#30 Easter and Science: What Three Words Bind Them Together Forever?

Brad Bright explains the how Science and Christianity are tied together and what does tie Science and Christianity together, forever!

Apr 3, 2023

20 Min 51 Sec

View the podcast script

EASTER & SCIENCE: WHAT 3 WORDS BIND THEM TOGETHER FOREVER?

INTRODUCTION

QUESTION: Has anyone ever said to you, “I don’t believe in God, I believe in Science,” as though science and God are somehow incompatible? How did that make you feel? How did you respond?

QUESTION: Let me ask you are harder question: what can you do today to help ensure you never hear those words come out of the mouth of your child as he or she grows into adulthood?

If your child is in public school they are learning that science and religion are at war with each other. That they are incompatible.

In Christian school they are probably learning that God is irrelevant to science, which isn’t much better. In most Christian schools they are taught the Bible, but they are never taught where Science and Christianity intersect, and so they eventually conclude that God is irrelevant to science. That’s not illogical.

What this podcast is about is helping you to have that conversation with your co-workers and your kids. It all begins with three words, “HE IS RISEN!”

Those 3 words bind Science and Christianity together forever.

WITHOUT THOSE 3 WORDS:

You’d still drive a horse and buggy—at best
Electricity would not have been harnessed
The lightbulb would have never been created
We’d have no radio
No TV
No iPhones
No computers
No internet
No air conditioning
No cars
No airplanes
No satellites
We would have never flown to the moon
No vaccine for polio, measles or smallpox
No penicillin
No antibiotics
The Scientific Method which underlies all these things would still lie undiscovered.

I know you’re probably thinking, “Okay Brad, I don’t get it. Are you really saying that Jesus’ resurrection was critical to the development of modern science?” YES! That’s exactly what I’m saying.

WHY DIDN’T OTHER CULTURES DEVELOP THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD?

Have you ever wondered why the ancient Egyptians (pyramids) didn’t come up with the scientific method?

Babylonians?

Persians?

Greeks? (Plato, Socrates, Aristotle)

Romans? (Roads, Aqueducts, the rule of Law)

Chinese? (Gunpowder, the compass and block printing)

Mayans, Aztecs? (Great pyramids, astronomers, brain surgery)

These were all very advanced cultures with very smart people.

Do you really believe that Europeans were significantly more intelligent than all the people in all those other cultures throughout all of history? Or was there something else? What made the difference?

European Christians thought differently than any other civilization in all of history.

Specifically, they saw God differently, and therefore they saw nature differently.

Atheism, Polytheism, Syncretism, Ancestor worship, Islam, did not give birth to the systematic study of nature, which we call science. Why?

Why did Christianity alone give birth to the systematic study of nature?

APPEAL TO FELT NEED:

Your children and grandchildren will not be taught this in public school, and they probably won’t be taught this even in Christian school. I doubt you were taught this. I know I wasn’t.

And there is a frontal assault on Christianity today, especially among our kids. Do you really believe your children are immune? They’re not.

Our conversation today will help you help them.

STORY: Jewish couple at Christmas party.

I don’t want that to happen to you. So the conversation we are going to have today, is the conversation you will want to have with you kids in different forms along the way.

So that you know, I’ve put a lot of the information we are going to talk about today in a blog on the BrightMedia.org website so you don’t have remember it all.

But let’s jump into this. What binds Easter and Science together, forever?

OVERVIEW OF HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD:

History books will tell you the Scientific Revolution, the systematic study of nature, kicked into full gear in the mid 1500’s with Copernicus.

But the development of the Scientific Method probably began 400 years earlier during the Middle Ages, which some historians of the last 150 years have intentionally mislabeled the “Dark Ages,” in an attempt to demean Christianity.

But the Scientific Method didn’t just suddenly spring to life from nothing. It developed over time.

Many of those involved were clergy and theologians. Almost all assumed the rationality of God.

The Scientific Revolution was simply the blossoming of that process.

OVERVIEW OF HISTORY OF THE WAR BETWEEN SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY

It wasn’t until that latter half of the 19th century, on the heels of Darwin and Freud, that this assumption was seriously challenged. That’s really when the perceived conflict between Christianity and science began.

Up until then, the practice of science was generally based on the assumption that God existed, that He designed the universe, that He was rational, and that He was a God or order, and that nature would reflect this order.

Up until that time most scientists held the following seven assumptions:

7 ASSUMPTIONS BEHIND THE DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENCE

GOD EXISTS. Where did they learn that? From the Bible.
GOD IS RATIONAL. Where did they learn that? They learned that from the Bible.
God created the universe. Where did they learn that? From the Bible. Therefore, they believed the universe would reflect his rationality, through its order.
GOD HAS A MIND AND A WILL. He is not some kind of impersonal force. Where did they learn that? From the Bible. God chose to make the universe he wanted to make, not the universe he had to make. This implies, contrary to Greek philosophy, that you have to do more than reason, you must actually observe nature in order to discover what God actually created. Now we consider that common sense, but this was a complete break from the way the ancient Greeks thought.
MAN WAS CREATED IN GOD’S IMAGE. Where did they learn that? From the Bible. Therefore, man is also a rational being (created in God’s image), capable of discovering the order embedded in nature through observation.
BECAUSE OF SIN MAN’S RATIONALITY IS FLAWED, and therefore needs to be double-checked and triple-checked through REPEATED observation—the Scientific Method. God is real, and science is real. The difference is God never says, “Oops!” Science says it all the time because our rationality is limited. That is why the Scientific Method is necessary.
MATHMATICS APPLIED TO THE STUDY OF NATURE: Because mathematics was all about order, mathematics could be systematically applied to the study of nature because of the order embedded in nature. This was a revolutionary concept. Mathematics had never been systematically applied to the study of nature ever before. This final assumption ultimately led to Newton’s theory of gravity and Einstein’s theory of relativity.

In the words of Johannes Kepler who discovered the laws of planetary motion:

“The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order and harmony imposed on it by God and which he revealed to us in the language of mathematics.”

Core assumptions: God is rational. God has a free Will.

The entire scientific method and the Scientific Revolution was built on those two basic assumptions about God.

WHY ATHEISM COULD HAVE NEVER BIRTHED THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

Atheism could never have given birth to Modern Science because it does not necessarily assume order in the universe. In fact, Richard Dawkins, an Oxford biologist, and one of the leading intellectuals of the New Atheist Movement, stated that there is no real order in the universe, only “apparent order.” What he was inadvertently admitting is that atheism could have never birthed the Scientific Method which was built on the assumption that there is order in the universe.

APPLICATION

The next time someone says, “I don’t believe in God; I believe in science.” Ask them why the ancient Egyptians, the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Aztecs, the Mayans, the Chinese never came up with the scientific method (the systematic study of nature) but the West did. Was it because Europeans were smarter than all those other people and cultures? Or was it something else? What was it?

And at some point, start having that same conversation with your kids. They are smarter than you think. Don’t lose the battle for your children’s minds by default.

When they are young, ask them simple questions. “Can God think?” “Can we think?” Does God ever say “Oops!” But does science ever say “Oops!” “Can a cow give birth to a dog? Why do you think God made it that way?”

As they get older, ask harder questions. By asking questions that involve God’s relationship to science, you will start creating the intersection between God and science in their minds.

In fact, this next week do a fun activity with your kids that will help them make this connection.

PRE-EASTER ACTIVITY:

When you turn on the lightswitch say, “He is Risen, so therefore we have light.”

When you get in the car say, “He is Risen, so I can start my car.”

When you pull out your cell phone say, “He is Risen, so I can text grandma.”

Get your kids to do it with you. Explain to them why.

It will help solidify the connection between God and Science in their minds.

See how many things you can apply that statement to leading up to Easter.

CONCLUSION

The resurrection of Jesus gave birth to a new way of thinking about God and nature, which created fertile soil for the birth and growth of science.

Ideas have consequences. Ideas about God have even greater consequences.

So, this Easter, when you hear the words, “He is Risen,” I hope you will have an even greater appreciation for the power of those words.