What We Really Believe

One of the most fascinating books I've read for the Faith Has Its Reasons sermon series is Rodney Stark's The Victory of Reason. Stark's fascinating study makes clear how science is not a "bad thing" but a "good thing" in respect to Christianity. For example, Stark makes clear how history reveals that some of our greatest minds in the disciplines of mathematicians, scientists, doctors, engineers and inventors have been and continue to be Christians. Even more, science was actually "birthed" from a Christian worldview! The so-called Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth century has been misinterpreted by those wishing to assert an inherent conflict between religion and science. Some wonderful things were achieved in this era, but they were not produced by an eruption of the secular thinking. Rather, these achievements were the culmination of many centuries of systematic progress of medieval scholastics, sustained by that uniquely Christian twelfth-century invention, the university. Not only were science and religion compatible, they were inseparable - the rise of science was achieved by deeply religious Christian scholars.

Stark proves his point in a number of ways and the one I find most inspiring is a lecture by the famous English philosopher and mathematician, Alfred North Whitehead. The lecture took place at the Lowell Lectures at Harvard in1925. Whitehead, who was friends with one of the most famous atheists of the last century, Bertrand Russell, said "Science arose in Europe because of the widespread faith in the possibility of science derived from medieval theology." Stark said "Whitehead's pronouncement shocked not only his distinguished audience but Western intellectuals in general once his lecture had been published. How could this great philosopher and mathematician, make such an outlandish claim? Did he not know that religion is the mortal enemy of scientific inquiry?"

Stark goes on to rightly claim that the rise of science was not an extension of classical learning. It was the natural outgrowth of Christian doctrine: nature exists because it was created by God. In order to live and honor God, it is necessary to fully appreciate the wonders of his handiwork. Because God is perfect, His handiwork functions in accord with immutable principles. By the full use of our God-given powers of reason and observation, it ought to be possible to discover these principles. These were the crucial ideas that explain why science arose in Christian Europe and nowhere else.

This is huge because there is a line of thinking out there that teaches science and scriptures don't mix, but I believe they mix very well!

On the Victory Side,

Dave