The Big Question 5: Do Scientists Believe in God?
Apr 23, 2018 2812
Radio Version:
Do scientists believe in God?
If you ask a group of scientists whether they believe in God, you’ll find that some do and some don’t.
The popular idea that if you’re a scientist then you must by definition be an atheist, is wrong. Science doesn’t necessarily lead to atheism.
The whole notion that the history of human progress has been a battle between science and religion is actually total nonsense. In fact, in the twentieth century the majority of Nobel Prize scientists were Christians. And here’s something else: every major discipline of modern science as we know it was developed by a Bible-believing Christian. Here are just a few:
- Louis Pasteur, Bacteriology
- Isaac Newton, Calculus
- Johan Kepler, Celestial Mechanics
- Robert Boyle, Chemistry
There are two belief systems. One accepts that there is or may be a God, and one says there isn’t. It’s not science that fundamentally determines whether you fall into one camp or another.
Why? Because science has its limits. Science looks for hard evidence of a very specific sort. And where that evidence is incomplete, science cannot say that God does not exist.
Francis Collins, who was responsible with his team for sequencing the human genome, said this,
“There are answers that science isn’t able to provide about the natural world—the questions about why instead of the questions about how. I’m interested in the whys. I find many of those answers in the spiritual realm. That in no way compromises my ability to think rigorously as a scientist.”
I’m with Francis Collins. You don’t have to check your brain in at the door when you become a believer in Jesus. In fact, God invites to you think! He says, “Come, let’s reason together”.
And that’s why there are many scientists who believe in God.
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