I have found myself playing a role in a conversation that previously has not been of particularly interest to me, the subject of the interaction of faith and science. At Annual Conference last month, the body rejected several petitions that sought to affirm a young earth creationist viewpoint among United Methodists.
At one time, when I was a child, this conversation seemed very important to me. In fact, as a preteen, I was the youngest member of the Kansas Creation Science Society. As my faith matured in teen years, the question of how long God spent creating the earth became unimportant to me and I focused on a very experiential form of Christianity that included a lot of evangelism, loud prayer meetings, missions, and playing Christian worship songs on guitars. I loved church history and systematic theology during my undergrad years, and plunged into biblical studies. I even spent some time looking into apologetics. Perhaps I'm a bit too post-modern, but I've never felt that people came to faith through rational argument (that's another blog). Even at a conservative place like Oral Roberts University, learning genre appropriate means to study scripture helped me see how the Bible can be read faithfully without supporting young earth creationism. Most of my apologetics have come from people like CS Lewis, whose work has been valuable to me not because it proves Christianity to unbelievers, but because it helps make Christian theology accessible without dumbing it down, which helps me as a teacher of the faith to communicate better.
But, I'm on the committee on resolutions and petitions, so I've had to work on these petitions in committee. And I'm on the conference board of church and society, which has been asked to provide resources to better study the question. So I'm reading about faith and science these days.
I've already recommended Lawson Bryan's book and Adam Hamilton's stuff that touches on the subject.
Here are some names of some popular and very thoughtful writers on my reading list:
Alister McGrath. McGrath is known to many Christian readers through his popular and very good theology textbook. He's written tons of books and lots of subjects, including a book I read and enjoyed very much on the production of the King James Version. McGrath holds doctorates in theology and molecular biophysics. He's written
Science and Religion: An Introduction, a book I think everyone who wants to participate in this conversation should be required to read. It's not difficult. It's not shallow. It's a perfect start to an intelligent and faithful conversation on the subject.
Francis Collins. Francis Collins is the head of the National Institutes of Health and led the team that mapped the human genome. A former atheist, he came to faith through his study of science. His
The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief was a very popular New York Times bestseller.
John Polkinghorne: Polkinghorne is a recipient of the Templeton Prize (a sort of religious version of the Nobel Prize). He left his job as chair of mathematical physics at Cambridge University to study for the priesthood. He is widely recognized as the world's greatest thinker on the interaction of science and religion, and his writings are noted for being written to be accessible to lay people. He has written more than 25 books on the subject of science and religion. I don't know where to start, so I've ordered
The Polkinghorne Reader as a sampler.
William Lane Craig. Craig has made a name for himself in recent years as a gifted apologist who gives The New Atheists fits in public debates. He destroyed Christopher Hitchens. Richard Dawkins famously said that he is the one Christian who puts the fear of God in him. He is not trained as a scientist, but holds doctorates in both theology and philosophy. His philosophical work was on cosmology, though, and so scientific questions related to origins are central to his expertise. He's on the conservative side theologically and in terms of social ethics, teaching at Biola and beginning his training at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. I don't know where to begin with his writings and would love a recommendation. He's got a good website.
These are some of the top defenders of the Christian faith these days, the folks on the front lines of intellectual debates for the existence of a personal God, believers who engage science in a meaningful way. Interestingly, none of these feel that evolution is inconsistent with Christian faith or a faithful reading of Bible, and all of them are opposed to young earth creationism and intelligent design.
Those who argue for creationism (not the Apostles' Creed kind, but, as Polinghorne calls it, creationism in "that curious North American sense") and intelligent design often say that there are tons of scientists who are creationists, and people debate about whether they are correct about this. What's interesting to me is not how difficult it is to find a creationist scientist, but how difficult it is to find a creationist apologist for the Christian faith who also has any reputable scientific training. The same is true of biblical scholars--it's nearly impossible to find a faithful Christian who teaches the Bible as reputable scholar and who reads the Bible the way
the creationists and intelligent design people read it. I would love to hear from anyone who can offer some good counter examples. I'm supposed to be providing resources for everyone, so I'm open to getting as much help as possible.
