Science And Faith

By Author: Johnon Philip
Total Articles: 90
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"Science" is the name of that systematic knowledge which we collect about this physical world through certain well-defined activities. This knowledge is never complete and therefore man's scientific activity continues every day with more and more vigor. Further, a good proportion of the knowledge obtained by science is not final or absolute, and that is the reason why we keep hearing that scientists have modified certain theories and that they have reject others.

The difference between knowledge collected in scientific and unscientific ways is this that while there is no way of checking the correctness or wrongness of the unscientific information, there are numerous way to check the correctness of information collected in the scientific way. Further, all the information collected about this universe is not always equally reliable. But if this information has been collected by the methods of science, then there are several built-in methods by which we can estimate the reliability of the information to a fair extant. For example, when a scientist presents a new thought titled "hypothesis" we know immediately that here ...
... is something which is only an assumption. It is least reliable at this moment, but if experiments support this assumption, then it will turn out to be fully reliable; if not, we will reject it.

All intelligent people should realize the great value of science in learning more accurately of this physical world. At the same time they should remember that since sciences have been designed by us for studying only things related to this physical world, they cannot be used to study, prove, or disprove anything about things which are nonphysical in nature. Further, since all human activities are influenced by assumptions or opinions the science of every generation surely contains at least a few things which are not right. But the scientific method has this beauty that eventually we discover such wrong information and discard them.

Faith is the starting point of everything in science. All the basic assumptions of science have been accepted in faith because they cannot be proved. At the same time it is our faith in an ordered and systematic universe which leads us to investigate this world. If there were no possibility of order, and if the laws of the universe were varying from time to time in a random manner then scientific investigation would be meaningless. So it is man's firm faith in the meaningfulness of such investigation that has led researchers to take up scientific investigation of the universe. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that modern science was initiated and developed by a group of Christians who were motivated to do this because of their firm belief in a God who sustains His universe.

This implies that faith is not a dirty, outdated, or unscientific word as is often claimed. On the contrary, faith is the starting point of every intelligent human activity. Whether a particular faith is correct or wrong becomes clear when scientific investigation is done. Such objective faith is not to be confused with superstitions and blind faith. Objective faith is the starting point of all intelligent activity, including the Christian faith.

Both evolution as well as creation are beliefs. They are meant to explain the origin of the universe, a phenomenon which none of the scientists have ever seen. Whenever we deal with things which are not seen or which cannot be seen, all what we can have is a mental picture of what it might be like. This picture is then transferred into a "model" which is then examined with the help of mathematics. Since both evolution as well as creation are unseen in the laboratory, we study them with the help of models. They are known as the Evolution Model and the Creation Model. The model which is able to explain maximum number of facts, and also able to predict maximum number of phenomena, is considered closer to reality according to the norms of science.

So, even though the origin of the universe and life are unseen realities, they can be tested through the models which depend upon the present reality. When this is done, the evolution model turns out to be far from reality. According to this model, random (unplanned) events should give rise to order, there should be an upward growth all over the universe, and there should be numerous fossils to demonstrate the evolution of life in the past. But what has been observed is just the opposite. In the physical world random events always destroy order. Instead of upward growth there is degeneration in the universe and the fossils do not give even a single undisputed demonstration of evolution. On the other hand, the Creation Model predicts that the universe will show conservation of certain aspects while there will be an overall degeneration in conformity to the principles of creation. This is exactly what we find : there are many conservation laws in the universe, and at the same time there is an overall degeneration. The fossil record brings up different categories of animals and plants so abruptly and without any trace of evolution that many eminent scientists have confessed that it favors the creation model more than the evolution model.

Evolution and Creation both have been expressed as testable scientific models. They have been examined with the help of all the systematic procedure developed for scientific investigation. The best available conclusion is that the Creation model is more valid than the Evolution model. The Evolution model still continues as a hypothesis (assumption), and not as a proved fact. This is the reason why many scientists are abandoning their blind faith in evolution while others are demanding that whenever Evolution is taught, Creation should be taught as a valid scientists alternative.
Dr. Philip is the principal of Free Courses, a distance program. He also has Free Apologetics Courses where numerous free courses are available.