Science and the Bible: The ‘How’ and ‘Why’
Genesis 1
New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
Six Days of Creation and the Sabbath
1 In the beginning when God created[a] the heavens and the earth, 2 the earth was a formless void
and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God[b] swept over the face of the
waters. 3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light
was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the
darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters
from the waters.” 7 So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome
from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. 8 God called the dome Sky. And there
was evening and there was morning, the second day.
6
And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry
land appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered
together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. 11 Then God said, “Let the earth put forth
vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed
in it.” And it was so. 12 The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind,
and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. 13 And
there was evening and there was morning, the third day.
9
And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night;
and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the
dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. 16 God made the two great lights—
the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. 17 God set
them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth, 18 to rule over the day and over the
night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there
was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.
14
And God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above
the earth across the dome of the sky.” 21 So God created the great sea monsters and every living
creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every
kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and
fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” 23 And there was evening and there
was morning, the fifth day.
20
And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping
things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.” And it was so. 25 God made the wild animals
of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the
ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good.
24
Then God said, “Let us make humankind[c] in our image, according to our likeness; and let
them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and
over all the wild animals of the earth,[d] and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the
earth.”
26
27
So God created humankind[e] in his image,
in the image of God he created them;[f]
male and female he created them.
God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and
subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every
living thing that moves upon the earth.” 29 God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding
seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have
them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything
that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for
food.” And it was so. 31 God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And
there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
28
This week we continue our sermon series on being a faithful church by looking at
the relationship between the Bible and science.
The relationship between science and the Bible has historically centred on the
creation stories of the Bible. Much of the debate and points of contention
between the two groups has focused on the perceived attack of science on the
Biblical basis for the creation of the world. So while science and the Bible as a
topic is much broader than just the creation story, today for time reasons we will
focus our discussion primarily on this point.
If we are going to discuss the Bible and science in relation to the creation story we
must do three things. First, we must understand science and its purpose. Second,
we must remind ourselves of how to read biblical texts faithfully and with that
knowledge gain an understanding of Genesis 1 in its context. Third, by keeping
the purpose of science in mind and holding it together with our knowledge of the
Genesis text we will enter into a dialogue between the two.
First, what is science, and what is its purpose?
In definition form science is the systematic knowledge of the physical or material
world gained through observation and experimentation.
Science is an intellectual activity carried on by humans that is designed to
discover information about the natural world in which humans live and to
discover the ways in which this information can be organized into meaningful
patterns. A primary aim of science is to collect facts (data).
So if the primary aim of science is to collect facts, then the purpose of science is
to use these facts to answer the question "how?" By using these facts, science
seeks to answer the question of how things came to be and how they function. In
relation to the creation story the threat that many feel science poses to faith rests
in this notion of "how?" Science is asking how the world was originated, and the
scientific answer of evolution is starkly different than what we are reading in
Genesis 1.
One thing we must be wary of when we discuss science is its breadth. Science
encompasses a huge array of studies with a huge array of perspectives. Natural
sciences, social sciences, political sciences, and mathematical sciences are just a
few of the broad topics within science.
What we can think of when we see science attacking the Bible is what is called
Naturalism. The belief that the natural world is all there is and that no
supernatural reality exists. Naturalism is a part of science but it is just that, a part.
While naturalism conflicts with a certain reading of Genesis, to say that science as
a whole is anti-Christian, anti-bible or even anti-creation is false.
Our second task is to remind ourselves of how to read the Bible faithfully and with
this knowledge gain an understanding of Genesis one in its context.
While I cannot mention every path to stay on and every ditch to avoid, I will
mention one path and one ditch that have particular meaning for our text today.
The path is context. Context, context context! When was the text written, was it a
firsthand account or was it written decades or centuries later to inspire or
remind?
Who was it written for? One individual? A small church two thousand years ago?
A people under intense persecution? A people who had been slaves in Egypt for
400 years?
What literary style or genre is being used? Is the text in question a firsthand
account, was it a parable or story, poetry, history, was it someone’s vision, was it
mythological like Genesis 6, where the sons of God come down and sleep with the
daughters of earth and produce giants?
Each literary style needs to be read with that style in mind. We do that now
naturally. Science fiction and fantasy novels are clearly not history or a firsthand
account of current events, and we would never read them that way. In the Bible
we read many of Jesus parables as parables, a story with meaning and we try not
to confuse his metaphors with law. None of us feel the need to chop of our hand
when it causes us to sin. Everything is about context!
A ditch to avoid that I mentioned a few weeks ago is to read the Bible as a
scientific text book. The church has a history of reading the Bible as a scientific
textbook and it has always proven ill. When Galileo Galilei claimed that the earth
revolved around the sun, rather than the sun revolving around the stationary
earth, he was tried by the church for heresy and spent the rest of his life under
house arrest. The church of the time was convinced, by using several different
verses, that the earth was stationary. As we stand now I don’t believe there are
very many people who would dispute Galileo’s claim.
The church is still making mistakes today by disputing scientific fact with Biblical
proof.
When we view the Bible as a science textbook we paint ourselves into a corner
that says that the Bible must speak the truth in all areas of life, including science.
It means that the Bible must know more about the natural world than science
does.
Because of the churches ugly background in misreading biblical texts as speaking
to science I would beg of us to not read into the Bible the answers to our scientific
queries. We call that proof texting. When we read the answers we want into the
text instead of listening to the answers it is giving.
In fact I would argue that the Bible, and particularly the creation story, in no way
makes any attempt to speak scientifically about our world because it has no
concern for science. The author of our Genesis text was in no way concerned
with how old the earth was or how many days it took to be created.
I believe that the author of our creation story was in fact concerned with teaching
the readers about the true nature of God, humanity and creation, all the while
dispelling the worldviews that had become prevalent in the minds of the
Israelites.
Let me take some time to unpack that statement.
The first thing to take note of is that creation stories are not unique to Hebrew
literature. Many of the ancient near Eastern religions employed older creation
stories and myths that closely match many of the stories we can find in the first
eleven chapters of Genesis. A reading from The Book of Torah, by Thomas Mann
says
“…in the story of Adapa one man’s offense brings ill to humankind, as does
Adam’s; a story about the conflict between a shepherd and a farmer resembles
the story of Cain and Abel…In the story of Atra-Hasis, a tremendous flood covers
the earth, though one man is saved through the help of one of the gods–a story
obviously very similar to the flood story in Genesis. There are also connections
between the account of creation in genesis 1 and the Mesopotamian story of
creation called Enuma elish.” (pg 10)
In the Babylonian creation account called the Enuma elish, we learn that the
world was created after a battle between the god Marduk and the goddess
Tiamat. Marduk defeats and kills Tiamat and uses her skin to form the heavens
and her body to form the earth. Marduk then kills Tiamat’s husband Kingu and
uses his blood to create humans so that all the lower gods would no longer have
to work.
A creation account such as this creates a certain kind of worldview. It says that
the world was created through violence; that the world is full of gods and lesser
gods that inhabit different aspects of creation; the gods are evil, violent, and
untrustworthy; that humans are slaves that serve the gods; calamities were
blamed on the gods and it was the human’s job to appease them lest some ill
befall you. That is the world view of a nation that leans on a creation story such as
the Enuma elish, and that was the world view of the Israelites neighbours.
These were also the beliefs that the Israelites themselves came to believe in the
400 year captivity in Egypt. The first eleven chapters of Genesis are dated to being
written shortly after the exodus out of Egypt. They are used to remind a long
enslaved Israelite people of who their God is and what kind of a God He is. In a
culture that believed in a world that was violent, in an array of gods who were
mean and unpredictable, our creation story enters into the fold with a wildly
different worldview.
Accounts such as the Enuma elish and the atra hasis are generally referred to as
myths. Today myth commonly means something that is false. If you were told
something that you don’t believe to be true you would perhaps say “that’s a
myth!” However, scholars refer to mythology to describe ancient accounts that
provide a comprehensive view of the world, the nature of the divine being, and
the role and destiny of humans. Myth gives us a window into the worldview of a
people group.
Our Genesis creation account fits into this realm of mythology as it portrays the
expected worldview of the people of God. The very purpose of our creation story
is to counter the prevailing myths and worldviews of the civilizations around them
by enforcing a different view of God and our world.
So how did our creation story counter the other popular worldviews? Let’s read
the first few lines. “In the beginning God created….” This line affirms the absolute
sovereignty of God. There is only one God and he is all powerful.
Waldemar Janzen, a former CMU prof, writes in his book about another way in
which the creation story separates itself from the surrounding worldviews.
“One of these is the creation of light long before the creation of the heavenly
bodies. We must see here a deliberate demotion of the heavenly bodies, often
regarded to be gods in the Ancient Near East, from primary significance to a
secondary and subordinate function, namely to be the celestial clockwork.”
(Waldemar Janzen, Still in the Image, pg 42)
Another way in which our creation story counters the Enuma elish is that the
world was created not by violent means but through peace. “And God said, Let
there be light, and there was light.” Our world was spoken into being in Genesis 1
and formed by the hands of God in Genesis 2. No violence or bloodshed. Human
beings are created for the purpose of ruling over and taking care of God’s world.
We are in many ways God’s partners, not God’s slaves.
Each aspect of the creation story, from the order of the days, to the Sabbath
keeping, to the way in which God creates and then declares everything good was
a way of setting apart the Hebrew people and their God from the neighbours and
their gods.
One could say that our creation story answers the question “why and what”. Why
did God create us, why are we here, why are we different, what is our purpose,
and what is God like? If we can recall back to our interpretation of science we will
remember that science was focused on asking the “how” question. “How was the
earth created, how long ago was it created, how did humans appear, how have
we evolved to this point?”
I believe that the biblical writers of Genesis 1 had absolutely no intention of
answering any of the how questions that science brings to the text.
“The authors of Genesis did not own watches or clocks and were not concerned
to make claims about just how long it took God to create or what exact order God
followed. Using powerful poetic language, they sought to make points already
noted here: that God made all things, that what God created is good, and so on.
They had no particular interest in how God went about creating things, and
indeed do not offer explanations of the sort that would compete with those of
science.” (William Placher, Essentials of Christian Theology, pg 96)
However, that being said there is a fear that science and evolution is making a
claim that there is no God, and indeed many evolutionists believe that. If
scientists say that the world is self-generated and has no creator or that the world
is random and has no purpose then they are making a claim against the Biblical
creation story. But it is also important to note that they are not actually acting as
scientists but as philosophers. The nature of science as we said earlier is to
discover information about the natural world in which humans live through
scientific method. However, God cannot be measured or tested but only observed
and experienced. Thus science really cannot say anything about whether God can
exist or not because it is limited to our natural world. If a scientist wants to
comment on the possible existence of God they do so as philosophers not as
scientists.
If we see science and the evolutionary theory as an attack on Genesis then I
believe we are misreading our scripture. The Bible was never meant to answer
sciences questions. It was not focused on the how of science but on the why.
Daniel Migliore, in Faith Seeking Understanding writes, “The stories in Gen 1 and
2 are not scientific descriptions competing with modern cosmological theories but
rather poetic…declarations of faith in God, who has created and reconciled the
world to each of us.” (pg 113)
So what kind of a relationship is left between the Bible and science?
First of all I am very tired of seeing the Biblical scholars vs. the scientists, as they
duke it out on television or in a chat room like two heavy weights. This notion of
competing is absurd because the questions they are asking and can ask, are
different.
Imagine a track and field meet. Often you have many events occurring at the
same time. On the track we have the 800m run just concluding with a single
runner out in front. A few meters to his left we have another competitor running
on the long jump track. The two are running stride for stride with only a few
meters separating them. But here is the kicker. There will not be one winner and
one loser because they are not competing against each other. They are not
competing because they have two different goals in mind. One is to finally cross
the finish line while the other is to jump as far as they can. To see them as
competing athletes would be absurd.
In the same way I see the competition between science and the Bible equally
absurd because like the athletes they are competing for a different goal. Science
seeks to know how, while our Bible wants to tell us why.
If we can rid ourselves of this competitive mind frame then I believe the
relationship between science and faith can be strong. In fact I would say we can
hold both to the science in the evolutionary theory and to faith in God the
creator. Unless we view the Bible as an inerrant textbook on natural science then
it is in no way inconsistent to hold both faith and science together.
“Evolution does not mean that the process is godless or impersonal. “It is possible
to believe that the evolutionary process was supervised by God, planned and
designed by God, and filled with purpose.” (The Bible and Science, Pittsburgh
Mennonite Church, February 3, 2013)
When we read Genesis as a statement of faith in a good God who created in
peace, and created us to be in his image as we partner with him in the care of this
world then I believe it leaves open all the scientific theories about how the world
came into being.
Yet one thing to be wary of is to go to the extreme and claim that science is a
surer way to God than through the Bible. This has been then mistake of many
who hold to the evolutionary theory. The Bible should remain for us the primary
revelation of God as creator, saviour, and redeemer. Science should never replace
our Biblical creation stories or our belief in God because only through faith can we
know the kind of God we have, who we are, and what our purpose is. Science can
only tell us the how.
With a biblical reading of the creation story as myth, science can continue to
teach theology and faith new things about the world that our God created.
I feel closest to God in nature, as I look around and see the beauty and intricacy
around me I am astounded at the work of God. When I look at the stars in the sky
and bring to mind all that I know about them because of science, what they are,
how far away they are and how immense the universe is, I am only more
awestruck by this universe that God has created. In truth science brings me closer
to God.
I would like to end with two quotes. One from a scientist and one from a religious
leader. The first is from Francis Collins, a scientist who worked on the human
genome project. “I find that studying the natural world is an opportunity to
observe the majesty, the elegance, the intricacy of God’s creation.”
The second is from Pope John Paul the 2nd. “Science can purify religion from error
and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.
Each one can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can
flourish.”