SCIENCE and SCRIPTURE. Is the Bible Reliable?

The famous evolutionist Julian Huxley once said, "Any view of God as a personal being is becoming frankly untenable. The difficulty of understanding the functions of a personal ruler in a universe which the march of knowledge is showing us ever more clearly as self-ordered and self-ordering in every minutest detail is becoming more and more apparent" (Essays of a Biologist [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923], p. 217). His sentiments were echoed by the British philosopher Bertrand Russell: "That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins--all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand" ("A Free Man's Worship" in Selected Papers of Bertrand Russell [New York: The Modern Library, 1927], p. 3). Others have said that as science finds explanations of natural phenomena, God becomes smaller and smaller. Once God was the Almighty; now science is the almighty.

Our Christian faith is under constant attack. Many in our day would tell us that there is a conflict between science and Scripture, that the Bible reflects a pre-scientific world view and is scientifically inaccurate. We are told we are faced with a choice between the facts of science and the fantasy of Scripture. The conflict stems from the fact that, all too often, science has overstepped its bounds. Instead of being a method of discovering knowledge, it has become an all- encompassing world view. No one has stated that more clearly than the British mathematician Karl Pearson: "The goal of science is clear--it is nothing short of the complete interpretation of the universe" (cited by Gordon H. Clark, A Christian View of Men and Things [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952], p. 201).

One presupposition held by many scientists is that "the scientific method is the sole gateway to the whole region of knowledge" (Pearson, cited by Clark, p. 201). In other words, science allegedly has absolute authority. Science says that truth is discovered empirically, while the Bible says that man can't find ultimate truth on his own (1 Cor. 2:9-11; Rom. 11:33). It is here that one of the fundamental conflicts between science and Scripture is found. Science holds that only that which is observable and testable is true. Christianity holds that ultimate truth is found only in God's revelation.

As Christians we accept the facts of science. What we do not accept are the interpretations of those facts offered by some scientists. There is no conflict between the established facts of science and the Bible, though scientists often make unproved assumptions (such as the theory of evolution) that do conflict with Scripture. Although the Bible is written in everyday language and doesn't use modern scientific terminology, that does not mean it is scientifically inaccurate. Indeed, many of the world's greatest scientists have accepted the authority of the Bible, such as Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, Lister, Pasteur, Kelvin, and others.

The conflict between science and Scripture comes when science steps outside the realm of that which is observable and reproducible and speculates on origins, values, and destinies. At that point science has ceased to be science and instead become a religious viewpoint, since those things are not subject to observation and experimentation.

Many Christians assume the Bible contains scientific errors, and that it is authoritative only when it speaks on spiritual matters. But that is saying in effect that the God who wrote the Bible knew a lot about spiritual things, but not too much about science. To say that parts of the Bible are accurate, but others are not is to deny the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible. Since God knows all things, and what He speaks is true (cf., Titus 1:2), all that the Bible teaches is accurate, not just its spiritual truths.

The issue is not between science and Scripture; the issue is whether man will submit to the Word of God. Romans 1:28 describes people who refuse to submit as those who "did not like to retain God in their knowledge." Because they rejected God's revelation of Himself as Creator, men came up with the only alternative: that the universe and everything in it just happened.

There are three principles basic to science: matter, energy, and the space-time continuum. Science tells us that none of the three can exist without the other two; therefore all three must have existed from the beginning of the universe. Note that Genesis 1:1 mentions all three: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

The Bible says in Genesis 2:2 that "God ended His work which He had made." The matter and energy that was part of the original creation is all there will ever be; no new matter or energy is being created. The complete cessation of creative activity has been recognized by modern science as the first law of thermodynamics, or the law of the conservation of mass and energy. According to this law, which is one of the most universal and certain of all scientific principles, nothing is now being created or destroyed. That principle is illustrated in the following verses:

1. Isaiah 40:26--"Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, who bringeth out their host by number; he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might; for he is strong in power. Not one faileth."

2. Nehemiah 9:6--"Thou, even thou art Lord alone; thou hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth, and all things that are in it, the seas, and all that is in them, and thou preservest them all."

3. Ecclesiastes 3:14-15--"I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be forever; nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it .... That which hath been is now, and that which is to be hath already been."

This law, also known as the law of entropy, tells us that though energy cannot be destroyed, its ability to do useful work decreases. Systems tend to degenerate from a state of order to a state of chaos. Science tells us that eventually this process will lead to the death of the universe.

The Bible teaches that the second law of thermodynamics is a result of the Fall. Romans 8:20-22 says, "The creation was made subject to vanity, not willingly but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope. Because the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." Although that passage pictures the entire creation as progessively breaking down, it also gives us hope for the future. When God creates the new heaven and the new earth, the second law of thermodynamics will not operate. In that new creation there will be no more curse, death, decay, or sin.

Hydrology is the branch of science that studies the waters of the earth. In the hydrologic cycle, water evaporates into the atmosphere and is redeposited onto the earth in the form of rain or snow. That precipitation feeds rivers, which flow into the ocean. Evaporation from the ocean forms clouds, from which precipitation falls on the land, and the cycle repeats itself.

The science of hydrology was founded in the seventeenth century by Mariotte, Perrault, and Halley, but the hydrologic cycle is clearly described in Scripture:

1. Isaiah 55:10-11--"As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth, and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so shall My word be which goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it" (NASB).

2. Ecclesiastes 1:7--"All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full." That's because of the hydrologic cycle.

3. Job 36:27-28--"He [God] draws up the drops of water, they distill rain from the mist, which the clouds pour down, they drip upon man abundantly" (NASB).

4. Psalm 135:7--"He causeth the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth; he maketh lightnings for the rain." This verse speaks of evaporation and precipitation.

5. Job 26:8--"He bindeth up the waters in his thick clouds; and the cloud is not torn under them." This verse speaks of the formation of clouds by condensation.

6. Job 28:10--"He cutteth out rivers among the rocks." This verse describes run-off.

7. Job 38:22--"Hast thou entered into the treasuries of the snow? Or hast thou seen the treasuries of the hail?" This speaks of the clouds.

1. Job 22:12--"Is not God in the height of heaven? And behold the height of the stars, how high they are!" Although the height of the stars was unknown until the nineteenth century (Jean Sloat Morton, Ph.D., Science in the Bible [Chicago: Moody, 1978], p. 15), the book of Job recognized they were very distant from the earth.

2. Jeremiah 31:37--"Thus saith the Lord, if heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the Lord." This verse mentions the immense size of the universe. It also tells us that God will not permanently set aside Israel.

1. Jeremiah 33:22--"As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, neither the sand of the sea measured, so will I multiply the seed of David, my servant." The invention of the telescope in the seventeenth century made men aware of the vast number of stars. Beforehand scientists had said the total number was only in the hundreds or thousands. Only about four thousand can be counted with the unaided eye. Today no one knows how many stars there are, but "with the giant telescopes now available ..., astronomers have statistically estimated that there are about 1025 stars (that is, 10 million billion billion) in the known universe. One can also calculate that this is about the number of grains of sand in the world" (Henry M. Morris, The Biblical Basis for Modern Science [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984], p. 156; The Genesis Record [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1976], p. 384). The Bible is accurate when it states the impossibility of numbering the stars.

2. 1 Corinthians 15:41--"There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differeth from another star in glory." With the development of modern astronomy has come the realization that there is great variety of sizes and degrees of brightness among stars. If the Bible had stated that all stars were the same, it would have been in error. However, it doesn't say that because God knows as much about stars as He does about salvation!

1. Jeremiah 31:35-36--"Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun for light by day, and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night...'If this fixed order departs from before Me,' declares the Lord, 'then the offspring of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before Me forever'" (NASB). When I was a kid I remember thinking it was amazing how the planets all stayed in their orbits. The orbits of the moon and planets are so constant that eclipses can be predicted with great accuracy.

2. Psalm 19:6--Referring to the sun the psalmist says, "His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it; and there is nothing hidden from the heat thereof." This verse took on new meaning when it was discovered that the sun, along with the other stars in our galaxy, revolve around the center of the galaxy. Astronomy books currently teach that the sun completes one such circuit every 250 million years (e.g., Robert Jastrow and Malcom H. Thompson, Astronomy: Fundamentals and Frontiers [New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1977], p. 6)

Isostasy is a field of study within geology that deals with the balance maintained within the earth's crust. The differing weights of the various types of rock maintain a delicate balance; otherwise the earth would wobble in its rotation like a lopsided basketball. Isaiah 40:12 says, "[God] hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and measured out heaven with the span, and measured the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance." Psalm 104:5, 8 tells us that God "established the earth upon its foundations, so that it will not totter .... The mountains rose; the valleys sank down to the place which [He] didst establish for them" (NASB). The Bible teaches that the earth is balanced.

People in ancient times thought of the earth as being a flat disk, like a record, surrounded by a river called Oceanus. It was believed that anyone foolish enough to sail through the Pillars of Hercules (the Strait of Gibraltar) would fall off the earth into nothingness.

Ptolemy, in the second century after Christ, proposed a spherical earth as the stationary center of the universe, with the sun and the other heavenly bodies revolving around it. Not until the sixteenth century with the discoveries of

In contrast to the widely held ancient belief that the earth was flat, the Bible clearly teaches that it is round. Isaiah 40:22 says, "It is He who sitteth upon the circle of the earth." Job 38:14 says, "It [the earth] is turned like clay to the seal." That is a reference to the small cylinders used in ancient times to put one's seal on a clay document. Those cylinders had sticks through the center, like a rolling pin, and while the clay was still soft, they would be rolled across it, leaving the impression of the seal. The Bible tells us the earth rotates on its axis like a cylinder making a seal.

In the seventeenth century George Hadley discovered that the winds circulate around the earth. Thousands of years earlier the book of Ecclesiastes referred to this phenomenon: "The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to its circuits."

Before the time of Galileo, it was not known that the air had weight. Evangelista Torricelli, a student of Galileo, invented the first barometer, proving the air has pressure. However, Scripture implied that thousands of years before. Job 28:25 says, "He imparted weight to the wind" (NASB).

In the seventeenth century William Harvey discovered the circulatory system, demonstrating that the blood sustains life. In ancient and medieval times it was common practice to bleed sick people. Now that we understand the importance of blood in sustaining life, doctors sometimes give blood transfusions to sick persons. The importance of the blood in sustaining life is recognized in the statement of Leviticus 17:11 that "the life of the flesh is in the blood."

In 1953 a medical book was published entitled Personality Manifestations in Psychosomatic Illness by psychiatrist Oliver Spurgeon English (Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders?). It discussed how emotions can cause debilitating and even fatal illnesses. The book diagrammed the emotional center of the brain from which nerve fibers descend to every area of the body. Because of these intricate connections, emotional stress can cause anything from headaches to foot itch, as well as serious illness. The book said the emotional center produces illness in three ways:

1. By affecting the flow of blood--Emotional stress can increase or decrease the amount of blood in certain areas of the body. For example, anger often makes a person red in the face.

2. By affecting the secretions of certain glands--Have you ever gotten nervous and had your mouth dry up before you gave a speech? Your brain sent certain impulses through your nervous system that dried up the glands that provide the fluid in your mouth. Excessive emotional stress can produce excess thyroxin, which is then poured into the blood stream. That can cause illnesses such as a goiter or even serious heart disease.

3. By affecting the muscles--Emotion can change a person's physical health by creating muscle tension. The nerves affect the muscles by causing them to tighten up and become tense.

God knows that our emotions are very important to good health. Proverbs 16:24 says, "Pleasant words are like an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones." Emotional stress caused by criticism and angry words can adversely affect our health. Proverbs 17:22 says, "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones." A happy person tends to be healthy; an unhappy person tends to be unhealthy.

In his book None of These Diseases (Old Tappan, N.J.: Revell, 1984), Dr. S.I. McMillen cited this example of important medical principles found in the Bible:

"For many hundreds of years the dreaded disease leprosy had killed and maimed countless millions of people in Europe. The extent of the horrible malady among Europeans is described by Dr. George Rosen, Columbia University emeritus professor of public health: 'Leprosy cast the greatest blight that threw its shadow over the daily life of medieval humanity. Fear of all other diseases taken together can hardly be compared to the terror spread by leprosy. Not even the Black Death in the fourteenth century or the appearance of syphilis toward the end of the fifteenth century produced a similar state of fright.... Early in the Middle Ages, during the sixth and seventh centuries, it began to spread more widely in Europe and became a serious social and health problem. It was endemic particularly among the poor and reached a terrifying peak in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.'

"What did the physicians offer to stop the ever-increasing ravages of leprosy? Some taught that it was brought on by eating spiced food, spoiled fish, or diseased pork. Other physicians said it was caused by 'malign conjunction of the planets.' Naturally, their suggestions for prevention were utterly worthless.

"What brought the leprosy epidemic of the Dark Ages under control? George Rosen gives us the answer: 'Leadership was taken by the church, as the physicians had nothing to offer. The church took as its guiding principle the concept of contagion as embodied in the Old Testament.... This idea and its practical consequences are defined with great clarity in the book of Leviticus.... Once the condition of leprosy had been established, the patient was to be segregated and excluded from the community. Following the precepts laid down in Leviticus the church undertook the task of combatting leprosy ... it accomplished the first great feat ... in methodical eradication of disease.

"The procedures came from Leviticus 13:46: 'As long as he has the infection he remains unclean. He must live alone; he must live outside the camp' (NIV). Although the 'leprosy' of the Bible was much more ravaging than the modern disease we call 'leprosy' and although it may actually have been a completely different disease, the biblical method for control of infectious skin diseases is unequaled in the history of ancient man.

" Other historians credit the Bible for the dawning of a new era in the effective control of disease: 'The laws against leprosy in Leviticus 13 may be regarded as the first model of a sanitary legislation'" (pp. 21-22).

We could consider evidence from other branches of science, such as biology and anthropology, and still find the Bible accurate when it touches on those and any other fields. That's because the God who inspired it is the Creator of the world. Far from refuting Scripture, science helps confirm it. In the final analysis, all truth--scientific and spiritual--is one. Jesus said, "Thy word is truth" (John 17:17). The Bible speaks accurately on any subject it touches on because God inspired its writing.

Using the keyword "belongsinreligion" for your own article, orignally posted in the Religion forum, is peculiar. Perhaps you don't understand that keyword's genesis.

The originators of it imagine(d) themselves as posting police, and did not want any even remotely religious content posted outside the Religion forum, despite the clear statements of FR's founder and owner. So, "belongs in Religion" as a sort of keyword "protest" was born, along with a lot of negative stuff in keywords, mocking terms, rudeness, etcetera, that came to be known as keyword spamming.

I'd think you would want to disassociate yourself from that, and remove that keyword from your list of appropriate ones to use, as a result.

The Drake Equation of some years ago was an attempt to calculate the number of advanced civilizations in our galaxy that might be able to communicate at radio frequencies. No one knew those variables either, so he just plugged-in what he thought were very conservative values. My own feeling is that he overestimated them, but clearly, he - and I - thought it was plausible to do this.

It’s not necessary to assign a specific value to ascertain a “feeling” for the sense of probabilities overall, in the sense that we would use the word “probably” to assign a wide range of possibilities to as wide a range of considerations in general without having any definite idea of the actual odds determining their outcomes.

With this in mind just consider our place in the universe. We’re just out from the middle of a spiral galaxy where in it’s outer reaches metals would be very poor given the paucity of middle generation stars. Wherein too were we closer in toward the galactic center we wouldn’t be able to see outside it and the danger of cosmic collisions would be higher given the greater density.

We’re in a solar system with a large outer planet like Jupiter that sweeps up a lot of debris that we otherwise might have to be faced with.

We’re on a planet with plate tectonics which recycles and conversely reproduces oceanic crust without which chemical processes we likely wouldn’t be around to discuss them to begin with.

We have a Moon much larger than average size for our planet which stabilizes our precession yielding us seasons, allows us test relativity during solar eclipses….

There are myriad features all about us from the sub-microscopic to the universe at large that can be viewed in terms of probabilities, many of them fantastic.

And I’ll bet that God is behind them all.

There are at least about 10 sextillion stars at a conservative estimate in the universe. About a hundred billion galaxies each containing from a low of 10 million to a high of 10 trillion stars with a average of 100 to 400 billion stars. In the Milky Way the best guess is that maybe 30 billion stars out of about 200 billion have some sort of planet orbiting them. If say only one planet in one to ten thousand can support life in any form that still leaves lots of potential for life. The rub comes in when you consider what are the odds of any planet developing complex life beyond simple organisms. Even on our planet it has taken a whole series of fortunate events to provide stability long enough for complex life to form. How much rarer yet would the occurrence of intelligent life be? You are right a argument using unknowable numbers is questionable but the numbers only need to be a approximation to make a person realize how blessed we are to be here having this discussion at all. No matter how a person interprets God, even if you wish to consider God as mere random chance as a skeptic, at least pause and give thanks to the quirky universe. If a person wishes to approach the universe with spirituality, the Christian Bible is a brilliant place to start for as the original poster pointed out it does not really contradict science.

Even on our planet it has taken a whole series of fortunate events to provide stability long enough for complex life to form.

Yep. It was apparently only bacteria for a BILLION years. Even after relatively complex cells with nuclei's and organelles came along, it was still (IIRC) another BILLION years or more, close to 2 BILLION actually, before multicellular creatures developed.

The fact that these events took so long does tend to suggest they were highly unlikely. We do indeed seem to be lucky.

It's worth remembering, btw, that even we complex animals are, basically, only one half of an "alternation of generations." I mean that you can think, for instance, of the human zygotes, eggs and sperm, as being a distinct (single-celled) generation of human creatures. They have to exist so that we -- the multicellular types -- can exist.

Thanks, zygotes!

LOL! I must admit I overlooked the sublimity (is that a word?) of that Woody Allen bit at the time.

I distinctly remember, however, reading up on protists (single celled eukaryotes) and learning that they typically have a life cycle that alternates haploid and diploid generations. I hadn't been fully aware of that before, and it flabbergasted me when I suddenly realized that plants and animals are "merely" a special case where the diploid generation happens to go multicellular. Although of course there's a whole lot to that "merely," it was still the most stunned I recall ever being by a scientific revelation. Very "circle of life" and "unity of nature" type stuff. And I didn't even inhale.

I heard the most amazing Paul Harvey clip where he talked about a man who was unsure of his belief in God at Christmas. His family went to church while he stayed home.

Then he encountered a bunch of birds that he tried to herd into his bard since the weather was below frigid cold. The birds distrusted him and he opined that if he could only speak to them in their own language he could convince them that he was only trying to save them. At that point he understood why God sent Jesus to us.

Paul Harvey told it much better than I did. But it illustrates the fact that God does indeed make himself understood through Christ.

It illustrates the fact that God does indeed make himself understood through Christ.

I don’t think Paul told it any better, because I remember hearing him tell it! Good for you to retell it!

Sometimes I’m not sure what is love. We know God must be very big if He created the universe, the world, and everything in it. To demonstrate His love, He made Himself small enough to grow in Mary’s womb and be one of us. That’s sure contrary to our nature! No wonder the angels came singing, “Glory to God in The Highest, and On Earth, Peace and Goodwill to Men!” What a miracle it is when He makes this real in our hearts!
Happy, Happy Christmas!

First of all, the size of the universe is not known - the observable universe increases at every moment.

Just that, ends any sense of reliability in any formula you can come up with.

Never mind the wild assumption that life, as we know it - is life, as it is known. Given we haven't even reached the bow shock of the Sun, it's a tad presumptuous to assume you have any idea what might be normal circumstances for life in the universe.

And even that is assuming there's only one universe in one dimension....or that that something like chaotic inflation didn't occur, giving rise to non-symmetrical fundamental forces in who-knows how many bubble-universes.

No matter what, your calculation and conclusion are absurd.

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