So here's a question, if you find
yourself fascinated by nature say the
nesting habits of woodpeckers, should you
worry the studying them will lead you
away from your faith?  Or if you're
energized by your time staring into the
fascinating world only seen through a
microscope, will it lead you to believe
that you have no soul? Or if you
regularly ponder the wonders of the
stars up above will a career or hobby an
astronomy make you question the
existence of God? While these questions
may seem absurd, the rocky relationship
between science and some streams of
Christianity has led some to conclude
that believers should not be involved in
the study of what they encounter in the
outdoors, under a microscope or twinkling
in the galaxies.  Is that the case, and if
not, why do we believe that what we
learned from doing science will conflict
with the meaning we derived from our
faith?  It turns out the conflict is not
so much between science and faith as it
is between opposing world views.  If you're
not familiar, a worldview is a
philosophical understanding of how you
believe the world to be.  Your worldview
influences how you answer big questions
like who are we, why are we here, where
are we going, and how did this world come
to be.  Your world you define how you see
the world and your place in it but what
does this have to do with science?  As you
probably know we use science to answer
questions about the natural world
through observation and experiment.  You
may not know that it's a verb is
something you do it's not a collection
of facts.  Science is a valuable tool
that can answer questions that theology
does not fully address. Christians should
not fear science. It produces a better
understanding of God's creation and thus
it should produce a better understanding
of God. The tension comes from some underlying
assumptions about how science should be
performed.  A widely held modern approach
to science called methodological
naturalism limits scientific
explanations to only natural causes.
According to this standard any reference
to God miracles or the supernatural
should not be included in answers to any
of our scientific questions. This
guideline is mostly harmless and even
wise when applied to most day-to-day
scientific studies. However it sometimes
gets inappropriately applied to all
questions, not just scientific ones, when
this happens methodological naturalism
can morph into a naturalistic worldview
whose adherents conclude that there is
nothing but what we can see detect and
understand and therefore there's no
supernatural, no miracles, there's nothing
after this life, there's no bigger
meaning to life, and obviously there's no
God. So the practice of science can
reveal fascinating insights about God's
creation but some mistakenly believe
that science can answer every question
which puts them on a path to a
naturalistic worldview. This is a concern
and that's part of the Christian
apprehension with science and an aspect
of the perceived conflict. Now a conflict,
even just a perceived one requires two
sides, so what does some scientists
struggle with regarding Christian
beliefs? That question has at least two
answers and similarly it's tied to world
view. Christians typically respond to
worldview questions with answers like
humans are bearers of the image of God,
we're here to participate in God's
kingdom, and to glorify God,
we're here to love each other and to
steward God's creation and were headed
into an afterlife determined by our
faith in God. These conclusions and
others like them are matters of faith
they're derived from the Bible and they
can't be tested with an empirical study
of the natural world. Thus we shouldn't be surprised that they
frustrate those of the naturalistic
worldview who often believe that science
is capable of answering all questions.
The relationship is further complicated
by some Christians who reject scientific
conclusions if they believe that the
Bible provides clear answers. This makes
the blood of especially atheistic
scientists boil. For example, Richard
Dawkins the Oxford evolutionary
biologist, believes that Christianity
stifles scientific inquiry. He wrote, "I am
against religion because it teaches us
to be satisfied with not understanding
the world" further he argues that "any
belief in miracles is flat contradictory
not just to the facts of science but to
the spirit of science." While Dawkins does
not represent all scientists, he's not
alone in his concern that a willing
rejection of scientific conclusions on
select topics like the age of the earth
and evolution, can you'll the mentality
where Christians are comfortable
rejecting any scientific discovery that
doesn't fit their notion of the world
leading to a naive understanding of
science and how the world
operates. As Christians we have a
responsibility to tend to this tension,
faith and scripture on one hand, and
scientific discoveries about God's
material creation on the other. We at
Disciple Science believe there is a way
to responsibly deal with these questions
and we'll discuss a path forward out of
this conflict in a future video. Stay
tuned. Thanks for watching.
Disciples Science is a crowd-funded
nonprofit organization that's exploring
the intersection of science and faith. We
believe that together science and faith
produce a fuller picture of reality and
that scientific understandings can
inspire a strengthened Christian faith.
You can find the videos and the podcasts
and all of our resources for free on our
website at disciple science.com.  If you
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