Board index ‹ Science and the Bible

[Animal Dr]

Opinions on people saying Science makes God smaller ?

I personally think science and God can co-exist because I believe God created Science.

[jimwalton]

I think science exalts God. Science tells us AMAZING things.

[Taco]

How does it exalt god?

[jimwalton]

When I see the magnificence of space because of the Hubble and Webb telescopes, I am astounded at what I see. When I read about the complexity of the cell, it's amazing. When I read about nanoparticles, accelerator labs splitting particles, genetic studies, and quantum mechanics, it's just incredible. Since I believe that God is the creator of all this—large and small, complex and simple, random and orderly, beautiful and functional, I am staggered in my worship of God.

[Taco]

What about aspects of the human body which could easily have been different and better?

• Tissue prone to cancer
• urethra that can collapse
• low back in a location where it takes more stress than itself
• a faulty and deadly childbirth canal
• the ulnar nerve being prone to overstretching and impingement
• autoimmune response to harmless allergens
• air and feeding opening share the same tube
• the sciatic nerve routing can be fucky in certain people.
• one set of teeth

do these things exalt gods grand design?

[jimwalton]

What God designed was a dynamic system that accommodates and even nurtures life. It's a system of selection, mutation, and change. Life is nurtured better by a dynamic system rather than a static one. As such, though, such a system has aspects of negativity, as any biologist or geneticist will tell you. There is such a thing as deleterious mutations. But a dynamic system is still preferred over a static one. The Earth has to move (tectonic plates and earthquakes) for its own benefit, but yes, sometimes people are injured or killed. The Earth has to "breathe" (volcanoes), but there are downsides. The atmosphere moves, cells mutate, and evolution happens. These are all beneficial systems.

God didn't create tissues prone to cancer, the possibility of collapsing urethrae, or lower back weakness. These are the results of evolution, not design.

As an analogy, God created the idea of government as a way to give structure and to avoid societal chaos. This is not to say that God elected every leader, put every dictator in his position and endorses all of what governments do. It is to say that order is better than anarchy and authority is better than chaos. But we need to draw the lines where the Bible draws them, if we are examining what the Bible teaches.

What God is to be exalted for is the grand scheme, the systems, the design, and the progressive mechanisms that allow life to flourish with regularity, order, predictability, reproducibility, and even purpose and beauty. He didn't design every aspect of every organism.