“Science and faith are partners in the search for knowledge.” – Matt Carder
KEY SCRIPTURE
(Click on each passage listed to view it at bible.com)
- Psalm 19:1-4 The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.
- Genesis 2:12
- Psalm 104:5
START TALKING
- What’s your favorite sci-fi or superhero movie (or TV show)?
- Science class in high school? Wonder and delight, or confusion and torture?
START SHARING
- In some circles, it is a common thought that increased scientific knowledge will drive out genuine faith, that they cannot coexist are are opposed to one another? How have you seen this play out in culture? In your own life? How to you try to hold the two in balance?
- The temptation is to either treat science and faith as being in total conflict (one end of the spectrum) or totally independent of one another (the other end). Matt posed the questions, What if faith informs science, and science informs faith?” What would that mean for how you view your understanding of science and of faith?
- Matt made the statement, “Science provides knowledge about the natural world. But there is no experimental model for supernatural phenomenon.” What’s your reaction to that way of seeing faith and science? Does it create discomfort? Is it relieving?
- “Science doesn’t answer all of our questions. And the Bible doesn’t provide a complete picture of how the world works.” What’s the hardest part of that reality for you?
- Do you know anyone who is studying or working in a field of science? If that’s you, how has the tension between science and faith played out?
START LIVING
- If you know someone who is studying or working in a field of science, ask them to share their own journey of living in the balance of science and faith. Ask them to share how science informs their faith.
- Check out the resources below and spend some time exploring the questions you have that create tension between your faith and the scientific knowledge in the world. Take time to share with someone a few things that you learned or want to explore more.
RESOURCES & QUOTES MENTIONED
- exploregod.com
- reasons.org
- biologos.org
- The Language of God by Francis S. Collins
“Science and religion cannot be reconciled…Religion has failed, and its failures should stand exposed. Science should be acknowledged as king.” Peter Akins
“As science advances, there seems to be less and less for God to do…Whatever it is we cannot explain lately is attributed to God…And then, after a while, ewe explain it, and so that’s no longer God’s realm.” – Carl Sagan
“I think that we have misinterpreted the Scriptures many times and we’ve tried to make the Scriptures say things they weren’t meant to say. I think that we have made a mistake by thinking the Bible is a scientific book. The Bible is not a book of science. The Bible is a book of Redemption, and of course I accept the Creation story. I believe that God did create the universe. I believe that God created man, and whether it came by an evolutionary process and at a certain point He took this person or being and made him a living soul or not, does not change the fact that God did create man…whichever way God did it makes no difference as to what man is and man’s relationship to God.” – Billy Graham
“Either half my colleagues are enormously stupid, or else the science of Darwinism is fully compatible with conventional religious beliefs– and equally compatible with atheism.” _ Stephen Jay Gould
“I have found a desire within myself that no experience in this world can satisfy; the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” – C.S. Lewis
“This granted, and it being true that two truths cannot contradict one another, it is the function of expositors to seek out the true senses of scriptural texts. These will unquestionably accord with the physical conclusions which manifest sense and necessary demonstrations have previously made certain to us.” Galileo
“The scientific data God gives us can sometimes serve as his way of warning us when we are standing too close to the picture, at the wrong angle, or with the wrong expectations, to be able to see the inspired pattern he manes it to convey to us.” – Donald Mackay
“Although there is clearly an overlap between science and religion, neither is an exhaustive source of truth.” – John Polkinghorne
“Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish.” – Pope John Paul II
“I was merely thinking God’s thoughts after him. Since we astronomers are priests of the highest God in regard to the book of nature, it benefits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the glory of God.” – Johannes Kepler
WORSHIP SET
