Science
Hasn't science disproved God?
The short answer
Science explains mechanisms; it cannot rule on whether there is an author behind them. Modern science grew out of a Christian conviction that an orderly God made an intelligible world, and many leading scientists remain believers.
Two different questions
Explaining how an engine works does not tell you whether anyone designed it. 'God' and 'physics' are not competing entries on the same list; one is an agent, the other a description of how things behave.
The founders of modern science — Kepler, Boyle, Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, Mendel — largely expected nature to be lawful because they believed a rational God made it.
Genesis and origins
Christians differ sincerely here. Young-earth creationism reads the days literally. Old-earth views read them as long ages or as a literary framework. Evolutionary creationism holds that God used evolutionary processes. Augustine warned against literalism that outruns the text as early as the fourth century.
The doctrine at stake is not the mechanism but that God is the Creator, humans bear his image, and sin is real. Christians of every position on the age of the earth affirm those.
The Galileo story
Usually cited as proof of the war, it was in fact a tangle of church politics, personal insult and the scientific establishment of the day, which was Aristotelian. It was a real failure by church authorities — and a poor template for the whole history of science and faith.
"But what about…"
Faith means believing without evidence.
Not in Scripture. Biblical faith is trust based on grounds — 'I know whom I have believed'. Jesus offered his wounds to a doubter rather than scolding him for asking.
Evolution makes God unnecessary.
It offers a mechanism for the diversity of life. It says nothing about why there is a universe with laws capable of producing life, or why anything exists at all.
Most scientists are atheists.
Surveys are more mixed than that, and truth is not settled by headcount. Francis Collins, who led the Human Genome Project, is a Christian.
Scripture
And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
Colossians 1:17
Great are the works of the LORD, studied by all who delight in them.
Psalm 111:2
Go deeper
- —Decide which question you are actually asking: how, or why.
Where this came from
We're not experts — these are the sources we used while researching this page. Read them yourself, keep digging, and hold us to them.
- [1]Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Cosmological, Teleological, Moral and Evil entries
Peer-reviewed statements of the arguments and their strongest objections.
- [2]Gary Habermas — minimal facts research on the resurrection
The survey of critical scholarship behind the resurrection material.
- [3]Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, and Daniel Wallace, Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts
Both sides of the manuscript-reliability debate; the skeptical case is read directly.
- [4]Tacitus, Annals 15.44; Josephus, Antiquities 18.63 and 20.200 — Perseus / Loeb texts
The non-Christian ancient references to Jesus and the early church.