True science proceeds from faith. The historical record shows that modern science arose from faith in God. Science and faith harmonize. They don’t conflict.
Like the tearing down of statues in the United States, the elimination of genders unto gender fluidity, and the revisionism of patriarchy as social construct, secular materialists banish faith from the public square by falsifying the true story of faith and science. The false narrative, useful for dethroning God in the hearts of men, says Newton’s science triumphed despite and hindered by his faith. His belief slowed his work. The actual narrative would read something like the following: man’s thinking, human reasoning, implausible speculation, superstition, darkness, little to no scientific progress, publication and propagation of scripture, motivation to know God through His creation, observation, scientific method, discovery and progress (subduing and having dominion).
Whatever scientific progress continues is built upon the foundation of biblical creationists of the past and borrowing from and imitating their work, even if it is separate from faith. The riddance of faith portends to future regression, even as we see this trend and trajectory already. For instance, without the faith in the invisible hand, the world economy is headed back to something more feudalistic.
Faux historians produced the science and faith warfare or conflict model in the late 19th century and this myth, legend, or figment of imagination burrowed itself deep into the psyche of Western civilization. It isn’t history. It is a philosophical presupposition of naturalism masquerading as science. Stephen Meyer writes about this in his most recent book, Return of the God Hypothesis.
Most science historians report the fideistic beginnings of modern science. The founders believed in God and their faith buttressed their work. A few men told a completely different story, John William Draper’s History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science (1880) and Andrew Dickson White’s History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896). Commenting on this happening, historian Edward Larson writes in his Pulitzer Prize winning book that “they fostered the impression that religious critics of Darwinism threatened to rekindle the Inquisition. . . . Christianity and Science are recognized by their respective adherents as being absolutely incompatible; they cannot exist together; one must yield to the other; mankind must make its choice—it cannot have both” (Summer for the Gods: The Scope’s Trial and America’s Continuing Debate over Science and Religion, pp. 21-22). These above two books helped or aided to fix in the amassed minds that science and faith were at war with one another and always have been. Their lie displaced or deposed actual history. Now it is very, very difficult to dislodge.
The warfare or conflict model buttresses the uniformitarian template that man lives in a closed system without supernatural or divine intervention. It eliminates design with everything occurring according to chance. This view cancels God, His authority over and judgment of mankind. Man gets to live like he wants, because nobody’s going to do anything about it. Many if not a majority of professing Christians now at least surrender to this viewpoint, clashing with the Bible and a true, historical account.
Hi, good article. I think there are several things that could be said about this to amplify what you are saying. First is, I believe the strictly modernist interpretation does not apply to most people, but they inadvisedly rely on it as a supposed ‘neutral ground’ on which to engage with others in the world. Most people don’t have a problem accepting supernatural causes. They just have a problem with being judged, whether it’s by entities that would have that right as our originator or Creator would, or not. So, they have built a society on the idea that ‘neutrality’ means denying anything not physical or material. But post-modernism moves beyond that to try to bend the meanings of words used inside this space to make metaphysical statements and claims while retaining the outward shell of modernity.
For instance, I have heard adherents of post-modern thought call “climate change” the “symptom of an unequal system,” and, “what happens when the lives of marginalised people are viewed as expendable.” Clearly, what “climate” means to the post-modern writer is much more imbued with metaphysical meaning than the atmosphere, sea levels, climate and other things we can measure. But it retains that outward shell of fitting in the frame of supposed ‘neutrality’ that modernism demands – It hides the metaphysical claims and assertions inside of the meaning of words that, strictly taken, fit in a materialist framework. But materialism is not how they use those words. This gives it the ability to propagate in a society like the modern one, although in reality these people make metaphysical claims that antagonize against what Christians hold as true. Hopefully what I’ve said makes sense.
This is why it’s inadvisable to maintain that there is such a thing as “neutral” perspectives, or ways of going about life. Everything, every action taken has values. Every decision balances priorities. It is not possible to be “neutral” in life, however inoffensive one tries to make themselves. This helps to show why science by itself does not stand in for faith or replace it. It’s just not metaphysical, and yet, that’s the way people operate their lives, so it cannot be enough. Much less does that conflict with the idea of the supernatural. Saying that it does is just the way that people try to get away from inconvenient truth. This truth represents the signposts that signal that they truly need to repent and change their ways. Yet what ends up happening after this is that people absorb another worldly way of thinking as a substitute for the truth. They take in bad values in the space of good. They fall for the signs of antichrist afterward, because these affirm corruption and sin, and because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved.
My second point is that often, criticism of the state churches like that of Rome, England, and the eastern churches, is blended into criticism of the Bible itself, on the also-faulty assumption that the state churches are where Scripture came from. Often times this criticism is well-founded, but that reflects nothing poorly on the Bible itself, because the former institutions were not completely in line with the Bible. The overthrow of the state church through the development of guaranteeing liberties, something that in large part has to do with the United States and its rise, the overthrow of that state church is conflated with the overthrow of Christianity itself. But this is hardly the case.
Supreme Court Justice David Brewer (1837-1910) wrote:
“[I]n what sense can [America] be called a Christian nation? Not in the sense that Christianity is the established religion or that people are in any matter compelled to support it. On the contrary, the Constitution specifically provides that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’
Neither is it Christian in the sense that all of its citizens are either in fact or name Christian. On the contrary, all religions have free scope within our borders.
Numbers of our people profess other religions, and many reject all. Nor is it Christian in the sense that a profession of Christianity is a condition of holding office or otherwise engaging in public service, or essential to recognition either politically or socially. In fact, the government as a legal organization is independent of all religions. Nevertheless, we constantly speak of this republic as a Christian Nation – in fact, as the leading Christian nation of the world.”
– Brewer, The United States: A Christian Nation (1905 ed.) pp. 11-12
This can largely be attributed to the concepts brought and lived long before the signing of the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Dr John Clarke, an early founder of the Newport settlement on Rhode Island, wrote this in his petition in 1662, for the original royal charter to establish its presence in America:
“…That they might be permitted to hold forth a lively experiment that a most flourishing civil state may stand, and best be maintained, with a full liberty in religious concernments; and that true piety, rightly grounded upon gospel principles, will give the best and greatest security to sovereignty, and will lay in the hearts of men the strongest obligation to true loyalty.”
– H.R. Doc. No. 546, 28th Cong., 1st Sess. (1844).
Part of this is inscribed on the side of the state house in Providence, RI today. Earlier, Dr. Clarke signed his name to this statement upon arrival there in the year 1638.
“7th day of the first month: We whose names are underwritten do here solemnly, in the presence of Jehovah, incorporate ourselves into a body politic, and, as he shall help, will submit our persons, lives, and estates unto our Lord Jesus Christ, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and to all those perfect and most absolute laws of his given us in his holy word of truth, to be guided and judged thereby.”
So it is clear not only that the spread of liberty since then is not at all a refutation of Christianity, but also that the attempt to undercut these core values is resulting in a corresponding reversal of that trend. And I say this as someone who works as a scientist professionally.
My third point, as to how difficult this revision of history is to dislodge – it depends on who you are talking about. It is not difficult at all for me to dislodge for myself. Many other people agree with me. And nothing is difficult for God to do.
Thanks Andrew for the comment.