Unity of Faith and Scientific Theories

I spent a significant period of time in the American South while I was working on my Biochemistry degree. People in my church often asked me how I can study science. Isn’t it at odds with the belief system that the church espouses? On the other hand, I have had many discussions with scientific colleagues who are curious about my studies of the bible. They are often intrigued, because they have heard that modern scientific theories are at odds with the bible. Because I have learned both alongside each other, during roughly the same time period of my life, I feel quite qualified to speak about this purported incompatibility.

Before I dissect this conflict, I would like to explore the origin of the idea that science and the bible are at odds with each other. Within the scientific disciplines, I have met many people who would classify themselves as a theist, as opposed to an atheist. This doesn’t have anything to do with the religion they subscribe to, but simply that they believe there had to be some external creator-like figure at the beginning of the material world. After studying the details of the natural world, many find it hard to believe otherwise. However, to be a credible scientist, one must be objective and committed to the scientific method. So scientists generally keep their personal believes to themselves. There also have been few particularly influential scientists who are quite vocal about their disbelief of the Bible. The ones I had in mind are the mathematician Bertrand Russell and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. They are both amazing top tier scientists who have made significant contributions to the current body of scientific knowledge. But because they have been so vocal about their personal beliefs, particularly their disdain for the bible, the general public has adopted the view that science and the bible are at odds with each other. This doesn’t accurately reflect the true situation, because scientists are more evenly split between theists and atheists than most people realize.

I haven’t read Dawkins and Russell’s works yet, but they likely contest the credibility of the bible because of the creation story. This is found in the first 3 chapters of the book of Genesis, which is the first book in the bible. If you don’t know much about it, the bible project video below will give you a good introduction. It is short, but difficult to read without some prior context.

 

Bible Project Video Here

 

In the story, our universe as we know it is created over 7 distinct days. The beginning days seem to be about the origins of the cosmos. On the fifth day, sea creatures and birds are created. On the 6^th day land animals are created, and subsequently humankind. If we take this story literally, it seems different forms of life are arise in a discrete fashion. This contradicts evolution, which conjectures that all life arose in a continuous process, gradually leading to the complexity we observe. Furthermore, if the days are literal 24 hours, this loosely leads to the conclusion that the earth less than 10,000 years old. This is in direct contradiction with cosmological data and the theory of the big bang, the beginning of the material universe. Measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), which is radiation spread throughout our universe, can be used to constrain the age of the universe and deduce its origins. Calculations suggest that the age of the universes is of the order of 10 billion years. This would mean that the bible is one million times wrong on the age of the cosmos and everything in it. So how does this purported incompatibility arise?

In contrast to the overly vocal Atheists like Russel and Dawkins, I believe the conflict is created and perpetuated by outspoken evangelicals that lack an epistemological foundation. These troglodytes espouse an erroneous and over-interpretation of the creation narrative, leading many to think that the bible is some kind intellectual retardant. To begin, I must ask the obvious question, did the author of these chapters intend them to be taken literally? It is an important question, because the bible is composed of 66 books containing a large variety of literary content. There are eye witness accounts, love poems, lamentations, prophetic imagery, dreams, apocalyptic literature, genealogies, historical accounts and more. No one in their sober mind would suggest that apocalyptic literature is literal, just like no one would suggest that genealogies are strictly a metaphor. So where does the creation narrative fall, literal or metaphor? It is not as manifestly metaphorical as apocalyptic literature, but because of the following few reasons I think it is likely a metaphor.

If there is some universal message woven into this creation narrative, the best way to understand it would be to take on a mindset of the people that it was written for. These Israelite people were much more community oriented than most modern westerners, concerned about their relationships with others and with Yahweh. They were much less literal and direct in their communication as we are today. They were also living in premodern times, under constant threat of war and lacking the technologies we use to meet our basic needs. So the emphasis of the creation narrative is likely geared towards the needs of the Israelites, which would be morality and provision in a seemingly unforgiving world. It was likely not intended as a scientific discourse, because these were not thoughts in the collective conscience at the time. They may have had some primitive mathematics, but logical and scientific deduction was not yet available in its fullest capacities. The diabetic troglodytes mentioned in the previous paragraph err by trying to impose their modern literal thinking on a book written 2,000 years ago.

The previous two paragraphs were mostly intended to stimulate reasonable, objective and clear thinking. Now a literal interpretation of the creation narrative really crumbles when you consider what is a day. A day, being 24 hours, is one rotation of the earth relative to the sun. So the earth and sun must exist simultaneously for a literal definition of a day to occur. Yet, in the first three verses of chapter we see that the earth and sun may have not existed simultaneously. So time was passing, but it could not be measured with these twenty four hour increments we currently used. Why am I to assume that time is passing in twenty four hours segments in this first chapter. Furthermore, the story was originally written in Aramaic. The word translated to day 6 times in the first chapter is “yom.” The translators likely chose day for ease of reading, but “yom” used in other places frequently means an unspecified period of time. So the timescale of the creation narrative is not the authors intended emphasis.

In order to believe that the creation narrative is literal, one has to make a lot of additional assumptions upfront that don’t seem very reasonable. Also, these assumptions lead one to miss the main point of the story, which is not about the material world at all. It is about morality and people’s relationship to a Creator. If you want to understand the narrative more, I will defer to Theologian John Stevenson’s commentary which can be found here. He dissects the 7 day structure of the story and explains the parallelism literary device used by the author. The point of this post was mainly to show that the perceived incompatibility between the bible and modern scientific theories are artificial and can easily be discarded.