Bible and Science in Conflict

Rev.B.Zirsangliana

Introduction
When we speak of Christian Faith, it includes both the human encounter with God and the Church dogmas which are formulated on the basis of the Bible. On the other hand, the scientific development in this paper would cover the pre Christian era to the present time. Ever since the medieval period scientific development had numerous impacts upon the Christian faith. The scientific theories and new inventions challenged and questioned about the Christian faith and through out the centuries the Biblical accounts and the scientific explanation are always in conflict. The Bible, with its religious authenticity tells us about the universe and the created beings. On the other hand the scientists, with their scientific inventions have a different cosmology and explanation. The Biblical cosmology and the creation narratives are very much determined by the oriental mythological world view. This had been always in conflict with the scientific view which is based on experiment and new invention. In the past the pioneering effort of some scientists were accused as heresy, and they were even persecuted by the Church.

Pre - scientific era and the Christian thought
The pre-scientific here mainly refers to the Greek-era. During this period the dominant cosmology and world view were very much determined by the Greek philosophers. “In Pagan Greek mythology the physical world was believed either to have been generated by God or to have been emanated from Him, or at any rate to be of the same nature as God. Thus, nature itself was regarded as divine and as self-explanatory. Bacon argued that Aristotle was substituting nature for God and consequently had no further need of God. The Socratic view assumes that God had to make the world just as he did make it, that its specific character flows by necessity from His nature, and therefore it could not be otherwise than it is. This had been clearly rejects by the Christian beliefs and Christianity has always insisted that the world of nature is no mere emanation of the divine reason but a free creation of the divine will. Again, according to the Aristotelian doctrine, the celestial bodies were animate. Aristotle did not attribute animal or vegetative soul to the stars, but gave them an immortal mind and an indestructible body. Philophilus in the 7th century argued that this Greek doctrine of the animacy or even quasi-divinity of the stars is inconsistent with the Christian doctrine of God.
It is interesting to note that the pioneers of modern scientific thought always drew their principles from a Christian revelation and especially from the Christian doctrine of creation, which teaches that the world of nature is not in itself divine but is dependent upon or contingent upon the will of God. And it was when this pagan element was eliminated from philosophy that the development of modern science really began.

The development of modern science and origin of the conflict
Charles E.Raven observed that “the scientific method, in its simplest form, goes back to the beginnings of the race; it was highly developed in the astronomical observations of Egypt and in the practical inventions of China.” The report of WCC on Faith, science and the future also stated that “Modern science as we encounter it today is the contemporary form of a development that has deep historical root in Mediterranean and Eastern cultures (Greek, Arab, Persians and Indian). Thus, the revolution in science did not occur quickly. It developed over time. Although the medieval Church earned absolute power, authority and obedience, science and scientific thinking did flourish during the five centuries preceding that watershed we call the Scientific Revolution.


Ever since the end of the middle Ages, some Christians have had problems accepting the teachings of science. The origins of modern scientific thought go back to the Renaissance, when people rediscovered the teachings, art, and thought of the ancient Greeks and, of equal importance, began to see the importance of thinking for themselves, outside the restrictions of external authority structures.
The first major figure whose scientific views conflicted with the official position of the church was Nicolaus Copernicus, who published an anonymous work claiming that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the solar system. Copernicus died (1543) before his work was widely enough known, or widely enough associated with him, to cause him personal problems. However, his book On the Revolution of the Celestial Spheres was added to the Index of Forbidden Books maintained by the Roman Catholic Church, and Christians were forbidden to read it.

Galileo Galilei built telescopes and began looking through them at the heavens. He was familiar with the work of Copernicus, and his own studies confirmed the heliocentric (sun-centered) view of the solar system. However, in 1616 he was forbidden from teaching the truth of the Copernican view, though he was allowed to teach it as a hypothesis. In 1632 Galileo published a book called Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems (i.e., those of Ptolemy and Copernicus). Although the title of the book made it sound as though the two views would be treated as having equal validity, it is clear that Galileo favored the Copernican view. Galileo was forced by the church to recant his beliefs, and his Dialogue was added to the Index. Galileo himself remained under house arrest until his death eight years later, but he nevertheless maintained his views in private.

Both Copernicus and Galileo considered themselves to be Christians, yet they knew that their beliefs conflicted with the official teachings of the church on matters of science. Almost everyone today, Christian and non-Christian alike, accepts the scientific validity of the theories of Copernicus and Galileo. Biblical passages that at one time were interpreted as proving that the earth was stationary (Ps 75:3) or that the sun revolved around the earth (i.e., it rose and set) (Ps 50:1) were reinterpreted by Christians, explaining the language of the Bible as figurative rather than literal. The problem, Christians began to see, was not with science, nor with the Bible, but with improper interpretations of the Bible, for example, forcing it to be literal when it should have been taken figuratively or phenomenologically (i.e., describing events as they appear from a human perspective, like the "rising" of the sun).

Slowly but surely, the Christian acceptance of modern science attracted more and more adherents. Some scientists, like Isaac Newton and Blaise Pascal, dabbled in theology as well as science. Most others remained loyal to the church. Even though the church itself failed to remove Copernicus's and Galileo's books from the Index for centuries, the opinion of most Christians, including those in positions of authority within both Catholic and Protestant churches, was that science and the Bible were fully compatible.
A second crisis between science and Christianity arose in the mid-19th century, when Charles Darwin published his book The Origin of Species. In his earlier life Darwin had studied for the ministry, but he became engrossed in the idea of biological evolution after serving as the resident naturalist aboard the Beagle as it sailed around the world.

Biblical Cosmology and science
Cosmology is a branch of physics and astronomy which investigates the origin, structure and the history of the universe. One of the earliest creation myths are those of the Babylonians which probably preceded the Hebrew creation story as found in the book of Genesis. “In the history of the cosmological accounts of the different traditions, two trends of thinking can be seen about the origin of the universe. One is that the universe has continued to exist forever…the other trend is to posit a beginning for the universe, that the universe came in to existence at a particular time in history. Such a view is found in the creation account of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures.”

Genesis and the big bang theory
The Big Bang Theory is the dominant scientific theory about the origin of the universe. According to the big bang, the universe was created sometime between 10 billion and 20 billion years ago from a cosmic explosion that hurled matter and in all directions. After its initial appearance, it apparently inflated (the "Big Bang"), expanded and cooled, going from very, very small and very, very hot, to the size and temperature of our current universe. It continues to expand and cool to this day and we are inside of it: incredible creatures living on a unique planet, circling a beautiful star clustered together with several hundred billion other stars in a galaxy soaring through the cosmos, all of which is inside of an expanding universe that began as an infinitesimal singularity which appeared out of nowhere for reasons unknown. This is the Big Bang theory.

In 1927, the Belgian priest Georges Lemaître was the first to propose that the universe began with the explosion of a primeval atom. His proposal came after observing the red shift in distant nebulas by astronomers to a model of the universe based on relativity. Years later, Edwin Hubble found experimental evidence to help justify Lemaitre’s theory. The Big Bang Theory received its strongest confirmation when this radiation was discovered in 1964 by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, who later won the Nobel Prize for this discovery. Although the Big Bang Theory is widely accepted, it probably will never be proved; consequentially, leaving a number of tough, unanswered questions. Many present-day cosmologists describe the cosmos in terms of evolutionary development and most of them accept the so-called big bang theory.

According to the Biblical cosmology, The universe came in to existence at a particular time in history. The universe and all things in it are created by God. According to the Genesis creation account, the sky, the abode of the stars, is described as a "raqiya'" (rakia, Hebrew for an extended solid surface or flat expanse, considered to be a hemisphere above the Earth). The translation familiar to most English speakers is "firmament." According to Genesis 1:6-7, this raqiya' was set in the midst of the waters, and it divided the waters above from those beneath. There were also lights placed in the raqiya`, or firmament, to give light upon the earth (Genesis 1:14-17), being the Sun, Moon, and stars. According to some readings, God made it of matter already existing at the time of Creation; that is, God did not "create" it at that time. The raqiya' representing the sky in Ezek. 1:22 resembled ice; therefore it is quite possible that the author of Genesis, like Ezekiel, regarded the sky as being composed of solidified water or ice (some translations render it as "crystal"). Such a sky, being transparent, would permit the stars, which are located above its vault, to be seen through it.

Creationists maintain that what really happened at the time of creation is that God spoke and the earth appeared— he commanded and the heavens stood firm (Ps. 33:9)! All the many stars appeared suddenly and supernaturally in space. Scripture does not imply an explosion, although the universe must have experienced a sudden "explosive" input of ordered energy. Perhaps some of the astronomical data that seems supportive of the Big Bang theory, such as red shift and background radiation, needs to be looked at instead as evidence of a rapid creation. One secular variation of the Big Bang theory refers to an "inflationary" Big Bang, the suggestion being that the universe developed and matured very quickly in its first moments. In this particular theory, secular science seems to have taken one step in the creationists' direction.
Chronological divergences between Scripture and Big Bang
Scripture Big Bang
All elements made together ---------------- Elements beyond hydrogen and helium formed after millions of years
Earth formed before stars ---------------- Earth formed long after stars
Plants formed before the sun ---------------- Plants evolved after the sun
Sun formed on the fourth day ---------------- Sun formed before the earth
Sun, moon, and stars formed ---------------- Sun formed from older stars together

BIBLE AND EVOLUTION THEORY
Chapter 1 of Genesis states that God made everything from nothing in less than a week and that after that week the story of life began to unfold . This is termed as ex nihlo creation. On the first day, God made light and separated light and dark into day and night. He spent days two through four creating and separating water, dry land, and sky, creating fruit-bearing plants, and creating the sun, moon, and stars (the latter group brought forward so that time could be measured). On the fifth day God made life in the ocean and invented birds, encouraging them to increase their numbers. God created the creatures on dry land on the sixth day, including humans, who were told that they had been made in God’s image and that they were to “fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28). On the seventh day, God rested.
In contradiction to the Biblical creation account, the scientists believed in the gradual transition from non-living to living matter. “ It is now generally agreed among all reputable scientists that the history of this world from its earliest beginnings to the present time is one of gradual, cumulative development.” This idea or theory has originated from the ‘evolution-theory’ of Charles Darwin(1809–1882). The evolution theory is “the cumulative changes in the characteristics of living organisms or populations of organisms from generation to generation, resulting in the development of new types of organism over long periods of time.”(Chambers 21st century Dictionary). To put in other words, Evolution is the belief that, multiplied millions of years ago, life began by natural causes from nonliving matter; then gradually that original life changed till from it came all the modern kinds of plants and animals including man.

The 19th century Christian theologians adopted an attitude of hostility towards the idea of evolution, because they believed it to be completely incompatible with the early chapters of Genesis, and also because they thought it derogatory to the dignity of man. But modern Biblical scholarship and research in to the creation epics of nations and civilizations surrounding Palestine in the days of Hebrews, has indicated that much of the detail of the first and second chapters of Genesis is derived from pagan creation epics current in these nations. Before publishing his book, ‘On the origin of species’ Darwin had spent twenty seven years amassing from many fields an amazing array of facts on the variation of species. Darwin’s theory had received a lot of criticism from theologians of the day. Darwin respond to the problems raised by his critique as follows;

“Species have been modified, during a long course of descent,…chiefly through the natural succession of successive, slight, favourable variations; aided in an important manner by the inherited effects of the use and disuse of parts; and in an unimportant manner, that is in relation to adaptive structures, whether past or present, by the direct action of external conditions, and by variations which seem to us in our ignorance to arise spontaneously.

Darwinism influenced and convinced a number of intellectual people. Karl Marx read The Origin of Species in 1860 and commended that ‘Darwin’s book is very important and serves me as a basis in natural science for the struggle in history’. Later on he asked if he could dedicate his Capital to Darwin, but permission was refused.
As mentioned before, the Bible teaches that the all-wise, all-powerful, eternal God created the universe and all the forms of life in it, including people. The classical expression of this belief is to be found in the phrases of the Nicean creed. So evolution and creation are two fundamentally competing beliefs about the origin of the universe, life, and mankind. Some people speculate that we can believe both the Bible and evolution: the two can be harmonized. Theistic evolutionists**** say that all living things evolved from an original life form, but God began and directed the process. Progressive creationists**** claim that, from time to time over a period of billions of years, God intervened to make major changes but then allowed nature to gradually develop what had been made. Such people cannot, of course, take Genesis 1 literally, so they say it is symbol or legend. But is it possible to believe both the Bible and major tenets of evolution? Does evolution necessarily contradict the Bible? Can a person defend evolution and still be a faithful Christian? May Christians believe that "creation" involved sudden major changes caused by God but followed by gradual natural changes over billions of years?

Is earth at the center of the universe?
The earliest theories on the cosmos placed the earth at the center of the universe. The sun, moon, planets and stars all circled the earth. The Mesopotamians taught this theory, centuries before being taught by Aristotle, and later by Greek astronomer Ptolemy. This was not the only theory taught, even from the beginning their were dissenters, Greek astronomer Aristarchus in 270 BC taught that the earth circled the sun. Aristotle carried more clout than Aristarchus though and so the debate was silenced for generations. For the religious ;leaders the proposition that the sun is at the center and does not revolve about the earth is foolish, absurd, false in theology, and heretical because expressly contrary to Holy scripture…another proposition that the earth is not at the center , but revolve about the sun is absurd, false in philosophy and from a theological point of view at least, opposed to the true faith.

It is popular today to deny any special recognition for the earth. Secular scientists tell us that we live on a speck of dust, circling a humdrum star in a far corner of an obscure galaxy! While this is all true, the earth remains of central importance. Scripture gives a refreshing contrast to secular thinking by declaring that earth and mankind are not an insignificant result of accidental evolution. The Book of Genesis states that our planet was created three days before the sun, moon, and stars. The purposes of the stars relate directly to the earth: to provide a calendar system (Gen. 1:14) and to declare God's glory to men (Ps. 19:1). The earth is also a universal reference point in that Christ came here to walk among men, and will one day return. An unseen spiritual battle goes on for the souls of men , focusing on this earth and extending to high places (Eph. 6:12). The earth is truly a spiritual center of the universe. It was once thought that the earth was physically located at the exact center of the universe, and furthermore that it did not move. This "geocentric" view is still held today by a few people, although Scripture does not require it and observation clearly shows the earth's movement. The earth revolves around the sun once a year. It also rotates on its axis every 24 hours. These motions add together in a dizzy combination. The earth's spin results in a surface speed of 1,000 miles per hour at the equator. The speed of the earth due to orbital motion around the sun is 66 times greater still. This is 30 times faster than a rifle bullet. During an average human's lifetime (70 trips around the sun), 41 billion miles are traveled. While you read this page, the earth has already traveled more than 1,000 miles! Fortunately, we do not directly notice this motion since the earth's faithful gravity force ensures that both its atmosphere and inhabitants remain firmly in place. However, earth's motion is clearly shown by the westward movement of the sun, moon, and stars through the sky (seetable1). We really don't know where the physical center of the universe is. If God's heavens are infinite in extent, then no center actually exists. But the question of the earth's physical position is less important than the spiritual reality of God's love for his people.
The depiction of the status of Human: In the Bible and science (Barbour p.59)
The Bible depicted humanity above all other creations and human beings are to rule over creation. David asked the crucial question: "What is man that You are mindful of Him . . . ? You made him a little lower than the angels . . ." (Psalm 8:4-5). He goes on to tell us how man has been given rule over the earth, including the flora and the fauna (verses 6-8). The notion of supremacy of humanity above creation is held by the Church for centuries. For instance, “Below humans in hierarchy Origen depicts a world that resembles a pernicious wilderness, much more than a life-sustaining home.” During the reformation period the reformers tended to think first and foremost about God and humanity. For Luther the most important doctrine of all was the doctrine of justification and is concerned with persons seeking God and God coming to persons in judgment and grace. For Calvin too, the most important doctrine of all is the doctrine of the knowledge of God. In the doctrine of justification, God and humanity are the chief object of attention.

Western thought tends to make sharp distinctions between different ranks in creation, and divides God from the world, mind from mater, men from animals, living things from non-living things. These distinctions were the basis of our cosmography (our world- picture), and survive in the classification of subjects in our schools and colleges. The making of these clear distinctions seemed to be of great religious importance, so that challenges to them seem to threaten the proper order of creation. Ian Barbour rightly says, “ If God was the supreme member of the hierarchy of being in medieval thought, humanity was the center of the cosmic drama. Nature was subordinate to humanity. The functions of creatures lower in the scale were explained mainly by their role in human life, for the world was designed to serve human interest.” This assumption was challenged in a very diverse ways, first by Copernican astronomy, then by Darwin’s theory of evolution. Copernicus discovered that the earth is not at the center of the universe, it rather revolves around the sun….In the same way, Darwin’s theory of evolution derogated the long cherished belief that humanity is above nature. Eric C.Rust rightly says, “Copernicus has dethroned man’s habitat, and now Darwin seemed to dethrone man himself from any unique place in the universe.”

Conclusion
Science raises a number of significant and interesting questions that the Christians must consider thoughtfully. If Christians want the world to consider their ideas about religion seriously, they must themselves consider the evidence of science seriously. It is detrimental to the Christian cause for Christians to ignore science. It is far better to claim ignorance of a particular scientific topic than to repeat the claims of so-called experts without investigating the issue oneself.
Science is not the enemy of either Christianity or the Bible. As Christians, we have both reason and faith. The two need not be in conflict. The only aspect of the modern theories of origins of the universe and evolution, as they are sometimes portrayed, that is contrary to the Bible is the idea that either must have occurred in a universe without God. Nothing about either cosmology or evolution disproves the idea of God. In fact, one could argue that creating a universe and establishing its laws in such a way that evolution could occur requires a much more powerful and infinitely more intelligent God than one who simply created everything as it is today.
Many Christian scientists embrace both their Christian faith and scientific theories of cosmology and evolution. That is, they accept the factual, testable aspects of these theories, but they also acknowledge a real and tangible role for God in the process.

"He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end."
Ecclesiastes 3:11



BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abrecht, Paul , Faith And Science in an unjust world, Cambridge : Massachusetts Institute of technology,1979

Alexander, Denis, Beyond science , Bombay : Gospel literature service, 1972

Barbour, Ian, Religion and Science: Historical and contemporary issues, New York : Harper Collins publishers,1997
Cupitt, Don ,The worlds of science and religion, London : Sheldon press, 1976

Henry, Sarojini, The encounter of Faith and science in inter-religious dialogue, New Delhi : ISPCK, 2005
Raven, Charles, E., Christianity and Science, London : Lutterworth press,1955
Robinson, Mairi, Chambers 21st century Dictionary, Edinburgh: Chambers Harp publishers, 1996
Santmire, H. ,Paul The travail of nature(Philadelphia : Fortress press, 1985

Smethhurst, Arthur F., Modern Science and Christian Beliefs, London :James Nisbet &Co. Ltd, 1955

W. H.Vick, Edward , Quest : An exploration of some problems in science and religion , London : Epworth press,1975)

Internet Sources;

http//www -Kevin Sluder, God Genesis and the Big Bang

http//www-Donald B.Deyoung, “Selected question and answer excerpted from Astronomy and the Bible”