Our sermon at church this morning was on this topic. Today and next week the minister is discussing "reasons for faith", today (2 May 10) he addressed 'faith in a scientific age".
You can hear the talk at www.stmattsweb.org.au
The talk sketched some of the salient biblical issues, although the quoting of Frances Collins and Henry Schaefer suggests a view of the biblical text that detaches it at some point from history: which is what both Collins and Schaefer do, in my opinion; although I probably don't think it is part of an intentional program on their part (I've heard Schaefer speak and read some of Collins' work, see also a review of Collins book "The Language of God").
Leaving that problem aside, the quotes made of these two men did encourage an approach to the Scriptures as determinative of at least our approach to God.
The problem though, if any move is made to sever the Bible from the world it sets itself in, as reading my previous post would suggest, is that it overturns the Bible's resistance to such compartmentalisation of the real world into differentiable 'magisteriums', to adopt Stephen Gould's phrase, and the approach that is reflected by Collins and Schaefer, as I understand them.
And, for that reason, the title of the sermon itself: faith in an age of science, suggests at the outset a bifucated real world, where there seem to be two domains coming from the one creator (or is an independent creation implied...I can never tell; and I'll bet that you can't either). This just cannot work in the Bible's creation theology: the world is a unitary creation; which is to say, that the creator created it comprehensively, and there are no other principles operating.
The talk our minister gave took the approach that science describes 'how' but faith tells why. Trouble is, the Bible purports to tell how as well, for that elephant that is always in the room when it comes to 'science' and 'faith' or 'religion': the question of origins. Now, when it comes to this topic, science is hamstrung: origins is not observable, and any discussion of it in terms of 'science' is inevitably influenced by religious-type considerations. That is, the view that long ages and random process together are a sufficient (and necessary) explanation of the world that we experience. This is a view soaked in a particular 'religious' view and entails specific assumptions about the operation of the real world, assumptions that cannot be tested because a singularity such as creation is inaccessible to direct observation. For a Christian, it should be that the history in the Bible takes us to where observation cannot.
A couple of topics that the sermon did not probe, but that are germane, in my view are:
1. the dependence of science on a prior world view; which is established both logically and empirically (see for instance these books by Stanley Jaki, Peter Harrison and James Hannam and the corollary need for a specific philosophical framework for successful science as we know it,
and
2. the specific direction the Bible takes us in addressing the 'real' and the demand of the text of Genesis 1 to be taken as a direct account of actions within time and space that originated the world.
Topically, Richard Dawkins was quoted on faith; ironic, because he's not that much of a spokesman for evolution (see his interview here). Dawkins' quote was about faith being held in the absence of facts. It would have been interesting to expose this to the biblical definition of faith, read against the biblical background running from Genesis to Jesus, with faith being held against God's consistent delivery of his promises. It would also have been interesting to consider the inescapable faith position of all materialists, including Dawkins. As I see it, 'faith', or rather belief is the 'first existential movement', or the epistemic opening of the mind. Without an initial belief in the mind, and the congruence of its thoughts with the or an external world, and thus the validity of these thoughts, materialism, let alone anything else, gets nowhere.
Finally, I was reading Francis Schaeffer recently, where he said:
"But whatever is not of faith is sin" (Rms 14:23b). The sin here is in not raising the empty hands of faith. Anything that is not brought forth from faith is sin. When I am not allowing this fruit, which has been purchased at such a price, to flow fourth through me I am unfaithful, in the deep sense of not believing God."
Considering this in the light of 2 Corinthans 10:5, noting that setting aside the words of God ends up giving glory to the creation, not the creator (Roms 1:23) (not to say Col 2:8), and I think we too easily restrict the operation of faith to the 'religious' realm (due to poor theology of creation, naturally), and forget that as creator, God is over all, and all comes from his hand (Heb 11:3, just to close the circle).
Addendum 1
In the talk I heard Schaefer give, he made the comment that he didn't mind if the universe was either 15 or 20 billion years old (or whatever the two contending fashions were at the time of his talk, some many years ago); trouble is; God does care, because he sets his creation in accessible history by showing its link with our history frame: the very point of the chrono-genealogies, and his very specific timing of creation see here. That is to say, the creation and related text does not take us off this world, or out of its frame of reference, as myth does quite intentionally, but embeds its set of events into the world the events we experience today are in.
Addendum 2
The minister related that when people ask him his job, and he tells them, at once asking if they have any thoughts about ‘religion’ (and what a nice way of opening up a conversation), that some people say that they are not a person of faith, but of science.
Well, after reading Jaki, what a great opening to an extended conversation: that science (modern science) rides on the back of its Christian heritage and the Christian world view that grew through the middle ages.
This would be likely to surprise many people, and lead to a great discussion on why people have the views that they do.
