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Science and a faith in God are not mutually exclusive. Many of the greatest scientists in history were religious men. If not necessarily Christians, many were deists, at the least. The fact that the tow characteristics are often found in the great scientists should not surprise anyone.

The great scientific minds of the renaissance were inspired by their belief in God to seek for those unifying truths at the heart of creation. Of course, the Church, as a political and social force, was not always kind to the process of scietific discovery, but that goes along with the territory. Law, politics, social activists are still occasionally the enemies of scientific discovery. Don't clone humans, bann DDT and research into nuclear power, don't use animals in scientific testing, and for heaven's sake, don't use an aborted foetus to harvest stem cells.

You see, scientific discovery is by its nature,. ethically neutral. It is neither good nor evil. Scientific truth is ambivalent to ethical issues. But scientists are not. The scientist may be evil or good. Einstein, who argued for research into the atomic bomb, later wrote in defense of banning its use. He changed ethically on the use of the discoveries for which he lobbied.

So, science is not antithetical to science. Now, in some areas, especially paleontology and the earth sciences, it would be difficult to maintain a literal interpretation of Genesis and remain a viable scientist. Not impossible, but difficult. Fortunately, differences in interpreting any passage in scripture, especially one as difficult as the first three chapters of Genesis, do not prevent a person from having an abiding and real faith in Christ.

The birth and nurture of the sciences in every nation can be traced to a concommitant importance of religion. The golden age of Islam also saw the rise of scholarship: the invention of algebra, the utilization of the number zero, advances in optics and astronomy, the engineering of sewers and the advances of medicine and biology. The persistent advance of Christianity in Europe also brought with it the advances in astronomy, medicine, mechanics, the invention of calculus and laws of physics, and the codification of complex geometry.

The conflicts between a rigid Church hierarchy and some revolutionary scientists, are almost always atributable to uncomprimising incivility, impolitic stubbornness, and reactionary agressiveness on the part of the Catholic Church's struggle against heresy.

In the last two and a half centuries, sometimes the fundamentalist and the atheist scientist have come to usually figurative blows. This is secondary to the fact that most scientists do their work in a religiously neutral environment. Even where the two factions disagree most vehemently, there is often more room for agreement than between any two religious factions.

You see, science is not faith. Faith is the evidence of things unseen. Science requires visible evidence. Where misunderstandings, sometimes even outright deception, cloud the issue, there can be very emotional discussions. But they do not have to be the source of excommunication and round barrages of insults about intelligence. Rather, science should be guided by ethics, belief and faith, for science has no heart. On the other hand, faith should be confirmed in reason, for God is the essence of intelligence and reason.

Learn more about this author, John Devera.
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