John Davis
Honors English 2b
5/9/11
Is there Any Way to Be Christian and Believe in Science?
Part I. What I know
Pertaining to the subject of being a scientific Christian, there’s no solid fact I know. I believe one can argue that there are no facts for either. I guess that’s how I came up with this subject. Since I was young I’ve always loved science. It’s always been my favorite subject. I believe it contains all the good element of other subjects: The higher level thinking of English, the solid truth of Math, and the social and human interaction of Social studies/ History. Unfortunately I can’t always say I’ve had the same familiarity with religion, specifically being Christian. Sure I’ve been raised with basic Christian ideas, such as loving God, your people, and in general having good morals. I wouldn’t say that made me a Christian. I’d say I became a true Christian on January 1st, 2011. That’s when I developed a true personal relationship with God. Once you develop that relationship then you just become more open to the beliefs.
That’s where my problem emerges. Some beliefs of Christianity go against the ideas of science. To me this is a social and ethical issue. Social because sometimes I feel pressured by classmates when we’re learning things in science “the bible already clarifies,” and even at times from my church. I think it’s ethical because I really want to believe in what I love and what school teaches us, but I also want to believe in what I should, Christianity. That’s how I came up with my question: Is there any way to be Christian and a scientist?
Part II. What I Want to Find Out
The thing I’d like to find out the most is the big question; how to be Christian and a scientist? I’d also like to know more about religion and science altogether. I’d like to know why people turned to religion at the beginning of civilizations, and why more and more people are turning to science. Why did science emerge in the first place? Would society frown on you putting your faith in both? How do agnostics view religion or science? These are some question I’d like answered. I’d also like to know the church’s answer to certain subjects, like dinosaurs?
Another thing I’d like to know is, is it a stereotype that religion and science butt heads? Sometimes I have a hard time deciding what to believe, in terms of how we came here, but can an issue like that be labeled as butting heads? I’d like to get as many different points of views I can. I already have an idea for who I could interview, which would be Cindy Morales, because for as long as I’ve known their family, they have always had strong faith and attended church regularly. Cindy is a genius too. She went to Dartmouth for science related stuff (I think Astronomy) but now she goes to ASU because they have a better program. She’s also in her young 20’s, so maybe she could relate to what I’m talking about better than what an older person could. On top of all that she works for CHACHA, a free texting service where they answer any question you can throw at them.
Part III. The search
Article
For my article I chose Society Needs Religion by Michael J. Butley. I’m focusing on the A Superficial Look at a Serious Question and the Answering the Question before It Has Been Asked subsections. This article talked a lot about Atheism. It almost seemed biased, though you can hardly notice what side the writer was on. The writer talked a lot about New Atheism and Old Atheism. First he recited a story about a crazy man in a market place, set in a time long ago.
“Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the marketplace, and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!" The people in the marketplace convulsed with laughter and screamed mocking questions after the madman: "Has he got lost?" asked one. "Did he lose his way like a child?" asks another. "Or is he hiding?"
Only the madman can answer this question: "I will tell you. We have killed Him—you and I. All of us are his murderers." The full enormity of the deed and of their loss breaks in upon them. "But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns.... God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed Him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives.... Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us?"
The story was supposed to portray how the people in the market place thought God did not exist, and they thought you were wasting your time if you went to look for him. All the normal people did not care that God had died and left them, but the Madman was the only one that acknowledged the lost, (Maybe you have to be crazy to understand why people need God?) People that were in the market place were supposed to be New Atheists, who care less about God, and the Madman was suppose to portray Old Atheists, where it was an extreme think so and question it. In my opinion I think the big differences between the two are that New Atheists have no respect and could care less about God, as opposed to Old Atheists who it was a big deal to important that he chose to not believe in God.
This relates to my big question “Is there anyway to be Christians and be scientists,” because it shows our flaws as human beings. A lot of the time we let our pride blind us. It’s a tragic flaw that we get reminded a lot of in ancient and old stories, but have forgotten about. In this case, our pride has stripped us of being able to see both sides, Science and Religion.
Book
For my book I chose Science and Religion, Methodologies by Gregory Peterson. This book is a lot easier to understand than the article. It talks directly at how science and religion compare and contrast. He brings up how both revolve around realism. Both describe the world as it is. He argues that both science and religion have elements of subjectivity in their models of the world, meaning they both get believed in based on personal interpretation. If one interprets that religion just doesn’t seem possible, that believing someone can die and then be raised from the dead or that the blind can see once again, then maybe they can put their faith in science. Maybe it can be the other way around, where people think there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the miracles God can do. In that situation there would be no reason to believe in science if it can be answered with God. He doesn’t leave out that both aren’t for sure, and they only reveal partial views of the world.
He also talks about how they can overlap, and in that case its up for your interpretation on what you want to believe, whether that be a world where they can coexist, sort of harmonizing each other. I don’t see the problem in that. The only thing I think of that can turn people away is that the idea of them complementing each other seems crazy. It seems like today we only focus on either one or the other.
Interview
For my interview I interviewed Cindy Morales, whose majoring in physics but is also a pretty strong Christian.
J: Are you Christian?
C: Yes.
J: But you also want to major in physics, right?
C: Yes.
J: So, do you ever find it hard be Christian but also trying to major in a science field?
C: Only when you’re talking to other people, not really when you’re taking the class.
J: Do you ever find yourself maybe conflicting with the church or conflicting with their ideas of how the earth was formed?
C: Not between science and church as much as it is my political views and church, but yeah, not my field and church.
J: Would you say you’re a scientist, somewhat?
C: Yes.
J: On a scale 1-10, how strong are you of a Christian?
C: 10.
J: You do believe in having a personal relationship in God, and you have one?
C: Yes.
J: You also study science right?
C: Yes.
J: In High school did you have any problems with creationism vs. evolution?
C: No.
J: What do you believe in, personally?
C: I think that God created us to evolve.
J: Has anyone looked at you crazy for believing in that?
C: Yeah but people look at me crazy for everything.
J: Do you feel like science and church contradict each other?
C: I feel that people will always choose to make things appear the way they want them to appear. I think you can make the church look like it contradicts itself just like you can make science look like it contradicts itself, so you can also make it look like science contradicts the church and vice versa.
J: You believe in Jesus right?
C: Yes.
J: You don’t believe in any conspiracy theories?
C: No.
J: Would you say that you believe in all fields of sciences, or just a couple? How do you view science?
C: So I want to do astronomy and astronomy originally was funded by the church and it was a field that was thought of as being a person going after a God going mind and that’s how science was created, to understand how God created the world and what kind of laws God put in the world, and so for me that’s the way I’ve always look at science and physics and astronomy. So when I see the ideas of quantum mechanics and how everything is so ordered or how big things can be or how little we understand about the big bang or black holes it makes me be more impressed with God. I understand chemistry, I understand anatomy, I understand psychology, I understand other sciences like that, I haven’t gone to in depth into them but I think that they serve the same purpose in understanding how God created something.
J: What do you believe as a Christian?
C: I think that God created everything, there’s only one God, he sent his son Jesus Christ to come and die on the cross for us so that we can have a personal relationship with him, speak with him, and not need to have priests or saints or other people intervene with us or interpret for us. I think that as long as you believe that Christ came and died for you on the cross then you good to go, and I think that there is a hell, I think that people that turn their back on God go to hell, I think that the tribulation will come and Gods people will be taking over, I think that the world will be going to end; I’m not sure that it’s gonna be in 2012 but it’s gonna end. So yeah.
J: Back in high school when you were learning about evolution did you have anyone say “Well I know what happened, and gods what happened.” Did you have anyone say that?
C: I didn’t… I didn’t have people in class that spoke that way, and for me because it’s never been a personal issue where I think that evolution disproves God. I don’t think that that is true at all, so I also never had to speak that and I don’t know if there were people in my class that thought like that but never spoke up.
J: Do you feel that it’s different today in school because I know personally I do have some friends that have called me crazy saying how I could be Christian when I believe in science. Do you think it’s different from when you were in high school from how it is today?
C: I think that every year is different because the people are always different. I don’t think that the culture is very different, because it’s only been 4 years since I graduated in high school and I definitely had the same general science teacher that now works at Youngker (Irick) and so I don’t think that necessarily it different, I don’t think that the united states have a different stance on it, I don’t think anything like that. I don’t think they’ve made anything official in difference.
J: Do you believe that evolution is a theory?
C: I think evolution is a theory in that there are a lot of things about evolution where there are gaps so we make guesses as to how things happened or we make instead of direct lines we have little dotted lines where it all leads to this or it suggests this. Parts of it are circular and I think there is always going to be that “if” because… I Don’t believe that we are every going to understand Gods mind and how he really created the things so I think that a lot of things you will have to go on faith, and I think that everything made a clear cut and everything made since then there will be a need for faith, there wouldn’t need to be a need for hope, there wouldn’t be a need to believe any belief system in God because we would see it all and so many people have to believe not blindly but really how we have huge faith in Jesus and to be able to perform his miracles because a lot of those things go against your belief in what science says can happen you know, Jesus brought people back from the dead, he cured people of leprosy, he made blind men see, he did so many things that science at that point couldn’t do and explain so I think that its unrealistic to think that God is under the same restraints as humans.
J: When you say it’s circular do you mean it contradicts itself, or is needed in order to explain itself?
C: I think its one of those things that explains itself.
J: Would you say it’s easier to be atheist and believe in science or not?
C: I think it’s much easier to be agnostic because you say that there is or that there isn’t a god because I think that to be atheist you have to have a lot of the same blind belief in that there’s nothing out there. They’re both concrete (Religion and Atheists) but there are some things in this world that’s not concrete like miracles of being cured of cancer and there’s thing that we can’t explain. I think that being atheist, not believing in a higher power is the same difficulty as believing in a higher power.
Part IV. What I Have Learned
This really did help me change my views on how to be a Christian and a scientist.I choose to believe in science and all of its ideas, even evolution, but I think God made it for us to understand. A week ago if I would have heard this, I would have to re-read the statement. It’s a crazy idea to think they can live in harmony, but according to Cindy and Benjamin Peterson, why not?
I learned that it does not have to be one thing or the other. If you want it can be both. In the end it’s up to the person and what they choose to believe. I also learned about a completely different POV, agnostics. Before I sort of thought of agnostics as kind of cowardly; I saw it as they’re afraid of commitment of their beliefs. Now I understand that maybe they understand both, but it’s just easier to be open-minded and choose to stay on the fence. Overall I really liked this paper, and wouldn’t mind doing it again in the future.
Works Cited
Buckley, Michael J. "Society Needs Religion." America 198 (5 May 2008): 27. Rpt. in Atheism. Ed. Beth Rosenthal. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2009. Opposing Viewpoints. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 10 May 2011.
PETERSON, GREGORY R. "Science and Religion, Methodologies." Encyclopedia of Science and Religion. Ed. J. Wentzel Vrede van Huyssteen. Vol. 2. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2003. 756-759. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 10 May 2011.
Morales, Cynthia. Personal Interview. May 2nd, 2011.
