Does
God Keep Up with Modern Science?
SYNOPSIS:
If God knows everything, then, of course,
He agrees with everything discovered by modern science.
There is absolutely no conflict between Himself and
science.
When humans learn something new about the world,
they are only uncovering what He knew from the beginning.
Unfortunately many humans who believe in God
are stuck in the
human understandings of the world
that existed way back in the days when people 'listened to God'.
These world-views are now hundreds
of years
out of date.
OUTLINE:
1.
MEDICAL SCIENCE IS THE BEST WAY
TO UNDERSTAND
DISEASE AND CURE.
2.
COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN.
3. BEWARE OF FALSE PROPHETS.
4.
YOU SHOULD RELY ON EVIDENCE-BASED SCIENCE.
5.
EVOLUTION IS THE WAY THE SPECIES CAME INTO BEING.
6.
DON'T
PRAY FOR MIRACLES.
7. LET'S ALL KEEP UP WITH MODERN SCIENCE.
Does
God Keep Up with Modern Science?
by James Leonard Park
1. MEDICAL SCIENCE IS THE BEST
WAY
TO UNDERSTAND
DISEASE AND CURE.
Modern medicine did not exist at all
when people were last receiving revelations from God.
So the Bible has only the most primitive understanding
of disease.
Did God ever believe that demons were the cause of disease?
Most diseases are caused by micro-organisms
that were too small
for people to know anything about until a few hundred years ago.
And because human beings lacked this background of understanding,
and because no one had yet invented the microscope,
there was not way for people to understand microbiology.
But now, everyone can keep up with modern science.
Whatever is correctly
discovered by the sciences is a fact
that should be accepted by everyone who believes in God.
People who don't believe in God usually do not reject
science.
But some human beings are stuck in primitive world-views
simply because when their early religious books were written,
those authors knew nothing about science.
The people of Earth should continue all
scientific explorations,
including searching for the causes and cures of all diseases.
God should not prohibit the use of modern
science.
And ancient dietary rules based on health worries of the
past
can be relaxed when sanitation improves
so that the ancient rules are no longer appropriate.
2. COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN.
How has this problem arisen?
Communication broke down between God and human beings
hundreds or even thousands of years ago.
Some of God's people are stuck in ancient understandings of the world
because they have not been
listening for the last few centuries.
They waste their time reading ancient texts,
as if all truth is to be found in very old writings.
But those old 'scriptures' are always limited
to the understanding of
the people who wrote them.
When they did not understand the real causes of disease,
they just put down whatever guesses seemed right to them.
If persons of faith were listening to God today,
He would set them right about modern science:
Being faithful to God does
not require clinging to ancient world-views.
Instead of sending words into the minds
of ancient scribes,
which so easily got mixed up with their own speculations,
God uses scientific investigation to explain
the truth of
the
world.
We should pay attention to
what the
scientists are discovering.
That is a much more reliable means of understanding the world
than trying to discover truth by re-reading the ancient books
written by people who were limited by their prior
understandings.
If God had a reliable way of disclosing the truth,
He would have His scribes write down
the results of all future
scientific research.
God already knows what will
become known to human beings
hundreds and even thousands
of years from now.
But God cannot write the physics and chemistry books of
the future.
The world as known by natural science a
thousand years from now
will be very different from the world as understood in the third
millennium.
We should not fear what science will discover.
It is all good.
3. BEWARE OF FALSE PROPHETS.
Occasionally there are human beings
who claim to
have revelations from God about how the world operates.
But, so far, these have all been people
who were stuck in ancient understandings of the world.
We should not believe
everything
that is proclaimed in the name of God.
Be wary of any human
being who claims to speak for God.
How will you be able to separate true revelations from false
prophecies?
Here is an easy test:
If the prophet says something contrary to science,
then that person is a false
prophet,
proclaiming something coming from his own mind,
not something that comes from God.
God will not reveal anything that is
contrary
to modern science.
4. YOU SHOULD RELY ON
EVIDENCE-BASED SCIENCE.
We should rely on the scientific method for
discovering the truth
about how the world is put together and how it operates.
We should
stop
praying for God to intervene in the world.
That is not the way the world works.
You have at your disposal many useful tools
for making the world a
better place to live.
So get to work
instead of wasting your time and effort
trying to please God so that He will do your work for you.
There is nothing sacred about the ancient
world-views.
We should give up teaching outdated understandings of the world
as if that folklore were truth
from on high.
This is the best we can do right now.
We will uncover the facts about the world
using the investigative methods of the sciences.
There is no way that God can
tell us something
that we are not ready to
understand.
We have a similar experience whenever you try to educate our children:
They have to learn to walk before they can learn to dance.
They must understand cause and effect
before they can understand the operation of the world.
We teach them only what they are able to understand
at that particular stage in their development.
Likewise, the peoples of the Earth will only discover
those facts that they are ready to understand
—the
facts that fit within their world-views at that time and place.
Perhaps God wishes he had a shortcut for explaining
everything.
But it has taken us millions
of years
to arrive at our current levels
of understanding.
(Yes, I said millions of
years:
The human race really is that old,
no matter what some people say in
the name of God.)
Progress was especially slow in the first few million years of human
growth.
But now we human beings are beginning to advance more rapidly.
Since God cannot communicate truths by
electronic means,
we will have to depend on the slow methods of science.
5. EVOLUTION IS THE
WAY THE
SPECIES CAME INTO BEING.
Charles Darwin got it right in the middle
1800s
when he discovered that the differences among the animals
was due to evolutionary
change rather than special
creation.
God did not create all of the plants and animals as they now exist.
Rather, after billions of
years without any
forms of life on the Earth,
some simple molecules got together,
linking up because of their natural chemical bonds.
This first string of DNA was the beginning of all life on Earth.
And for the last 3.5 billion
years,
new forms of life have been emerging from the earlier forms.
Over these billions
of years of life on the Earth,
most of the life-forms that ever existed have become extinct.
But those forms of life that were best adapted
to their environments survived and reproduced.
The beginning of human life was about 7 million
years ago,
when our first ancestors branched off from the other large apes.
And it took most of these millions of years
for us to develop brains
large enough
for us to even begin to speculate about anything.
In what sense should we say that God created the
universe?
Perhaps scientific
investigation is the way to discover how He did it.
Exactly how life emerged from non-life is an amazing story.
And perhaps even God is glad
that human beings have
finally discovered how it happened.
6. DON'T
PRAY FOR MIRACLES.
How does God feel when people pray for
miracles?
Why should they pray for healing
when they already have the medical means to cure themselves?
When we can take an antibiotic to kill the micro-organisms,
taking the drugs is
the best means of healing, not praying to God.
God does not have the power to change the laws of nature just for us.
Likewise, we should not blame God for any diseases
we develop.
Cancer, for example, is just a part of the natural world,
not a specific punishment sent down by God.
We should use all our best methods
of preventing the emergence and
spread
of cancer.
And we should use our best scientific methods
of dealing with cancer
when
it occurs.
Praying to God might make us feel better,
which could mobilize our own immune systems.
But we should not expect God to intervene
to kill any cancer cells in
our
bodies.
7. LET'S ALL KEEP UP WITH
MODERN
SCIENCE.
Whenever we have opportunities to advance
modern science,
we should move science forward.
Some of us will study natural science to understand the world
better.
God probably entirely approves of such advances in understanding.
If we become scientists professionally,
we will discover the facts of the world
much more efficiently than the scholars who study ancient writings.
We should not worry that natural
science will
undermine 'faith'.
'Faith' should never have been identified with ancient world-views.
We should accept the facts of the natural world
whenever these facts are well supported by scientific evidence.
AUTHOR:
James Park began his college career in the natural sciences.
Much more will be discovered about him on his website
---the last link below.
Created
January 8, 2009; Revised 1-23-2009; 1-28-2009; 3-20-2009; 7-2-2009;
2-25-2010; 9-10-2010; 2-26-2011; 11-19-2011;
7-4-2012; 10-29-13; 11-5-2015; 1-15-2020;