Christianity and the beginnings of modern science

EXPLORING CHRISTIANITY - SCIENCE

THE BIBLE
Can we trust a book written 2000 years ago?

EYEWITNESS
Did the writers of the New Testament get their picture of Jesus right?

GOD - MAN
Is Jesus really God?

RESURRECTION
Did Jesus really rise from the dead?

RELIGIONS
With so many religions, why Christianity?

SUFFERING
If there is a God, why is there so much suffering?

TRINITY
Understanding the Trinity.

SCIENCE
The complementary nature of Science & Christianity.

FORGIVENESS
What it is and why it matters?

GUIDANCE
How does God guide?

REPENTANCE
What it is and why you can't get to heaven without it.

BORN AGAIN
What does it mean to be converted and born again?

SAVING FAITH
The kind of faith that will get you to heaven

ASSURANCE
Can I know for sure that I am going to heaven?

TRUTH
What is truth and does it matter?

MORALITY
Does it matter how we live? A Christian view of morality.

THE CHURCH
God's vision for his family, the Church. A call to the churches of the new millennium.

PURPOSE
How can I find a great purpose for living?

IDENTITY
Who am I; Finding my true identity as a human being and as a child of God.

SELF-ESTEEM
How can I feel good about my self? The Christian basis for proper sel-esteem.

LIFE AFTER DEATHChristianity's Hope & Challenge.

THE CROSS
Why did Jesus Die? What the Bible says about the Cross.

Grace
The importance of grace in the New Testament.

Beginnings of modern science

Christian pioneers

It is significant that the early pioneers in modern science were men of deep Christian faith. For Copernicus, the first astronomer of the scientific revolution, God was personally responsible for all the activity in the heavens. His radical ideas were contained in his book On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, which was published in 1543, the year of his death. The regularity he was discovering in the movements of the planets was, for him, a manifestation of the faithfulness of a loving Creator.

"It is significant that the early pioneers in modern science were men of deep Christian faith"

Galileo (d. 1642) invented the hydrostatic balance and discovered the laws of dynamics from observation of falling bodies. However, he is chiefly known for his achievements in astronomy. His discovery of the four satellites of Jupiter on January 7, 1610, with the aid of the newly invented telescope, revolutionised the study of astronomy. He has been called the first modern scientist and his work confirmed the observations of Copernicus. He regarded his science as illuminating the work of the Creator. For all his quarrelling with the church he remained a devout Christian until he died.

Kepler, the German astronomer, a contemporary of Galileo, was also a devout Christian. His discovery of the three laws of planetary motion laid the foundation for Newton's theory of gravity. He regarded his study of the physical universe as "thinking God's thoughts after him". In The Secret of the Universe he wrote:

Here we are concerned with the book of nature, so greatly celebrated in sacred writings. It is in this that Paul proposes to the Gentiles that they should contemplate God like the Sun in water or in a mirror. Why then as Christians should we take any less delight in its contemplation, since it is for us with true worship to honor God, to venerate him, to wonder at him? The more rightly we understand the nature and scope of what our God has founded, the more devoted the spirit in which that is done.

The baton of scientific leadership passed in the next generation to Newton, born in the year of Galileo's death. Though he had problems with the Christian view of the Trinity, he was a strong believer. As a member of the Anglican Church he was involved in distribution of Bibles to the poor and the construction of new churches. He actually wrote more than a million words on the Bible and theological topics, more than he wrote on science. His well-worn Bible, with marginal notes in his own handwriting, is in the Wren Library of Trinity College, Cambridge. He became the foremost mathematician in Europe. He published Principia mathematica in 1667, "a book that transformed the course of western science". His work gave new direction to optics, mechanics and celestial dynamics. His work on gravity established the Cambridge reputation for mathematics. His studies of light produced the first reflecting telescope. His invention of calculus gave science the mathematical tool it needed for further exploration of the trails he blazed.

Biblical foundations

How was it that the Christian faith aided the scientific approach of many of the original thinkers of those times and enabled them to break with the preconceptions of the past? In his 1925 lectures, Alfred North Whitehead had said that Christianity is the mother of science because of "the medieval insistence on the rationality of God". Because of the confidence of the early scientists in this rationality, they had an "inexpungable belief that every detailed occurrence can be correlated with its antecedents in a perfectly definite manner, exemplifying general principles. Without this belief the incredible labours of scientists would be without hope." Newton wrote in Principia:

This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being...This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as the Lord over all.

"This God also declared that all he has created is good... therefore his works are worthy of study"

This God is not only intelligent, but also faithful and worthy of trust, as the Scriptures often declare. His faithfulness is expressed in the regularity and order of the created world, a regularity that could be expressed scientifically as "laws". Newton is noted for his formulation of the law that governed the motion of the celestial bodies - his famous law of universal gravitation.

This God also declared that all he has created is good, a word that occurs seven times in Genesis 1. Therefore his works are worthy of study. This contrasted with the idea of the unreality, or inferiority of the natural world, common to Greek philosophy and other religions. The central theme of Protestant theology at that time was the glory of God, and they saw this partly in understanding his creation. The early Christian scientists also saw it as their task to take seriously the command given in Genesis 1:28 to subdue the created order.

Many studies have been done on the influence of "voluntarism" on the rise of early modern science, from Augustine to Ockham to Boyle and Newton. This is the idea that emphasises the will of God and that he is free to choose his own way of doing things. He did not have to create or to do so in the way he did. This world might not have existed, or it might have had different properties from the ones it has. As a result, nature's properties must be discovered rather than merely deduced from the principles of logic or mathematics.

A further factor was undoubtedly the Christian view of progress in history which is implied in God's first command to "replenish the earth and subdue it." The idea of progress is inherent in applied science. The Christian view of purpose in history, which had a beginning, and which will end with the second coming of Christ, is very different from the cyclical view, with constant repetition, common to some other major religions. This sense of the rationality of God, the faithfulness of God, the goodness of his creation and his purposes in history underlie much of what surfaced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and largely grew out of the Reformation, though we have seen that its beginnings go back to the early Christian centuries - indeed, to the Bible itself.

Finally, the picture of a single God who created the whole universe to operate by consistent laws, is very different from the idea of many different nature gods whose activities may vary. As Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay W. Richards state in their very significant book The Privileged Planet: How our place in the cosmos is designed for discovery:

" Since they believed that God is one and that human beings are created in God's image, medieval Christians and Jews could expect nature to have a sort of unity (to be a uni verse) and to be accessible to the human mind. These ideas, brought to fruition by interaction with the Greeks, were the seedbed from which natural science slowly grew. It's hardly a coincidence that science emerged in the time and place where these many factors converged. Although they are now forgotten, modern science draws on the interest of specific theological convictions."

Alfred North Whitehead, in Science and the Modern World, declared eighty years ago: "Faith in the possibility of science, generated antecedently to the development of modern scientific theory, is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology.

The Book of God's Word & the Book of God's Works

One of the results of the Reformation was a new sense of freedom. People felt free from the old traditions, whether ecclesiastical, political or philosophical. The scientists said they were free from the preconceived ideas of Greek philosophy, and they would submit their ideas to the Book of Nature, just as they submitted all matters of faith to the Book of Scripture. As God was the author of both there could be no conflict between them, other than that which arose from human misunderstanding. Galileo wrote that "the world is the work and the Scriptures the word of the same God." Or as Kepler put it: "The tongue of God and the finger of God cannot clash." This was a common theme. Francis Bacon, lawyer, philosopher, and the founder of the new scientific approach in England, who was made Lord Chancellor in 1618, declared in his Proficience and Advancement of Learning:

"The scientists said they were free from the preconceived ideas of Greek philosophy, and they would submit their ideas to the Book of Nature"

Let no man think or maintain that a man can search too far or be too well studied in the Book of God's Word or in the Book of God's Works.

(Interestingly enough, this quote appeared opposite the title page of Darwin's Origin of the Species.) Bacon also stated in Novum Organum that natural philosophy (science) is:

after the word of God, the surest remedy against superstition, and the most approved support of faith.

Kepler felt himself to be "a high priest in the book of nature, religiously bound to alter not one jot or tittle of what it had pleased God to write down in it." That is why he took seriously the eight minutes of divergence from the circular in the orbit of Mars, which he discovered by observation. He revealed the motivation for his work when he wrote:

Since we astronomers are priests of the highest God in regard to the book of nature, it befits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above else, of the glory of God.

They were following the lead given in the Bible 2,000 years or more earlier: "Great are the works of the Lord; they are pondered by all who delight in them" (Psalm 111:2). Lord Rayleigh prefixed this text to his collected scientific papers and it is carved on the great door of the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. It was put there at James Clerk Maxwell's request, one of the greatest scientists of his day. It was he who laid the foundations of field theory in physics that led to relativity theory.

The old ideas that had been appropriated from Aristotle - the earth was perfectly round; it was the centre of the universe; it was immovable; the sun was a perfect sphere without spot or blemish; air fell upwards, et cetera - had gone out with the Middle Ages. As people continued to study the universe in the light of these principles, taking seriously what they saw, the foundations of true science were well and truly laid.

Puritan influence

The influence of Christianity in the early days can be seen very clearly in the formation in 1660 of the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, normally known just as the Royal Society, which was very significant in the promotion of scientific advances. Most of its members were professing Christians. It began with informal gatherings in Gresham College, a Puritan College in London. Seven of the ten scientists who formed the nucleus of those meetings were Puritans. In 1663, sixty-two per cent of the members were clearly Puritan in origin - at a time when Puritans were only a small minority in England. Robert Boyle, the "father of chemistry" and one of the founders of the Royal Society, left the sum of £50 per annum in his will for a series of eight lectures to be given against unbelievers in some church in London. There were also important scientists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who were Roman Catholics.

Nineteenth century

Moving on to the early nineteenth century, the number of pioneer geologists who were Bible-believing Christians is noteworthy. Among them were William Buckland, who held the chair of geology at Oxford, and his counterpart at Cambridge, Adam Sedgwick. Both were leading churchmen. They maintained contact with the famous French geologist, Baron Cuvier, another Bible-believer. In the mid-nineteenth century, the most famous Christian geologist was probably Hugh Miller. His brilliant field research on the geology of the Western Highlands gained him the presidency of the Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh. He wrote a number of best-selling books on geology, including Footprints of the Creator. The highly regarded Edward Hitchcock, president of Amherst College in Massachusetts, is also worthy of mention. He also held the chairs of natural theology and geology there. His lectures on the age of the earth were famous.

"It could still be said in the mid-nineteenth century that most of the world's scholars and scientists were still professedly Christian"

The basis of physics was established by men of Christian faith: Newton, Gauss, Faraday, Maxwell, Lord Kelvin, to name a few. The outstanding early botanist, John Ray (d. 1705), declared:

The treasures of nature are inexhaustible...If man ought to reflect upon his Creator the glory of all his works, then ought he to take notice of them all and not to think anything unworthy of his cognisance.

Atheistic science, which followed on from the French Revolution, reached Britain in the 1820s. However, it could still be said in the mid-nineteenth century that most of the world's scholars and scientists were still professedly Christian. The British Association for the Advancement of Science was formed in 1832. Clergymen were active in its formation and provided three of its presidents during the first five years. At a meeting of the Association in 1865, a manifesto was drawn up and signed by 617 men, many of whom were of the highest eminence, in which they declared their belief not only in the truth and authenticity of the Holy Scriptures, but also in their harmony with natural science. The original document is in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

In his very helpful book, What If Jesus Had Never Been Born, D. James Kennedy gives a list of some of the outstanding Bible-believing scientists who gave the lead in founding the following branches of science. This list is worth repeating:

Antiseptic Surgery	Joseph Lister
Bacteriology	Louis Pasteur
Calculus	Isaac Newton
Celestial Mechanics	Johannes Kepler
Chemistry	Robert Boyle
Comparative Anatomy	Georges Cuvier
Dimensional Analysis	Lord Rayleigh
Dynamics	Isaac Newton
Electronics	John Ambrose Fleming
Electrodynamics	James Clerk Maxwell
Electromagnetics	Michael Faraday
Energetics	Lord Kelvin
Entomology of Living Insects	Henri Fabre
Field Theory	James Clerk Maxwell
Fluid Mechanics	George Stokes
Galactic Astronomy	Sir William Hershel
Gas Dynamics	Robert Boyle
Genetics	Gregor Mendel
Glacial Geology	Louis Agassiz
Gynaecology	James Simpson
Hydrography	Matthew Maury
Hydrostatics	Blaise Pascal
Ichthyology	Louis Agassiz
Isotopic Chemistry	William Ramsey
Model Analysis	Lord Rayleigh
Natural History	John Ray
Non-Euclidean Geometry	Bernard Riemann
Oceanography	Matthew Maury
Optical Mineralogy	David Brewster

However, over the last 150 years the gap between science and Christianity has widened. The causes of this are many: science's share in the increased secularisation of Western society; prejudices and misunderstandings on both sides of the fence; the trend of increasing reductionism in science (reducing subjects to their ultimate units as in quantum mechanics and molecular biology) and so missing out on the bigger picture - to name a few.

Having looked at the Christian foundations of modern science, I will now explore the two issues over which most of the battles have been fought, the age of the universe and the theory of evolution.