Science and Religion: An Introduction for Youth

By Holmes Rolston III

This is written for young people, grades 9-12, to read on their own, with others their age, as well as with parents and teachers.

How is the scientific method similar to and different from the way that Christians think? One tends to see what one is looking for. Those who think about religion also use such frameworks. They may call them creeds. Both science and religion open up "big questions." Scientists seek causes; believers seek meanings.

The origin and creation of the universe displays some surprising features. Physicists have found dramatic connections between astronomical and atomic scales that combine to make the Earth and its life possible. The mid-range scales where the most complex things are found depend on the interacting microscopic and astronomical ranges. The universe is "user-friendly."

Scientific concepts of the origin of life are very different from the Genesis creation stories. Genetics is about creating, storing, elaborating information. The Genesis stories are a parable that reveals the meaning of creation. Biological science does discover a wonderland Earth. The Genesis parable affirms a land of promise, today an Earth with promise.

The human mind is the most complex thing in the known universe. How much science of persons can psychologists have? Neuroscience has discovered remarkably plastic, flexible minds. Resolute behavior, especially in youth, re-shapes our minds. Humans have huge cognitive power gained by speech and language. Jesus teaches us to love God and neighbor. The two great commandments are not the facts of any science.

The knowledge and wisdom of past and present transmitted to the future in cultures is as important as what we inherit genetically. How are youth shaped by their rearing, by their peer groups? How do people behave socially in groups: government, politics, churches, economics, and business? Also, evaluating ethical responsibilities for love and justice demands religious and philosophical judgments.

Contemporary scientists have added a new science. What of artificial intelligence, of massive computing power? This aids science, makes possible new discoveries. Youth have pages on Facebook. They twitter. How will this behavior affect their adult character? Youth hear a lot about STEM - science, technology, engineering, math. Youth need faith and ethics to evaluate the values in STEM.

Natural and cultural histories require searching for meanings. History is more narrative, the stories of personal life that shape history: Abraham, Muhammad, Jesus, Martin Luther, Martin Luther King, Israel, England, America, and the Second World War Youth today will write the history of this first century of the new millennium, with challenges as painful as ever. To do that with justice and love, they need the wisdom of the Christian faith.

 

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Release date: Apr 9, 2019
• ISBN: 9781595559951

Holmes Rolston III

Holmes Rolston III is a Professor Emeritus at Colorado State University and taught for 40 years on science and religion.  He gave the Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, 1997-1998. Dr. Rolston was awarded the Templeton Prize in Religion in 2003 by Prince Philip in Buckingham Palace.  He donated that prize to his alma mater, Davidson College, to endow a chair in science and religion.  Rolston has spoken as distinguished lecturer on all seven continents.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

HOW DO SCIENTISTS/CHRISTIANS THINK? WONDERING HOW AND WHY!

Who do you know that is a scientist? Ask that person what kind of scientist he or she is. This could be your dad or mother. Or a teacher at school. Or neighbor. Maybe you are already a young scientist who has done experiments at school. How did you go about it? Ask your adult scientist how scientists think. You may get different answers from different scientists, but answers will probably go something like this: scientists study the causes of events in nature, also the social world, and try to find laws and theories that help to explain how these events happen.

Find out whether your scientist works in a laboratory or outdoors (in the field, scientists may say). Ask your scientist what he or she has been studying. Maybe trees growing in forests. Or what makes kids sick. It may take some years to learn what scientists already know (a college education and further study). But ask your scientist what’s new. What’s not so well understood yet? This will be called research.

When the science has been more or less worked out, scientists will say they have a theory, which has been discovered by studying the observed facts. Now they can know (predict) what to expect further to find, more facts. The theory also tells them what they should not expect to find.

This will be related back to further observations to confirm or disconfirm (as scientists say) the theory, more or less. Then they can try to find a better, revised theory, from which new conclusions are drawn. After this the facts are again considered to see if there is a better fit.

The theory says that new spruce trees should be growing after the big old trees burned in a fire, but that isn’t happening. Maybe the fire released some pollutants into the soil. The theory says that the sick kids who take antibiotics should be getting well, but only half of them are, so what’s the problem? Maybe some of the germs aren’t any longer being killed by the antibiotic? Or maybe we were wrong about what disease half of the kids had.

Scientists may say here, using some fancy (professional) language, that they generate and test hypotheses. They think up an explanation that they have a way of checking. Run a new soil test in the spruce forest. Try a different antibiotic and see if the other half of the sick kids get well. They may talk about the scientific method.

You might ask your the scientist what isn’t science. See what he or she says about music, or storybooks, or poems. Or what a store clerk, a carpenter, a lawyer, or the mayor does. But don’t ask about the church —not yet.

Scientists talk about observations, but these are soon set in frameworks. A framework is a kind of background. Ask your mother about a picture she had framed, why she chose that frame and the matting color for the picture in the living room. In doing science, the facts become framed in a background. They get fit into a pattern.

The facts are set within and partly become results of their theoretical frameworks, because you tend to see what you are looking for. Or looking with. Ideas and laws are used to classify natural events, and the facts so obtained do not come as simple facts but are rather filtered through these background frameworks.

The more advanced theoretical sciences, like those in astronomy, or genetics, will have a complicated combination of thought-up ideas, using mathematics, interpreting what is seen through telescopes, or microscopes. There may be complicated electronic detectors, which involve interpreting streaks on photographic plates, or meter readings.

You can’t build any such detector (such as a meter that measures electric current) unless you have some idea what you are looking for—lines of force in an electromagnetic field. If you are lucky, you may get some surprises. These can be clues to new ideas about what you should look for.

A geneticist figures out what some genetic materials are by observing certain colored stains, in layers, from material that has been spun around very fast in what is called an ultracentrifuge (like a top spinning at a hundred miles an hour). Imagine how creative you have to be to see what can’t be seen, like very small particles (such as neutrinos) or what scientists call dark matter or black holes.

We can illustrate this framework or pattern idea with three pictures. The first one is well known, an image that seen one way is a vase, and seen another way is twin faces looking at each other.

The second one may be harder for you to see. But if you look at it a while—maybe have a friend hold it open for you to see from across the room—you will see both an old woman and a young woman, and you can switch from one to the other.

Here the same part of the picture can be interpreted as a mouth (of the old woman) or a necklace (on the young woman). Also you can see her chin, and then make it out as the old woman’s nose.

The two ways of seeing are called gestalts. The farmers I grew up with would say it depends on what blinkers you have on. If your dad rides a horse, ask him what blinkers are. Here you will be rather sure that both ways of seeing (two sets of blinkers) were intended by the artist.

Scientists may call such ways of seeing models or paradigms. They may say that both are right or they may argue about which is right. When they fit different models together they call them systems.

Weather forecasters use a model they call cold fronts and warm fronts (masses of air) that push on each other and move back and forth across landscapes. They fit this model into models of high-altitude winds (in the stratosphere) and into warm and cold ocean currents.

Maybe the two ways of seeing are found by different scientists (biologists and social scientists). Maybe the two ways of seeing are like seeing as a scientist and seeing as a Christian.

Still harder, but in much research science and also in religious thinking, you puzzle what to make of what you might be seeing. Consider another picture. This one is supposed to have originated when a person was high on a mountain. He was struggling to make sense of the world and took a picture of a snow-covered landscape. He thought he saw a person who somewhat resembled traditional pictures of Jesus.

The light on Jesus is from the left, and the right side of his face is shadowed, though part of his cheek and a bit of his chin can be seen. But now you probably say, Well, that’s just somebody’s imagination. You have to forget about all the unimportant patches of snow to the left and right in the photo.

That