Jesus Creed Admin: December 2008 Archives

Scot having tried his hand at science a couple of weeks ago (here), I (RJS) will step up to bat once again and start to tackle what may be the toughest question in the science and faith discussion.

We have been carrying on a conversation dealing with the hard questions in the relationship, sometimes conflict, between scientific knowing, scripture, and the faith.  Much of this conversation has centered around books - and there are many good books available to focus discussion.  The internet age has also made readily available a much broader range of resources. The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion at St. Edmunds College, Cambridge has an excellent collection of lectures on topics of interest available for download in mp3 audio and in video formats. Driving home after the holidays last weekend I listened to several of these lectures. It was a profitable way to pass an 11 hour drive. Today I would like to focus our conversation on two of these lectures, more will find their way into our conversation in future posts.

In the last post in this series I suggested that one of the important issues in the current discussion of science and faith in our culture deals with knowing; how do we "know" and understand? None of us can know everything in every subject. How many of us really understand particle physics, quantum mechanics, genetics, geophysics, ANE culture and language, or how many of us read Greek and have real expertise in 1^st century Roman and Jewish culture? We all trust authorities for much of our knowledge.  In this post I want to consider the importance of authority and expertise in the discussion of science and faith. 

The key question today is this - What authorities do you trust and how do you decide? What is the ranking order of your authorities from top to bottom? Does that ranking order shift from subject to subject? How do you find authorities you can trust? How authoritative is your pastor for what you believe?

As those who read this blog regularly will know, I (RJS) am a scientist and a professor - at a secular University, not a Christian college.  This perspective and expertise plays a major role in my view of scripture and creation.  The question often comes up, however, of how to introduce a discussion of science, faith, and creation into a local church or a small group.  This is a hard question, because emotions run high on all sides and most pastors and church leader feel ill-equipped to deal with the topic.  Experts who have carefully considered the issues are seldom available (and some experts are not as tactful as one might wish).

One of the aims of our conversation on this blog is to grapple with the issues of reasonable faith.  As a professor and a scientist, I  (RJS) find this a crucial and unavoidable discussion.  It is a fact of our modern (or postmodern) church that we must develop  a way to think about our faith that engages heart, mind, soul, and strength.

In the current conflict between science and faith the discussion often boils down to knowing; how do we "know" and understand? How do we learn? We have amassed an enormous body of knowledge in science and history, sociology, psychology, and linguistics. None of us can know everything in every subject. How many of us really understand particle physics, quantum mechanics, genetics, geophysics, or ANE culture and language? For that matter, how many of us read Greek and have real expertise in 1^st century Roman and Jewish culture? We all trust intuition, common sense, and authorities.  In this post and in a follow-up post I want to consider two aspects of knowing in relation to science and faith.  Today - intuition, and in the next post authority.

I (RJS) saw Ben Stein's "documentary" movie EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed over Thanksgiving on DVD, or I saw parts of it anyway - some of the family saw the entire movie.  I have also been asked about this movie at church on occasion. I have to say, I found the movie very hard to watch because of the format, which is designed for sound bites, entertainment and sensationalism, rather than accuracy and information.