Has Science Disproved Christianity?
Reflections on Joe Omundson’s article in Ex-Communications
Joe Omundson sees science and religion engaged in a battle. When the United States entered World War II, Winston Churchill is said to have written in his diary, “Ah, so we’ve won!” Although there were many more years of fighting left— the outcome was clear.
Similarly, Joe sees religion as outgunned by the superior capabilities of science. Religion will lose more and more territory before inevitable surrender.
I found Joe’s article interesting, partly because I’ve moved in the opposite direction to him. As a Christian who grew up in a non-religious family, I can remember making similar arguments in the past. I’ll explore below why I’m now less persuaded by their validity.
‘Subtraction stories’ in context
Joe sets the scene with a summary of intellectual history:
Up until the last few thousand years, almost all of our questions had supernatural answers. What makes thunderstorms happen? How are babies formed? Why does fermentation preserve food?
…The more we’ve come to understand about how the world works, through biology, chemistry, geology, physics… spiritual explanations have turned out to be far less reliable and useful than the scientific explanations that replaced them.
Accounts like this, of how we came to understand the world, are popular among atheists. If a story is repeated enough, we start to believe it is true. But I encourage Joe to be more sceptical. Is this an accurate reflection of history? What is the origin of these stories?
Charles Taylor, Professor Emeritus at McGill University, would categorise Joe’s quote above as a ‘subtraction story’. Over time religion is subtracted from life as an inevitable consequence of the triumph of science.
Taylor has conducted the most comprehensive historical evaluation of this type of story. In A Secular Age, he traces these narratives back to the 19th Century. According to Taylor, these stories were never meant to be neutral summaries of intellectual history.
Instead, they reflected the socio-cultural conditions of that era — the equivalent of our culture wars. Individualism began to take root as people left the social hierarchies of village life to seek work in cities. Similarly, stories proliferated of people leaving behind the comforts of religion to ‘face the world like a man’.
Although these Victorians confidently predicted ‘where Europe leads the rest of the World will follow.’ It is now widely accepted predictions of worldwide secularisation have largely failed.
Science as a method or worldview?
…science is an actively-growing method of collecting and refining knowledge about the universe around us, while spirituality is increasingly confined to the realm of storytelling and subjective experience.
I think Joe unhelpfully blurs the lines between science as a method and ‘Science’ as a worldview (naturalism).
To understand the distinction, it’s worth pausing to define what we mean by a worldview based on this quote from a peer-reviewed journal:
A worldview is a way of describing the universe and life within it, both in terms of what is and what ought to be... A worldview defines what can be known or done in the world, and how it can be known or done. In addition to defining what goals can be sought in life, a worldview defines what goals should be pursued.
Worldviews include assumptions that may be unproven, and even unprovable, but these assumptions are superordinate, in that they provide the epistemic and ontological foundations for other beliefs within a belief system (Koltko-Rivera, Review of General Psychology 2004; 8:3–53.
Worldviews are concerned with broader questions about life and reality. These assumptions are the foundation on which we build our understanding of the world and are often untested or untestable.
For example, is matter and/or energy the ultimate reality from which all life emerges? Does God(s) exist? How do we determine what is right and wrong? How do we understand the subjective experience of consciousness about the world and ourselves? Do our logical inferences lead to valid conclusions about the world?
I imagine Joe would respond that ‘Science’ has already answered or is in the process of answering these questions. But by ‘Science’ it is important to distinguish between:
- scientific method (empirically testing hypotheses or models to inform our understanding of the world)
- naturalist worldview (including naturalist assumptions about the world that are not empirically testable)
We agree that the use of empirical methods to understand the world is science. Where we disagree, I think, is that I do not consider untested or untestable naturalist assumptions about the world to be science.
Is the Christian worldview incompatible with the scientific method?
Joe assumes that Christianity and ‘Science’ are fundamentally in competition. What does this mean? That Christianity is incompatible with the use of logic, maths and empirical methods?
I’ve argued in more detail elsewhere that the Christian worldview, including beliefs in an ordered universe and that humans are equipped with intellectual faculties to understand our world, provides strong grounds for applying the scientific method.
The historical evidence also challenges Joe’s premise. Modern science developed in the context of medieval Europe — a society fundamentally rooted in the Christian worldview.
For example, Peter Harrison, formerly Professor of Science and Religion at Oxford University, has shown that Christian assumptions about our susceptibility to bias inspired the development of experimental scientific methods. Pioneering scientists, based on their Christian faith, knew we had to root out these inherent limitations to draw valid conclusions.
On the other hand, I totally agree with Joe that Christianity and the naturalist worldview are incompatible.
Christianity disproved? Interpreting Genesis
Joe starts his case, by stating science has shown Genesis 1 got it wrong. However, a quick read of the passage makes clear the age of the universe is not the main point.
There is no consensus on whether Genesis 1 teaches a particular age of the universe. Interpretations have differed since at least the 4th Century CE (see, for example, Augustine of Hippo’s Confessions). So it’s a curious target for trying to disprove Christianity.
Joe also states that the universal flood of Genesis 9–11 ‘certainly didn’t happen’ but doesn’t provide any supporting evidence for this statement. He also does not interact with the anthropological evidence which challenges his conclusion.
If Noah’s flood ‘certainly didn’t happen’, we wouldn’t expect to find similar stories in cultures who had no plausible contact with ancient Israelites. When the travel restrictions release, I recommend a trip to the British Museum in London, a short walk from where I used to live. It’s fascinating to see artefacts from all over the globe with similar stories as Noah’s flood.
Of course, they differ from one another but there is a clear common thread in the stories of Australian aborigines, Aztecs, Mesopotamians, Greeks, Norse, Native Americans, Chinese and many other cultures.
Impossibility of Miracles
Joe claims to have empirically disproved various miracles in the Bible:
Nutrition and common sense tell us that two million people never survived in a desert for 40 years eating magic sky bread. Anatomy and physiology tell us humans can’t walk on water or survive death.
An obvious response is that these events were seen as miraculous precisely because they were not humanly possible. For example, to imagine the Bible made a nutritional blunder by recommending the ‘honey wafer diet’ for desert conditions is to miss the point.
Joe is reading these Bible passages through the lens of his worldview. Yes, I agree, if we assume there is no God then the miracles reported in the Bible are not possible.
He is free to do that, but it should be clear that unless Joe justifies his assumptions he is engaging in tautology rather than empirically disproving Christianity.
Historical and theological problems with Jesus’ sacrifice
Jesus’s sacrifice makes no sense from a theological or historical perspective.
Jesus’s sacrifice has occupied a central place in Christianity throughout its history — certainly an important target to disprove the faith. Yet, Joe provides no argument for his conclusion that ‘Jesus’s sacrifice makes no sense’.
I understand the need to be concise. But surely Joe must be able to justify why he thinks a central claim of Christianity ‘makes no sense’. Linking to another article, that has supposedly disproved Christianity, isn’t enough.
Suffering and the Impossibility of a loving God
Wildlife surveys demonstrate that God does not actually care about the sparrows of the field, and humanitarian organizations would laugh at the idea that God protects innocent children — as many thousands die every day.
It’s unlikely the ancients were unaware that many children and animals die. But even so, Joe raises a good point about how we should interpret Jesus’s words in the light of a suffering world.
There is much more we can say. But for the sake of brevity, I will focus on the key weakness of Joe’s argument.
There is a hidden premise. If we are to conclude that the death of sparrows or innocent children show God doesn’t care, then we must assume that God had no justified reason for allowing these tragic events to happen.
It is accepted by numerous philosophers that it is impossible to meet the burden of proof for this assumption. We may claim that we cannot think of a reason why a loving God would allow suffering. But this is different from stating we know that an omniscient God cannot have a justified reason for allowing suffering. We would need to be omniscient to make that claim.
Conclusion
Joe’s article speaks of a mortal conflict between science and Christianity. I find this puzzling. Christianity is not a method in competition with science. Nor is science a worldview in competition with Christianity.
There are certainly areas where science and religion intersect. I think scientific evidence (for example, on the origin of the universe, the origin of life, consciousness) can help us compare Christian and naturalist worldviews.
We can also compare the coherence of these worldviews. For example, are Christian or naturalist assumptions about reality more consistent with assumptions of the scientific method (such as the objectivity of logic)?
I’m convinced this is a more constructive path for discussion between Christians and atheists, rather than narratives on the war between science and religion.
