, including those who do not share our Christian commitment; but the second reason touches on our faith directly: we fear that science will somehow undermine our faith. The fact that many writers hostile to Christianity — such as Richard Dawkins and Carl Sagan — make just that point, only adds to the fear.
I think my daughter's interest in the python models true Christianity better than these common fears do. Her curiosity about the little wriggler, and her delight in touching it — which is how she feels about most animals, including bugs — were untainted by any fears or misgivings. And in this book I will argue that this is just how it ought to be: in fact, if we have a proper hold on Christian belief we will love the natural world and respect the study of it; and by it we will also come to these studies with full mental vigor, confident that God's truth can hold up under any challenge — and not only that, but also that his truth will both illuminate and enrich those studies.
But of course to support this positive view of the sciences, and of Christians' active work in them, I will have to consider just what is a "proper hold on Christian belief," and that is what I aim to do in this book. I will start by looking into some of the philosophical issues that come into play in this discussion. This is because we need to know what faith and science are, how they relate to one another, and what claims either has a right to make about "truth." My theme, which I will develop throughout the book, is that good science and good faith both need sound critical thinking.
From there I will move on to discuss the biblical teaching that most impacts our view of science: namely the teaching about creation — how the universe came into being; and about providence — how God keeps the universe in being and interacts with it, and how he expects us to interact with it. And of course this raises questions about the age of the earth, miracles, psychology, and evolution — the places that most people think of as conflicts between faith and science; so I will go on to discuss these topics.
I will finish by considering what it means to live in a created world. That is, I will outline a Christian view of the world, give some ideas about educating children in the sciences, and reflect on how Christians can impact their culture in this arena.
You can see how I have arranged the material: philosophical issues, then theological ones, then areas where science and faith interact, and finally the conclusion. Some of my students who read a draft of this book wondered why I didn't arrange it by topic — so that, for example, the chapters discussing the biblical view of the age of the earth (chapters 4–7) would lead directly into the chapter on cosmology and geology (chapter 15). My reason is that the chapters on interaction depend on a wide range of theological and philosophical discussions. But if you prefer to read the chapters in that order, go right ahead; but, whatever you do, please be sure to read chapters 2–3 first. If you're like me, you want to get to the real stuff, and skip the preliminaries; but these chapters are not preliminaries, they are crucial to my overall case.
I am writing this book for people who do not have specialist training in theology or philosophy. I think, for example, of Christian parents who want to know how their children should study science; of college students thinking about entering the sciences, or challenged in their faith by them; of teachers and those who write books for children. I would also be pleased if any who have doubts about Christianity, because of what the spokesmen for science tell them, might read this book and find that believing in Christ is reasonable after all. Finally, I have Christian friends who are scientists, and they mostly feel that their non-Christian colleagues at work think they're crazy for their faith, and the people they share their pews with think they're suspect for their scientific work: I'd like to help them achieve some sense of peace.
This means I will restrict myself to ordinary language and keep technical terms to a minimum. (I have done without footnotes altogether. If you want to pursue things further — or to make sure that I've done my homework — I've included "Notes and Comments" for each chapter as an appendix. ) But in all this I intend to translate the discussion for your benefit, not to dumb it down. Some of the issues are complicated, and we can't do justice either to them or to God or to those we love if we don't want to think them out. I aim, then, to help you do some serious think-ing: but so does Jesus, who wants his followers to be "wise as to what is good" as well as "innocent as to what is evil" (Rom. 16:19; compare Matt. 10:16). As C. S. Lewis said, Christ "wants a child's heart, but a grown-up's head. He wants us to be simple, single-minded, affectionate, and teachable, as good children are; but he also wants every bit of intelligence we have to be alert at its job, and in first-class fighting trim."
You may feel that I've given you more material than you want. My defense is that I am concerned to help with how to think about these questions, even more than what to think.
When I need to discuss a disputed point of biblical interpretation, I will generally use a fairly literal translation such as the English Standard Version (ESV), or sometimes the New American Standard Version (NASB) or the Revised Version (RV). Citations of the Apocrypha/ Deuterocanonical books will be from the New American Bible (NAB) or Revised Standard Version (RSV), or from the RV if I need greater literalism. Unless I mark a Bible quotation otherwise, I'm using the ESV.
I write from the standpoint of "mere Christianity": that is, I write as a Christian who shares in common with all Christians such basic convictions as: the Bible is God's special revelation to man; the ecumenical creeds (such as the Apostles' Creed, Nicene Creed, Athanasian Creed) express the Bible's teaching about Christ and the Trinity; and Christ saves his people and calls them to pursue holiness and to serve him in the church and in the world. For all that divides Christians from one another, these common beliefs give them a common cause: to combat the unbelief that riddles our contemporary world. I sympathize with the elf Haldir in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, who apologized for having to treat the Fellowship of the Ring with suspicion when they entered Lothlórien: "Indeed in nothing is the power of the Dark Lord more clearly shown than in the estrangement that divides all those who still oppose him." This means that I will stick with the Bible; if I cite a church's confession, it is because it says nicely what needs to be said, not because it in itself settles the discussion.
There are a few points in the theology section where I cannot claim to speak for all believers, but have to take sides in disputes that divide them. I have generally indicated when this is so.
Don't misunderstand me: I am a loyal member of my denomination, and think its distinctives matter a great deal; but presenting them is not my goal in this book. I have found spiritual help in a wide range of Christian authors: the ardent Roman Catholics Blaise Pascal, Romano Guardini, and G. K. Chesterton; the staunch Protestants J. Gresham Machen, John Murray, and Francis Schaeffer; and the irenic Anglicans C. S. Lewis and J. I. Packer — not to mention the giants Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, and John Calvin. (I am sorry to say that my reading in Eastern writers is primarily limited to the exegetical writings of Chrysostom and Theophylact.) I hope to give back to the whole church something of what I have gained.
You deserve to know who I am and what right I have to write this book. I was born in the Baby Boom generation and grew up in a nominally Christian home, receiving a decent education in good public schools. I have always been interested in science, math, and languages. I was an amateur herpetologist as a teenager (I loved snakes, lizards, turtles, frogs, and salamanders; bless my mother for putting up with me), and went to MIT where I got my bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering. I came to a living Christian faith during my second year there. After a few years of work I went to seminary, and then earned a Ph. D. in Hebrew linguistics (which is a "science") in a department of Oriental studies at an English university. I now teach at a theological seminary; and besides the usual classes in Biblical studies (I am at heart a grammarian of Hebrew and Greek), I also teach a class called "Christian Faith in an Age of Science." I have been studying and writing about Genesis 1–3 for several years now, and have also written a technical book on nature and miracle (The God of Miracles). My wife and I have two children, and at present we school them at home. As I write this, my daughter wants to be a veterinarian, and my son wants to be an inventor — both noble careers. I can't think of anything I want more than for these children to grow up serving Christ faithfully in this world.
Annette, a friend of ours, provoked me to write this one day, when she phoned us to ask what she should teach her children about fossils and the history of the earth. I had intended to write a technical book on science and faith (as I indicated in the footnotes of The God of Miracles), but Annette's question made me think that a book on a general level would do more good. If God wills, I'll yet write that other, more technical, book.
CHAPTER 2Science, Faith, and Rationality
A Short Course in Good Thinking
THE IMPORTANCE OF PHILOSOPHY
This chapter and the next cover some issues in the philosophy of science; but if I'm going to write about that, I'd better first defend myself against a flurry of objections. If I don't defend myself, you might easily fall prey to the temptation to skip these chapters so you can get right to the red meat. But these chapters are foundational to most of what I will argue later, so please bear with me.
Philosophers, with their endless questions and uncertainties, frustrate people in the sciences: if these philosophers had any experience in the lab, they wouldn't get so hung up over whether the scientist actually knows anything or deserves to be believed. In my six years as an undergraduate and graduate student at MIT, never did anyone official suggest that any of us would learn something worth knowing from a philosopher. So why should I think there is anything to be gained from even mentioning philosophy?
And in the Christian world there won't be a much warmer reception. Doesn't Scripture warn us not to be taken captive through philosophy (Col. 2:8)? Isn't philosophy just the wisdom of this world, which gets in the way of genuine faith (1 Cor. 1:21)?
Let me start my defense by saying that there is a difference between phi-losophy and philosophers. Philosophy is the discipline that studies how to think clearly: to know what is a good argument that deserves our agreement because it makes its point, and what is a bad argument that we should reject.
If an ornithologist (a scientific bird-watcher) tells me that my favorite canary is safe with his falcon, I want to know how he knows: is it just because he's never seen his falcon go for a canary, or what? This is, as it turns out, a question in the philosophy of science: has the ornithologist made a sound conclusion? Actually, in matters of faith we have similar issues: if someone tells me I should (or should not) have my children baptized, I want to know how he arrived at his opinion. That, too, is a kind of philosophical question, one in the subject that theologians call "hermeneutics" and "theological method"; but at bottom it's all about drawing sound conclusions.
G. K. Chesterton put it well:
Men have always one of two things: either a complete and conscious philosophy or the unconscious acceptance of the broken bits of some incomplete and often discredited philosophy. ... Philosophy is merely thought that has been thought out. It is often a great bore. But man has no alternative, except between being influenced by thought that has been thought out and being influenced by thought that has not been thought out.
In reference to a man who responds to miracle claims with, "But my dear fellow, this is the twentieth century!" Chesterton observed:
In the mysterious depths of his being even that enormous ass does actually mean something. The point is that he cannot really explain what he means; and that is the argument for a better education in philosophy.
Now if we look at it this way, we can see that what Paul warned the early Christians about was bad philosophy, namely the kind that kept people from believing that the Christian message is true. And what about the philosophy that my fellow MIT students and I despised? Is that bad philosophy too — or were we following a bad philosophy of our own? To answer that we need this chapter.
Here is my basic claim, which I intend to develop throughout this book: our conclusions, whether in science or in religious faith or in any other area, are sound only to the extent that they follow the principles of good reasoning. (Just what those principles are will come soon.) In this I am following the lead of C. S. Lewis, who observed,
The distinction thus made between scientific and non-scientific thoughts will not easily bear the weight we are attempting to put on it. ... The physical sciences, then, depend on the validity of logic just as much as metaphysics [philosophy] or mathematics. If popular thought feels 'science' to be different from all other kinds of knowledge because science is experimentally verifiable, popular thought is mistaken. ... We should therefore abandon the distinction between scientific and non-scientific thought. The proper distinction is between logical and non-logical thought.
I put the last two sentences in italics because they sum up my case. Science and faith are "good" to the extent that they obey the rules of rationality. So the key to a solidly Christian way of thinking about science is sound critical thinking.
Now there are two groups who will disagree with this idea. Some will say that science defines what rationality is. The answer to that is simple: they have made a claim, and the way to decide whether the claim is true or not is to evaluate whether it makes sense. So the very claim itself has to answer to the rules for rationality. Others will say that there is no such thing as "rationality," because that is a human invention (this group is called "postmodern"). The problem with that objection is that in everyday life we know it's not true: we know that getting hit by a flying stone is bad news, and typically we take steps to avoid it; we know that some materials make better knives than others (flint is better than sand, and steel is even better). A good philosophy will start from everyday rationality and build on it, and refine it. The principles of sound thinking that come next are just such a development.
PRINCIPLES OF SOUND THINKING
To return to my example of the ornithologist, how will I know whether I should believe his assurances about his falcon and my canary — that is, how will I know whether or not I am reasonable to believe him? And the answer is, of course, if he has followed the rules for drawing sound conclusions from his experiences. So then: what are the rules?
To begin with, we need to understand what are the parts of an argument. (I use the word "argument" to mean the process of drawing a conclusion, not the quarrels that erupt between brothers and sisters.) Then we can decide whether the parts are all in good working order.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Science & Faith"
by .
Copyright © 2003 C. John Collins.
Excerpted by permission of Good News Publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS,
1 INTRODUCTION TO THE QUESTIONS AND SURVEY OF THE BOOK,
SECTION I: PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES,
2 SCIENCE, FAITH, AND RATIONALITY: A SHORT COURSE IN GOOD THINKING,
3 MUST SCIENCE AND FAITH BE AT ODDS?,
SECTION II: THEOLOGICAL ISSUES,
4 THIS IS MY FATHER'S WORLD: THE BIBLICAL DOCTRINE OF CREATION,
5 WHAT KIND OF DAYS WERE THOSE, ANYHOW?,
6 OTHER BIBLICAL PASSAGES ABOUT CREATION,
7 IS THE EARTH YOUNG OR OLD? BIBLICAL ARGUMENTS,
8 WHAT A PIECE OFWORK IS MAN! HUMAN NATURE AS IT WAS CREATED,
9 THE GLORIOUS RUIN: HUMAN NATURE AFTER THE FALL,
10 HOW "FALLEN" IS NATURE?,
11 HOW DOES GOD RULE THE WORLD? THE BIBLICAL DOCTRINE OF PROVIDENCE,
12 GOD REVEALS HIMSELF IN HIS WORLD: SCIENCE, FAITH, AND A POLOGETICS,
13 CARING FOR GOD'S WORLD: THE BIBLICAL VIEW OF THE ENVIRONMENT,
SECTION III: SCIENCE AND FAITH INTERACT,
14 SCIENCE, PROVIDENCE, AND MIRACLE,
15 HOW OLD IS THE EARTH? COSMOLOGY AND GEOLOGY,
16 WHERE DO ANIMALS COME FROM? BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION AND DARWINISM,
17 IS INTELLIGENT DESIGN A DUMB IDEA? ANSWERS TO OBJECTIONS,
18 SCIENCE AND THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN,
19 THE HUMAN AND SOCIAL SCIENCES,
SECTION IV: CONCLUSION,
20 CULTURE WARS AND WARRIORS: FAITH, SCIENCE, AND THE PUBLIC SQUARE,
21 LIFE IN A CREATED WORLD,
APPENDICES,
A. NOTES AND COMMENTS ON THE CHAPTERS,
B. OTHER RESOURCES,
C. THOMAS KUHN AND PARADIGMS: A REVIEW ESSAY,
What People are Saying About This
"Collins maps the entire interface between faithful biblical interpretation and questions of all sorts posed in the name of the sciences. Interesting, fair-minded, shrewd, and clear from start to finish, this will prove outstanding as a pastoral resource."
—J. I. Packer, Board of Governors' Professor of Theology, Regent College
"There is something here for just about everyone. Science and Faith is required reading for all who are interested in the relationship between science and the Christian faith."
—J. P. Moreland,Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Biola University; author,The Soul: How We Know It’s Real and Why It Matters
"This is a highly significant book on possibly the most important subject confronting the church today-the neutrality of science. A delightful style makes it easily accessible yet the author never neglects important issues. It is the best book of its kind for decades."
—Ranald Macaulay, Speaker, L'Abri Fellowship; Coordinator, Christian Heritage, Cambridge
"Jack Collins is my kind of guy-a fellow MIT nerd. But he is much more: a brilliant scholar of biblical languages and a keen observer of the interaction between science and the Christian faith. This is a wonderful book, and I recommend it most strongly."
—Henry F. Schaefer III, Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry, University of Georgia