Is Christianity At Odds With Science?

Today, we tend to see science and religion as antagonistic, but this has not been the case for much of the history of science. By science, we mean the systematic attempt to understand the material world, as distinguished from technology, which is knowledge obtained by trial and error or by applying scientific understanding. There are people with naturalistic worldviews who maintain that Christianity is incompatible with science, or even hostile to modern science. Christianity’s positive influence on scientific progress is seldom acknowledged. Christian theology, in fact, can be seen not only as compatible with science, but also as the principal motivator for scientific inquiry in the western world. It can be argued that Christian beliefs played a paramount role in the development of modern science. Contrary to the atheists’ intellectual claims, bullying, arrogance, and intimidations here, modern science and intellectual pursuits in the past were predominantly the domain of men who believed in the existence of God and worshipped Him.

As a Christian believer, I find that the beauty and complexity of scientific laws reinforce my faith in a divine intelligent designer who not only created the world, but also superintends it by his divine providence. The idea of a personal creator gives credence to science because we can’t derive rationality from irrationality. The Christian’s belief that the universe came about according to rational intelligent design gives more credence to science than the spurious claim by Stephen Hawking that the existence of gravity means the creation of the universe is inevitable. Anyone with a modicum of knowledge of the history of science can’t discuss the evolution of modern science without acknowledging the contributions of Christian scientists. Yet, the atheists have dishonestly refused to discuss the great contributions of Christian intellectuals who laid the foundation for modern science.

Instead of discussing the influence of these intellectual giants in the advancement of modern science, they have chosen to marginalize the role of Christianity in science. Why are the Ghanaian atheists not talking about the Christians who were trailblazers of modern science? Bertrand Russell, an avowed atheist, in his book, The History of Western Philosophy, extols the contributions of four great Christian intellectuals—Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton—as pre-eminent in the creation of science. Yet the Ghanaian atheists throw their intellectual weight about as if Christianity were the domain of dummies, dishonestly discounting the intellectual acuity of these Christian men. Besides these four are people like Rene Descartes, Robert Boyles, Michael Faraday, Gregor Mendel, Louis Pasteur, and Blaise Pascal, just to mention a few.

To the ordinary person, science is completely inimical to religion. The atheists and the skeptics maintain that science embraces facts and evidence, while religion professes blind faith. Like many simplistic popular notions, this view is supported neither by the history of science nor by reasoning. Yet people who hold such convictions repeat them with such intellectual boldness and confidence that the average person takes them as the truth. One respondent to a post I made some time ago on “The existence of God and the presence of evil,” remarked:


Religion is based on faith and not REASON. Reason is the basis of science and the two can coexist without peril if each one keeps to its method. The problem comes when you try to rationalize God or religion then you yourself looks ridiculous. Religion or God cannot be rationalized in terms of the physical world, or observations. It is illogical anyway you consider it.

People like the above commentator, who take such positions, do not argue for their position, but rather simply assume it. It is true that religion involves faith, but to say that there is no reasoning involved in religion is not only ridiculous, but also insulting to religious people. This kind of thinking is the result of eighteenth-century empiricism and skepticism, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century positivism and pragmatism. The Christian church was constructed as the greatest repository of wisdom and knowledge to society. Scriptures command us to love God with all of the faculties within us: our hearts, souls, and minds (Mat 22:37). We are instructed as Christians to give reasons for what we believe. 1Peter 3:15 says, “Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you.” Paul, according to the Scriptures, reasoned with the Athenian philosophers of his day in an effort to explicate the truths of Christianity to them.

The Christian faith contains deeper truths with philosophical implications that make conceivable the mind’s exploration of nature: man’s place in creation. What we need to do in order to have an objective and analytical debate on this issue is to step out of today’s secularized intellectual climate and ask difficult and challenging questions: Why did modern science arise among avowedly Christian clergies, theologians and professors of medieval and Renaissance Catholic universities and monasteries? If science gradually arose during the medieval and Renaissance periods, but Christianity and science are seen as incompatible, how did this apparent contradiction occur? Modern science began in the seventeenth century in Europe; it is one of the most interesting of all questions to ask why it began when and where it did. Europeans at one time were not materially much better off than people in other great civilizations of antiquity. How did Western Europe surpass other civilizations? What was the philosophical underpinning of the rise of scientific achievements within that period?

Professor Pierre Duhem, one of the greatest scientists and historians of sciences, saw a direct relationship between Christian metaphysics, its rejections of various classical Greek philosophical conceptions, and the birth of self-sustaining science. This eminent French expert looked at the intellectual roots of science and saw theology and science as closely tied together in the medieval era, since the same people often did both. Also, the eminent historian and philosopher of science Stanley Jaki observed that scientific development in other great civilizations outside Europe stagnated or dwindled because of the prevailing ideas that stifled scientific development. He cited, as an example, the cyclical approach to time in other ancient civilizations and the astronomical approach to the heavens, the metaphysical views that either deified nature (animism) or denied it. Both Duhem and Jaki agreed that the principles underlying the scientific method—testability, verification, and repeatability—came from the Judeo-Christian Scriptures.

Furthermore, Herbert Butterfield, in his book, The Origins of Modern Science, persuasively argues that the rise of modern science in the sixteenth century and subsequent periods was not the result of new information, but rather changed minds. P.E. Hodgson also remarks, “Although we seldom recognize it, scientific research requires certain basic beliefs about the order and rationality of matter, and its accessibility to the human mind … they came to us in their full force through the Judeo-Christian belief in an omnipotent God, creator and sustainer of all things. In such a worldview it becomes sensible to try to understand the world, and this is the fundamental reason science developed as it did in the middle ages in Christian Europe, culminating in the brilliant achievements in the seventeenth century. “

These writers believe that while other ancient cultures have given great discoveries to the human race, the Christian West had the unique set of assumptions or theological teachings required by science. The three main assumptions are: the universe (world) is orderly; this orderly universe can be known; and there is a motive to discover that order. These assumptions were not present in the Greek or Roman cultures. The Greek science of nature was not experimental. The ancients believed in a vast hierarchy of beings extending from the deity in the Empyrean heaven at the outer edge of the universe, through graded series of angels. M. B. Foster maintains that the modern investigators of nature were the first to take seriously in their science the Christian doctrine that nature is created. Francis Bacon noted that the Greeks were simply wrong in their approach to nature because they failed to regard it as created.

Many other non-Christian scholars such as Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), a widely respected mathematician and philosopher, and J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967), who was director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, have acknowledged the role of Christianity in the birth of modern science. Whitehead said that Christianity is the mother of science because “of the medieval insistence on the rationality of God.” He noted that because of this belief, the founders of science had an “inexpugnable belief that every detailed occurrence can be correlated with its antecedents in a perfectly definite manner. Without this belief the incredible labors of scientists would be without hope.”

Let me conclude by saying the orthodox faith is not a blind faith: the constituent elements of orthodox Christian faith are notitia (knowledge), assensus (intellectual assent), and fiducia (trust). The orthodox Christian theology relies on cogent logical argument, deduction, and reason. While a great deal of the medieval theologians’ rational arguments start from statements held by faith, they were embodiments of logical analyses and rational arguments. For example, the logical principle known in argumentation as Ockham’s Razor was named after a fourteenth century Franciscan theologian. One can also say that scientific statements are not that much different in the sense that a lot of the implicit assumptions in science are ultimately expressions of faith: Scientific statements involve a number of faith statements. While the specifics of scientific study and reasoning are largely based on empirical evidence, the implicit assumptions underlying them are largely based on faith.