Emerging Scholars Blog

InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Network

Carl Sagan

Nature as a Christian Apologetic: The Open Secret

The BT Tower was an official secret for decades, meaning it did not appear on official survey maps, despite being a conspicuous 627′ London landmark. Is it a better symbol for natural theology than a watch on a beach?

Introduction

In previous blogs, we’ve seen that God reveals himself to man through nature and through scripture and we’ve been addressing questions about how man’s interpretations of these revelations can be reconciled. In the next two blogs we are going to address a different question: can nature be used as a Christian apologetic? In other words can Christians use nature in some way for evangelism?

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. — Psalm 19:1-2

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. — Romans 1:20

These verses imply that something about God can be known from nature. Romans 1:20 further suggests that there is moral accountability for what is revealed in nature. Natural theology is a discipline that systematically explores a proposed link between God and nature. The traditional approach to natural theology sought to “prove” God’s existence from what is observed in nature without reference to the Bible or other sacred documents. William Alston, a Christian philosopher, defined natural theology as

the enterprise of providing support for religious beliefs by starting from premises that neither are nor pre-suppose any religious beliefs.

Problems with the traditional approach to natural theology

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Does science rule out God?

This is the second in a series of blog posts concerned with Christian questions about evolution. A major question for me after I became a Christian was: Does science in general and evolution in particular rule out God? I know that is also a question that troubles many Christians. You may remember that in my first post on the Mechanism of Creation, the View from Science, I said that there were four meanings of evolution. The first three change over time, common descent, evolution by natural selection are conclusions based on scientific evidence. I have put off discussion of the fourth meaning until now. That fourth meaning views evolution as a justification for atheism. In this post, I’m going to show that this meaning is a world-view interpretation of the scientific findings, not a conclusion from science. First, not all scientists are atheists. To be sure several recent books by more fervent atheists claim that science in general and evolution in particular disproves God. Perhaps the best known example is The God Delusion by the biologist Richard Dawkins. Dawkins has famously stated that “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” Two other examples are Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon and Victor Stenger’s God the Failed Hypothesis.

Asa Gray (1810-1888) “could be described as the person who established systematic botany at Harvard and, to some extent, in the United States. . . .”  — From Harvard University Herbaria.

However, there are other well-known scientists who believe that evolution is perfectly compatible with their Christian faith. Examples are Asa Gray who is widely regarded as the most important American botanist of 19th century, Theodosius Dobzhansky, a geneticist and evolutionary biologist, who was instrumental in shaping the modern synthesis of evolutionary biology with genetics and Francis Collins, a geneticist and former Director of the U.S. Human Genome Project, who recently wrote the book, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. Here is the key point. Science is a wonderful and very productive tool for studying nature. But since God exists outside of nature the question of God is not approachable by the empirical methods used by science. Thus science does not have the competency to make definitive statements about the existence or lack of existence of God! [Read more…] about Does science rule out God?