The Forum

My columns so far have prepared us to examine five different approaches to science and the Bible that are currently popular among Christians. Beginning today, I’ll identify core tenets or assumptions for each of those approaches. I’ll start with propositions about the Bible, draw some conclusions, and then conclude with a short historical commentary—sometimes taking more than one post to cover all that ground

Perhaps, as Einstein famously claimed, “God doesn’t throw dice.” Some may find the view in which God utterly controls all the minutia of everyday life—each coin toss, each radioactively decaying particle—simple and comforting. In this context, randomness only reflects our lack of knowledge and represents our best coping strategy for things we cannot understand any other way.

While the specific “how” of our being made into the image of God will probably always remain a mystery, the Bible and creeds are clear on the “why” of our creation: we were made to worship the Lord, and be in relation with Him and each other. That intimate, conscious and deeply symbolic knowledge of our maker and fellow human beings is a profound difference that sets us apart from the other creatures.

Pastor Joseph Barkley of Ecclesia Church extols the greatness of the God who has brought forth incredible works and engaged humankind in relationship. In the first part of the sermon “Over and Above Naturalism,” Barkley admires the factual knowledge unlocked by science, and yet reminds the Church that those material descriptions fail to answer the question of ultimate significance.

The Christian faith begins with Christ, not nature “taken by itself.” Faith in Christ informs reason, and faith and reason work together, finding their end in God and a redeemed view of nature. One cannot have a fully-grounded understanding of nature unless one first finds one’s origin, sustenance, and end in its Author.

We now do have good reason to think that the p24-2 performs its essential role without merely propping up the function of its parent gene. This role could not have been essential when it first arose, but it is essential now. The evidence strongly suggests that evolutionary processes can add new components to already complex molecular systems.

Despite this usage, most of us know that randomness has something to do with probability, and that it often implies a lack of conscious intentionality. But what do mathematicians and scientists mean when they say something is random? Can a random process lead to an ordered, even predictable outcome? Is there evidence that God makes use of random processes to fulfill his creative purposes?

Design arguments have been around forever and expressed in various ways. Most of them fall into what we call natural theology, which is the process of inferring something about the existence and nature of God by the inspection of nature. The story of creation in Genesis launches the discussion in the Judeo-Christian tradition when it speaks of God ordering nature and driving back chaos.

A God who can create randomness, determine the parameters in which it operates, and use it to achieve certain purposes is not a weak and powerless God. The idea is clever and elegant; the implementation, challenging.

It should not be surprising that John Cage asked the stuff he used to make paintings to take part in the process—to contribute its own identity to the intentional, purposeful, and determined work of creating “based on chance.” All art, all creation that we can observe, happens as a dialectic between materials and the creator, and such engagement and interaction in no way lessons the purpose of making, the end in sight.