Christianity: Science and Belief
Revision – things you may not
have picked up on…
Revelation and Scientific Method
• Make sure you know the similarities and
differences between the methods of both
revelation and science (both use
observation, draw conclusions from
evidence, have an element of bias, require
interpretation, etc BUT one is extremely
personal and religious experiences cannot
be re-enacted to confirm they were real,
experiments can)
Viewpoints
• Creationists – These are extremely fundamental Christians who
take the Bible literally (young earth theory, rejection of modern
science, God would not lie).
• Progressive Creationists – These are fundamental Christians who
are making an attempt to reconcile the ‘facts’ in the Bible with modern
science. They may accept some fossils as evidence of Fixity of
Species (not evolution), and may believe the 6 days are 6 time
periods, but they still believe the Bible is fact and God wouldn’t lie.
• Liberal Christians – Those who are ‘regular’ Christians in Britain
today who use the Bible to give meaning and purpose to life, but
would accept scientific evidence as showing the way God ‘got things
done’
• Scientific Materialists – ‘Hard line’ scientists who give no room at all
to belief. Truth is in the proof.
• Other scientists – not all scientists are scientific materialists. You
get open minded scientists who are not religious, but may believe
there are limits to what science can find out. You also get religious
scientists (in the past many major scientific breakthroughs have been
by scientists motivated by wanting to find out how their God did
things, or to understand the world God had given them)
Bible
• Take note of the differences between Genesis 1
& 2 – 2 different stories from different times,
cultures, and naturally with different emphases.
• Used for origin of universe, origin of life, and
purpose of life arguments – creationists believe
it is literally true, liberal Christians take it in
context of the history and draw meaning from it.
• Remember the Bible is a collection of books (not
one book by one person, more of a complex
library)
First Cause Argument (Aquinas)
• To be used for Origin of Universe essays
• If asked KU on Cosmological / FC A then
try and explain it using the Three Ways
from Summa Theologica (Motion,
Causality, and Potentiality, all drawing
conclusion of God as First Cause /
Unmoved Mover)
• Remember objections and possible
replies.
Big Bang Theory
• It was NOT an explosion in space – there
was no space to explode in!
• The ‘explosion’ contains all space and time
– we don’t even know if there is an
‘outside’ or what it would be like, just that it
is not space and time as we experience it.
• Remember words like singularity,
expansion and cooling, 12-15 BILLION
years, etc
Design Argument - Paley
• Fits with Origins of Life essays
• Remember for KU on Teleological / D A to
give in-depth step-by-step account
• Paley used human eye as evidence of
design
• Know criticisms and replies
Evolution
• No need to discuss development in detail (e.g. bacteria in sea,
oxygenation etc)
• Explain life developed from simple single celled organisms to
more and more complex ones
• The ones best adapted to environments survive
• Also competition for resources gives a regime of ‘survival of
the fittest’
• The ones that are best adapted and survive the best have
differences that make them better – these differences happen at
a genetic level in DNA.
• Random genetic mutations give an organism an advantage or
disadvantage that can be passed on to offspring.
• Over thousands of years these changes ‘take hold’ and
species can change and survive, or change and die out.
• Not all members of a species will change, so evolution happens
with ‘branches’ and is not linear (so we have not descended
directly from primates!)
More on Creationists
• Bible = 100% true as comes from God and God
would not lie (response is the contents of Bible
interpreted by fallible humans)
• Reject BBT = it says billions of years, young
earth theory says 10,000 ish (response –
evidence in light etc)
• Reject Evolution = God created a Fixity of
Species, not changing ones (Response –
explain new strands of viruses etc)
• Reject Evolution = says we came from animals
and are not special, Bible says we are special,
image of God, soul so cannot be (is there
evidence of a soul, or some other explanation?)