"Science and the Bible" UT Seminar

     Last Friday, Christians on Campus hosted a seminar on "Science and the Bible." The speaker was a professor at UT, Dr. Ken Diller, who teaches in the Biomedical engineering department. The presentation he delivered was really clear and helped me align these two subjects in a proper way.

     As a student in the college of natural science, its not uncommon for me to hear a professor speak of evolution of man from apes as if it were an established fact. This can cause anyone to be a little confused and I would find myself struggling to relate what I was learning in class to my faith and belief in the Bible as the word of God. However, after hearing this lecture on "Science and the Bible," these two matters and how they relate to and exist with one another was made much more clear to me.

     The over all take-home message from this lecture was that "there's consistent harmony between verified science and the holistically interpreted Bible," meaning that when viewed as a whole, the Bible has no contention and conflict with hard, established scientific fact.

     What really impressed me from this lecture was a diagram shown which was entitled "Understanding Creation." Here, Dr. Diller, distinguished the two realms of the old creation and the new creation. In the old creation, there is science and the Bible. In the new creation there is God's purpose and God's economy. Within the old creation, science and the Bible were described as two different lines, each with a perspective, method and reason.

     On one hand, science can be described as having the perspective of the processes, meaning it focuses on how things change when altered. These processes are described by laws, equations and theories and are the subject of studies done by scientists. On the other hand, the perspective of the Bible is the purpose. If one wanted to find God's purpose for man or anything found in nature, this could not be found in science. This is only found in the Bible.

     The next point of difference along the lines of science and the Bible was the method. The method of science is concerned with the observable evidence or proof. Science is based on observable phenomena that can be measured, tested and manipulated. However, the method of the Bible is faith. As seen in Heb. 11:1, faith is concerning with things unseen.

  
The final point was the reason. While the reason for science is to explain the how, the reason for the Bible is to explain the why.

  





     After hearing this lecture, I feel a lot more at peace regarding the relationship between science and the Bible. Though there is undoubtedly many who would argue that there is great contention between science and the Bible, this stems from the mixing of the two lines or the attempt of trying to interconnect them. When we try to find purpose in science or even the processes in the Bible, we will just end up more confused and frustrated.

     So I am really thankful to have been able to see that science is where we find the processes, through means of observable proof, in order to find the how; whereas the Bible is where we can find the purpose, through means of unseen faith, in order to answer the why. To me, the purpose and why of nature and our human lives seems tremendously valuable. Therefore, I really treasure this opportunity to have learned more about how precious the word of God truly is. :)
  


for more on this...  here is another blog post on the same seminar :)