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“Faith-Building Fridays | Your Science Is No Good Here”
Categories: evidences / apologetics, philosophy, theology, wisdom“The reason that no one should believe in miracles—especially the miracle of resurrection—is because it can’t be tested by the scientific method.”
The Scientific Method is the technical term for the type of empirical measurement and testing of certain behaviors based in the natural world. Its key to success is its dependence on repeatable scenarios—testing, observing, and documenting the behaviors of substances, animals, weather patterns, etc. in the natural world. And we would do well to be magnanimous: We owe much of the modern world’s convenience and safety to the scientific method and the findings that have been wrought through it. But its dependence upon repeatable scenarios is a double-edged sword: it leads to greater reliability but is also a limitation that we must acknowledge.
The trouble for Christian apologetics is not with the Method itself, but with those who see it as a universal template for determining all knowledge and reality. When we believe that “science” is what will make humanity whole and essentially *save* us, we have put far too much faith in it. This is the problem of those who make the claim from this article’s first sentence: It is that when we approach the Bible’s events, we are dealing with historical people (which, by definition, are not repeatable) and supernatural scenarios (which, by definition, cannot be measured empirically).
As a general rule, Christians would do well to temper our faith in “science,” so far as that is defined by a naturalistic worldview. It’s certainly not always a bad thing, but we must realize its limitations. Believers ought to read with a discerning eye when anything claims that “science” has discovered the key to something which the Method cannot sufficiently explain. For some examples, consider some magazine and online article headlines: “Science discovers why we’re unhappy,” or “Science discovers why some people are good parents and others aren’t,” or any such thing. Likewise, we ought to temper our faith in its promises for the future, especially when we are told that it will make humanity whole. For some examples, consider promises like these: “Someday, science will help us stop every disease and injury from happening,” or “With enough scientific advances, we’ll be able to stop all wars, because all the resource and commerce problems will be solved.” Only when Christ is fully accepted by faith in every believing heart can we expect to see the world saved in such ways. It won’t be “science” that saves us; it will be God, through his Son Jesus of Nazareth.
At the end of the day, our acceptance or rejection of the Bible’s history comes down to faith. Do we have faith in the Scientific Method to tell us all that is real in the world? Or do we have faith in the One who created the world which the Method can only measure? The Bible’s miracles, and especially the resurrection, must be accepted by faith (see Jn. 20:30-31’s emphasis on belief). But with the preponderance of other evidence for Christianity and the Bible, we have all the reasons necessary to put our faith in them.
- Dan Lankford, minister
