Science v. Religion

Our local paper reported Sunday on the Texas state school board coming to terms with science controversies in the classroom. A sub-story explored the "religion controversay" and how one science teacher believes that science reinforces his faith (here).

Rather than seeing science and faith/religion as controversial, the teacher separated them into "how" and "why." Science tells us how things happen. Religion tells us why they happen. In other words, religion has no place within the scientific disciplines because it is irrelevant to science.But the truth is that much of science and the scientific method was birthed within Christendom. God encourages man to know Him and to seek Him through His revealed word, the Bible. While God cannot be known exhaustively, He can be known truly (Schaeffer). That means what we read in the Bible is true about God. No, we cannot know all there is to know about Him. If that were true, He would be finite and could not be God. That does not mean that we cannot know the truth about Him. We can and we do through His word and through His creation.

Men of old (Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Descartes, Faraday, Boyle as examples) posited that if this were true of the Special Revelation, the Bible, then it should be true of the General Revelation, all of creation, as well. The Bible declares that the heavens declare the handiwork of God and all creation reveals His glory. With that knowledge, men of God moved with confidence into the world with the knowledge that a) the world could be known, and b) what could be known about it would reveal even more of the magnificence of the God who created it.

There is a line between science and God, but it is not vertical. It's horizontal. If, and let me emphasize the word if, in fact God created the universe, then all of the sciences, yea even all academic disciplines, are revelatory about the God who is there. Science is submitted to God in truth, though not in practice. The line does not separate science from God but brings it to its rightful place under the authority of and in submission to the God who spoke the universe into being.
Today, God is not permitted within the fields of science, yet more and more the evidence points to a God who fine-tuned not only man but the entirety of the cosmos. He is dismissed from the answer from those who purport to seek the truth. Which begs the question, if He is the answer but is not allowed to be the answer, can man ever come to know the truth?

This dismissal is most troubling when it comes from scientists who are Christian. When evidence appears to run contrary to the Bible, something's gotta give. Do I go with appearance? Or do I go with the word of God? For the atheist or agnostic, this is a no-brainer. God's word carries no more weight than Green Eggs and Ham, so they happily run with the contrary. The believer, because of the overwhelming tide within academia and society, has often compromised his view of Scripture and of God because of the appearance of where the scientific evidence leads.

Since the time of Darwin, those theories based upon appearances have ever been in a state of flux. How old the universe? How old man? The theories are ever changing to accomodate the appearance of the evidence.

So very much evidence within the scientific realm points to God (DNA as an example). So very much points to Genesis (geochronometers, flood strata, and yes, even the fossil record). The Bible is not a book of science, but where it does touch the scientific realm, it does speak truly.

Trying to divide God from science is wholly unnecessary, for if God is, then He is the God of science, too. If we must use a line, let it be horizontal.