Case 08 · Apologetic · The class
Science
What science can and cannot explain, and whether it has left less room for God.
13 claims · 27 exhibits · 40 objections answered
What this case argues
- The universe had a beginning rather than existing forever.
- The idea that science and religion have always been at war was popularized by two writers in the late 1800s and has since been set aside by most historians of science.
- A Catholic priest was among the first to derive an expanding-universe model, and the first to propose it had a beginning, while refusing to treat it as proof of God.
- Galileo was a lifelong Catholic, and his conflict with the Church was driven as much by politics, personality, and authority as by science.
- Einstein assumed a static, eternal universe and changed his own equations to keep it that way, a move he later regarded as a serious mistake.
- Many of the founders of modern science were devout Christians who expected an orderly universe because they believed a rational God made it.
- The basic constants of physics sit in narrow ranges that allow stars, chemistry, and life, and shifting them even slightly would rule life out.
- A non-religious astronomer acknowledged that the discovery of a cosmic beginning matched what the biblical tradition had long claimed.
- A miracle is not a violation of the laws of nature, so science cannot rule miracles out in advance.
- There are three serious explanations for fine-tuning, and design is not the unscientific option among them.
- If human reason is only the product of unguided evolution aimed at survival, then trusting it to find truth undercuts itself, which is a problem for naturalism.
- A complete physical account of the brain still does not explain why we have inner experience, and this fits a mind-first universe at least as well as a matter-first one.
- Biological evolution, whatever its scientific merits, does not by itself settle the question of God, and Christians hold a range of views on it.
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