Does the Bible Contain Science?

The question — Does the Bible contain science? — is one of the more penetrating question one can ask when the debate about creation vs. evolution arises. The irony is that many of the most conservative of Christians absolutely know and fight for the Bible containing science while the most naturalists of scientists contend the very opposite. The former say Yes, Genesis 1 is scientific information while the latter say No, Genesis 1 is about religion. The latter fall into the hands of the former and the former fall into the hands of the latter all the time. They could easily switch sides and be at peace.

Denis Alexander, in his splendid Creation or Evolution: Do We Have  to Choose? addresses the question at the top of this post with aplumb (all quotations below come from that book, pp. 48-57).

Now what is science? [I have added numbers and broken into bits so we can see graphically what is involved.]

Modern science is a highly specialised activity using highly specialised techniques and terminology. It may be defined as

(1) an organised endeavour

(2) to explain the properties of the physical world

(3) by means of empirically testable theories constructed

(4) by a research community trained in specialised techniques’.

Notice the emphasis on organized and the research community. This is not a collection of individuals against faith but more or less a community of endeavor. And it becomes highly ingrown in method and language, which Alexander himself observes:

Scientific literature today is characterised by highly specialised language, by technical descriptions of methods in the ‘Materials and Methods’ sections of papers, by quantification and statistical methods, by scientific theory building and testing, and by numerous citations referring the reader back to related key points in the scientific literature. Papers are only published following a process of rigorous peer review that is exceptionally tough for the more prestigious journals.

Observe that those who are proven are those who judge whether papers and studies are worthy of the scientific community. It is nothing less than a scandal when this objective, scientific process is breached by less than scientific approaches. Which happens but the vast majority of studies are empirically-justifiable.

But this raises a major issue when it comes to the Bible and science. The problem of modernity, or the problem of a worldview that disallows God and the supernatural by method. This worldview, which Alexander calls “modernism” and might also be called “naturalism” or “empiricism” (with appropriate nuances all over the place):

Modernism is that stream of ideas suggesting that science and technology have all the reliable answers, or at least all the answers that really matter, and these answers are all that societies round the world need to function properly.

Notice the colonizing here of what matters into the discipline of science. This reveals, at the least, the reach and appeal of science.

Even to many Christians — who ought to do better!

Quite common today are those conservative Christians who rightly wish to remain faithful to Scripture, but in the process unwittingly bring modernist, secular assumptions to the interpretative process. Of course they would not (like some theological liberals) deny miracles in the name of science. But they assume that scientific knowledge possesses a higher kind of truth, and that therefore they honour Scripture by treating it as modern science’ in some way. O Or, worse, they delve around in biblical texts, taking them out of context to ‘prove’ that many modern scientific discoveries were already known in Bible times.

I see this often in churches. When? When a scientist stands up in witness to a discovery that proves the Bible true. Notice how this works: the scientific method is now being used to prove truth, and the Christian community rejoices when its faith is confirmed by the (supernatually-denying?) method of scientific endeavor. This is falling into the hands of the scientific community.

But this means the only way to know is the scientific method. Not all truth is susceptible to science. Alexander says this well:

It is very important that we understand that there are many different ways of knowing things, and many different types of well-justified knowledge, besides scientific knowing and in addition to scientific knowledge.

So well-justified beliefs are definitely not just found within the realm of science.

When Christians fall into the hands of the scientist, the scientist is in charge of theological claims. Over to Dawkins:

There is a certain irony in the reflection that the keen atheist Prof. Richard Dawkins shares with some Christians their idea that religious and scientific truths belong to the same domain. Dawkins writes: “I pay religions the compliment of regarding them as scientific theories and… I see God as a competing explanation for facts about the universe and life.’ …

Alexander rightly observes that one ought not to turn religious truth into scientific truth: “Yet religious explanations are in no sense rival to scientific explanations.”

He is moving into the realm of overlapping or separate magisteria of knowledge; he moves in what may be called complementarian realms of knowing:

So the best way to understand theological descriptions of things (Why are they there? What is their purpose? What does God intend for them?) is to see such descriptions as complementary to scientific levels of understanding. We need both scientific and religious levels of understanding to do justice to our understanding of God’s world.

Back to our question:

So does the Bible contain science?  … But if the question ‘Does the Bible contain science?’ is suggesting that a nonscientific statement cannot be true, or asking whether the Bible contains scientific narratives representing the same kind of literature as contemporary scientific papers, clearly that is not the case.

Notice what he did here: he made it clear that the truth of redemption cannot surrender to the methods of science or let the methods of science determine what is true and what is not:

The dangers of extracting non-scientific narrative massages from the Scriptures and using them as if they were science is well illustrated by the Galileo affair. …the way in which some of the Jesuit priests of the time who were opposed to Galileo (who was himself a Catholic) tried to use passages from the Psalms and elsewhere to criticise Copernicanism. Among these passages were Psalm 93:1: ‘The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved’ and similarly Psalm 96:10: ‘Say among the nations, “The Lord reigns.” The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity.’

Those passages were not on about that topic and it is a mistake — driven by modernity — to make the Bible submit to modernistic, scientific methods of knowing. So?

The moral of the tale is that we should be resistant to the idea that biblical passages can be removed from their original contexts to score scientific points.

The history of the church often moved into a theory of accomodationism, that God or the Bible’s authors knew better but most readers or hearers would not so God accommodated revelation to human forms of ignorance:

Augustine: “Hence let it be said briefly, touching the form of heaven, that our authors knew the truth but the Holy Spirit did not desire that men should learn things that are useful to no one for salvation.”

Alexander now puts this together:

In Augustinian thought, the purpose of the Bible was not to propound astronomical theories, since in any case these would not have been understood by the great mass of people, but rather to explain to people the way of salvation.

The Bible is about the way of salvation; it is not a scientific textbook. We need to know the difference.

Still it is certainly the case that the Word of God is written for the understanding and salvation of all humankind in all epochs, composed in timeless narratives which are not tied to the latest scientific advance or insight.

How would I put this together: every statement in the Bible needs to be seen for what it meant in that culture and context and not be expected to be speaking in the categories of our culture and context. The Bible speaks of external realities in the terms and categories of that day, terms and categories that have undergone constant shifting since that time.