Discussing the Conflicts Between Science and Religion

God encourages his people to use both the Bible and science to explore his creation in all of its complexity and grandeur, said Rev. Scott Hoezee, director of the Center for Excellence and Preaching at Calvin Theological Seminary.

“God takes delight in his own universe, and we can too,” said Hoezee during the inaugural presentation for the Science and Religion Forum, a student-run organization at Calvin College.

In a talk titled “Science, Theology, and Holy Curiosity,” Hoezee told students, “The Bible teaches us to serve the God of order. . . . As people made in God’s image, we have the chance to investigate God’s orderly universe.”

The newly organized student forum sprang to life as the result of a grant from the Templeton Foundation, which is seeking to foster discussion about issues surrounding faith and science on college campuses, said Jonathan Hill, an assistant professor of sociology at Calvin.

Hill is one of 25 academics who have received Templeton funding to participate in a program sponsored by Oxford University called Bridging the Two Cultures of Science and Religion.

Through seminars, excursions, and lectures, the program focuses on the need for participants to develop the interdisciplinary skills and understanding necessary to teach and conduct research in the field of science and religion, said Hill.

Also as part of the program, participants receive funding to establish and bolster science and religion clubs or forums — such as the one at Calvin — at their institutions.

“The clubs mainly help students deal with these issues in the context of how they can integrate science and religion into their own faith,” said Hill. “We want to provide space for those who might be struggling with, or who might be excited about, this topic.”

A forum like this serves a need at Calvin, where a survey a few years ago found that the majority of students at the college believed the universe was formed, as stated in Genesis, in the span of six days a few thousand years ago, said Hill.

As a result, some students have found important aspects of their faith in question when confronting some of the findings of the natural sciences in the classroom.

“For some students this creates uncertainty and conflict,” said Hill. “We want to help them make sense of their present situation and expand the conversation.”

In coming months, the science and religion forum, which meets on its own to discuss topics, will bring in speakers like Hoezee and offer events such as the play Mr. Darwin's Tree, which portrays the faith struggle of Charles Darwin as he developed the theory of evolution.

Hoezee opened his talk by noting that the conflict some Christians have today between the Bible and science, especially on the topics of human origins and the age of the earth, has only come about fairly recently.

If you go back to the time of such 16th-century scientists as Galileo Galilei and Francis Bacon, and even before them, he said, there didn’t seem to be a great division between science and theology.

In fact, the desire to better decipher God’s world through science emerged from many people in the church.

“There were several Christians who saw their work in empirical science as an extension of their faith,” said Hoezee.

But there has been a divide, especially among some evangelical and fundamentalist Christians, for the past 100 years or so over religion and science.

This has developed largely because of conflicts over scientific findings that point to the earth’s being many millions of years old. Playing into this as well are discoveries about the origins of human beings.

In response to such findings, a variety of teachings have emerged, including something called “young earth creationism,” said Hoezee.

This movement and others often attack the methods that mainstream science uses, such as carbon dating and DNA testing techniques, as a way to counter estimates about the age of the universe and the origins of humankind, said Hoezee.

Also playing into the issue of the relationship between science and religion, he said, is scientific naturalism, the belief that nothing is true unless science can prove it is true. Richard Dawkins, author of the book The God Delusion, is a leader in this movement.

While this movement claims that only natural and no supernatural laws are at work in the world, scientific naturalism is a religion, a belief system of its own, said Hoezee.

Trent Groenhout, a junior at Calvin, said he appreciated Hoezee’s presentation and how he described the ways in which the conflict between religion and science has “severe negative implications, inhibiting ’s [people’s curiosity and] understanding of what it means to be created in the image of God.”

Pursuing a double major in religion and Greek, Groenhout joined the Science and Religion Forum because he sees a “profound disconnect” in some Christian circles today between God’s general revelation as reflected in the universe and special revelation in the Bible.

“My hope is that the two can be reconciled within the church,” he said. “Along with Scripture, God’s character and his relationship with creation can be more fully known through studying God’s creation as it is revealed to us.”

One of the forum’s goals is to point students and others to resources that can help them sort through issues and views that contribute to the conflict between science and religion. A helpful resource presented from the Reformed perspective in this regard, for example, would be the book Origins: Christian Perspectives on Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design, by Calvin professors Deborah and Loren Haarsma. A DVD study of this book is also available (see introductory video).