Evolution* has caused many Christians to distrust science. That’s not a good thing, as science has so much to offer our world. It may help you to know that there are two kinds of science: Operation Science, and Origin Science. Operation science has done a lot to contribute to our world, but Origin Science is breaking old mind-sets and opening up new possibilities.
Operation Science deals with the way things normally operate by repeated and testable experiments. These show current regularities in the natural world that can be predictable. The problem is that scientists frown on anything creation or Intelligent Design-oriented because they think it is religious-based.
Origin science, on the other hand, deals with single events that happened in the past, and that are not repeatable through modern experiments. Scientists in this area of study are more like forensic cops, having to determine how a person was killed. Every event has a cause and the mystery, then, is how to figure out if that event could happen again from similar causes. Certain events have natural causes; others have intelligent ones. Was the person’s death, for example, caused naturally, or were they murdered?
Origin science seeks to find whether the origin of the universe, life and humanity is best explained by a natural cause or an intelligent one. “Either life was created on the Earth by the will of a being outside the grasp of scientific understanding, or it evolved on our planet spontaneously through chemical reactions occurring in non-living matter lying on the surface of our planet,” commented one scientist.1 Nobel Prize-winning biologist George Wald further explains that there is no third option.
Operation science has proven that spontaneous generation of life (basically life coming from non-life), doesn’t happen in the present. So, how did it happen in the past?
Today, more scientists “coming out of the closet” so to speak, and admitting that since the DNA coding has been discovered, it’s difficult to conceive of such a complex system happening by random chance or chaos. Harvard scientists recently released a book on DNA, stating that “one of the most provocative arguments for intelligent design centers on the recognition that DNA (and other biomolecules) is an information-based system. Common, everyday experience teaches that information derives solely from the activity of human beings. So, by analogy, the biochemical information systems, too, should come from a divine Mind.”2
When it comes to science, there are many great things to consider and provable evidence to embrace as thinking Christians. We need to analyze the evidence, glean the good and take those concepts and apply that knowledge to our lives. The Church and Science should not be at odds with each other, but should learn to work together to the betterment of all mankind.
* After more than 100 years of experimentation and scientific observation since Darwin, no one has ever proven from the fossil record or produced in the lab any change from one major life form to another. (“When Skeptics Ask,” by Norman Geisler, 257. c. 2013 Baker Books.)
Notes
- Jastrow, Until the Sun Dies, 62.
- http://www.reasons.org/articles/harvard-scientists-write-the-book-on-intelligent-design-in-dna
