I’m typing this on an exciting day – the day that the Large
Hadron Collider near Geneva was switched on. This is the vast machine
which will send beams of particles hurtling around a 27 km circuit at
almost the speed of light. By inducing collisions between these
incredibly tiny objects scientists hope to reproduce the conditions
just after the ‘Big Bang’ at the very beginning of the Universe.
They hope that this will enable them to answer fundamental questions
about the nature of matter and the origins of the universe.
As a nonscientist much of all this is a mystery to me, but I still find
it fascinating and exciting. It’s a fundamental part of our human
nature to want to understand the universe in which we live and of which
we are part. Christians should not shy away from these developments but
take a keen interest in them; after all it is God’s creation we are
seeking to understand.
Although there are scientists, such as Richard Dawkins, who wish to
rule out the existence of God, many others find that their work
increases a sense of wonder and awe and strengthens their religious
faith, or at the very least opens for them the possibility of the
Divine. So there should be no real conflict between science and
religion.
It’s a cause of great sadness to me that there are many Christians who
turn away from certain aspects of science, and in particular from the
theory of evolution. They want to make science conform to a literalist
reading of the creation stories in the book of Genesis and so they
advocate a pseudo science called ‘creationism’. This asserts (without
any scientific evidence) that the creation of humanity came about by a
special intervention of God rather than by a process of evolution from
‘lower’ forms of life.
Of course anyone who wishes to assert that God did intervene in this
way is perfectly entitled to do so. But they have no right to pretend
that what they are advocating is a respectable form of science to be
taught in schools alongside the theory of evolution. Although evolution
remains a theory which can’t be proved absolutely, my understanding is
that the evidence for it is overwhelming. To my mind, the theory of
evolution does not in any way conflict with our Christian faith and
problems only arise for those who believe that the Genesis accounts of
creation have to be understood as actual history rather than as poetry.
Those who do understand them literally have to face the uncomfortable
fact that Genesis actually gives us two very different creation stories
one after the other which sit very uncomfortably together if you insist
on reading them as actual history. To see this for yourself read
Genesis Chapters one and two.
Christians should surely embrace science rather than seeing it as a
threat to faith. We need to have the humility to accept that our
understanding of God’s relationship with the universe may have to
change as scientific understanding progresses and we must never try to
manipulate science to fit a literalist understanding of scripture.
This month we will be celebrating our Harvest Festival which as well as
being a thanksgiving for our food and drink is also an opportunity to
celebrate the whole of God’s creation. Perhaps in the year of the Large
Hadron Collider we ought also to give especial thanks to God for the
work of science and all that it is revealing to us of the wonder of His
creation.