My walk in the scientific/evangelical world – Who am I?

First, a little history. While I was working towards my doctorate in Bioengineering at the University of Washington, my husband and I attended a Presbyterian church in Seattle. Young and newly married, we chose to help in Sunday School, and found our niche teaching second graders there for almost 10 years. During that time I was very involved in the scientific world and surrounded by a university community that had a real appreciation for science. Wrapped up as I was in the lab, focusing on my dissertation, and living in a climate of serious inquiry and study, I was unaware of any significant disconnections between science and faith. Science was actively integrated with faith from the pulpit of our church, and in turn, we always loved to bring little bits of science into our lessons—even to the point of using sediment deposits in the Black Sea as evidence of a regionally-based ‘flood’ event thousands of years ago during our lessons about Noah’s ark. No one complained.

As I loved research, I continued to work in a lab at UW once I finished my PhD. But I also had two babies while completing my dissertation, and eventually found it challenging to balance work and family. When my husband was relocated to San Diego, I took that difficult uprooting as an opportunity to step back from labwork and spend more time with preschoolers. Leaving life at a fast-paced urban research university for the relaxed and resort-like coastal suburbs of San Diego County was another kind of culture shock, compounded by the fact that we found looking for a new church to be particularly hard. After some consultation with friends of friends, we stepped out of our Mainstream Protestant comfort zone and visited a Calvary Chapel.

There was certainly an adjustment period (eventually we stopped doing a double-take every time we saw the board shorts and flip-flops on Sunday morning – even on the stage!), but over time we were able to plug into a dynamic evangelical community. We found the vibrant, Christ-centered church to be a great place to make deep and lasting connections with the people, both through small groups and by serving in Children’s Ministry. Making a personally quite revolutionary decision to fully step away from the busy life of a researcher, I found a new calling when I took on a part time job leading the church’s 2nd and 3rd Grade program.

A surprising disconnect in the faith community

I now find myself spending my weekends with over a hundred kids and volunteers, and it has been a great adventure. However, it has also been through this ministry that I discovered first hand the uncomfortable disconnect between science and the evangelical church. At first it was just a few throw-away comments from fellow believers in church: dismissal of museum exhibits, eye-rolling at the ancient geology of the Grand Canyon, etc. Of course, I had heard rumors of such thinking, but I was a little surprised to find it to be so common in the Evangelical community. Many people I knew were rejecting large swathes of science outright. Sometimes I give out prizes to the kids in my class—trinkets and other insignificant plastic things that kids love—and some of the items I had in our “prize box” were “dino eggs with dino facts.” To my amazement, these items brought on complaints from parents because of their reference to the age of the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago.

Meanwhile, my husband—an environmental engineer with a background in Geology—was serving at the church with older kids. In his class he often heard that favorite question from Christian kids, “How do the dinosaurs fit into the creation story?” But the only answer he’d ever heard in response was the explanation that dinosaurs were obviously on the ark, and somehow became extinct after the flood. He is the most easy-going person ever, but he was taken aback by this wholesale dismissal of geologic history and by the lack of a more nuanced discussion of Scripture. At that point we began to ask around, and learned that, yes, this is a common way of thinking in evangelical circles.

These attitudes about science and the Bible seemed especially prevalent among the many home schooling families in our community. More than half of my church coworkers homeschool or send their kids to Christian schools. Several of these wonderful folks were homeschooled themselves, and very few attended secular universities. Many of the children and families that I minister to each week are also homeschooling families, and for the first time I became troubled by what they were learning about science and the natural world. I attended public school and secular universities both for undergraduate and graduate studies, and (after much thought and discussion) we chose to send our own kids to public schools, not least because we want them to have great training in science and math. While we are fortunate enough to live in a community with challenging public schools well equipped to prepare kids in those areas, I want the same for homeschooled kids, as well. All Christian young people should be able to both excel in science and grow in their understanding of the God of Scripture, whether they’re taught in institutional settings or at home. I only wish I could better trust available homeschooling science curriculum materials to achieve that end.

Is there cause for concern? Does it really matter?

One can correctly argue that Jesus’ incarnation and resurrection are the central beliefs and values of the Christian faith. In the end, does it matter what we teach our kids about origins or the age of the Universe? What harm is there in these black and white beliefs held by good people doing good things?

I believe that it does matter, for several reasons:

1. We have generation of Christian young people who are not trained in scientific principles that will allow them to meaningfully contribute to fields such as cosmology, geology, biology, etc. Our universities especially need an evangelical presence!
2. Thoughtful, scientifically-minded people—both young and old—will be pushed AWAY from the evangelical community. I know that I could not attend a church that dismisses scientific evidence in order to fit nature’s narrative into preconceived ideas, or one where scientists are actively mocked.
3. The faith of homeschooled and other Christian kids can be challenged when they have their first college classes on geology, evolutionary biology, etc. Many will reach a point where they think they have to choose between their faith and what the scientific world tells them about the created order.
4. Simply, evangelicals are in danger of looking a bit ridiculous to reasonable and educated people when they appear so fearful of science, making it easier for non-Christians to dismiss the gospel message.

Exploratory Efforts –Communicating God’s Revelation in Nature

Despite these experiences and concerns, my overall impression of the evangelical community’s perspective on science is that in most areas, everything is fine. But it seems that sensitivity around a few points—particularly origins, the age of the earth and climate change—limits open discussion even of more general scientific issues, and as wonderful as they are, our pastoral staff rarely invokes natural wonders to illustrate doctrine, whether speaking to adults or kids.

As a Christian, a scientist and an educator, I particularly want the kids I work with to know that it is good to wonder about the world around us and say “God Did It – But How?” More than that, I want them to know that they do not have to be afraid of the answers to those questions. So I ask myself, “Is there anything I can do?” As it turns out, I’ve concluded that there are ways that I (like any of us) can help, even if the efforts are incrementally small at first. Our church hosts a tremendous summer camp that teaches kids Bible stories and worship, but also gives children a chance to choose an “elective” and learn more about subjects like art, music, cooking, a sport, or science. Each summer more than 1,000 kids attend this outreach at our church campus, and I was privileged this past summer to be able to “coach” science and write up a fun science curriculum that dovetailed with the various Bible stories the kids were hearing.

The practice of science became a wonderful avenue for sharing God’s love and the Salvation Story whether I pulled ideas for experiments directly from the Bible (such as creating, testing and optimizing sling shots like David) or used the stories more allegorically; extracting DNA from strawberries (always a hit with kids) illustrated our uniqueness in God’s eyes, while creating a solar music box demonstrated the beauty of living in God’s light vs. hiding in the darkness. I found that this was an excellent place in which to bring young Christians (and non-Christians) into an understanding and appreciation of basic scientific principles in conjunction with communicating spiritual truth. My hope is that those lessons will open their eyes to further inquiry as they grow up and move on through junior high, high school, and—for some—beyond.

In the end, I was inspired to write out a preliminary curriculum, combining scriptural lessons with science experiments. This effort led me to co-author Wonders In Our World: Insights From God's Two Books, a book that further explains the complementarities of God’s Two Books – the book of nature and Scripture. While materials like these can be used in church settings such as the summer camp at our Calvary Chapel, my hope is that they will become a resource for Christian families all year long—especially for those homeschoolers I love so much. A full curriculum may still be a ways off (perhaps I’ll have more to share about that in a future post), but in the meantime, I’m honored to be able to draw on both Scripture and science to share my joy in Christ and his creation.

(I must add an immediate qualification to this brief history: Francis Collins did not work on this project after he moved to the NIH. As is often the case with co-authored works, the authors played different roles. Francis’s contribution was to get the whole FAQ project started and work closely with the original writers and editors on the first round of material, most of which ended up on The BioLogos Forum.)

The Language of Science and Faith shares and even embodies the very inspiration that launched BioLogos—the desire to help people find answers to “Genuine Questions” about relating scientific accounts of origins to their faith in God as creator. As our many visitors to this site know, the “pre-history” of BioLogos was Francis Collins’s publication of The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief in 2007. The book went on to become a bestseller and even now, almost 4 years later the book continues to be near the top of the best-selling books in its area. As I write these words a few days after Christmas, it is #1 on the “science and religion” list at Amazon, a powerful testimony to both the importance of this topic and the winsome writing style and testimony of its author.

The Language of God told the story of how Francis found harmony between his science and his Christian faith. He is a world-class scientist—leading the Human Genome Project to a successful completion and going on to become the head of the National Institutes of Health, where he presently works. But he is also a committed believer. His story moved readers who were wrestling with questions of faith and science, and seeking the place of rest that Collins had found in his own journey.

Letters and emails poured in, asking Francis for wisdom and insight. Readers wanted to dig deeper. Many asked questions not addressed in The Language of God. Soon Francis was buried in a pile of “Frequently Asked Questions.” Addressing these questions individually was simply not possible, but many of them were passionate and came from people with real struggles. Ignoring them was not an option. BioLogos was Francis’s response to this felt need.

Not surprisingly, the BioLogos website launched with a series of FAQ’s in which various experts helped BioLogos staff writers address key issues in their fields—from biblical studies and theology to the history of science, from biology to physics, and everything in between. The experts included such leading thinkers as Denis Alexander, Jeff Schloss, Owen Gingerich, Darrel Falk, Alister McGrath, Ernest Lucas, Ron Numbers, and Ted Davis.

The FAQ format requires short, stand-alone answers to work well, and it became apparent that there would be value in a more systematic treatment of these issues. The mission of The Language of Science and Faith is to survey these same issues but in a more wide-ranging way that is only possible in a book. By rewriting all of the original material, adding fresh material where needed, and working with the editors at InterVarsity, I have tried to create a coherent and consistent style that will help readers stay with the themes as they unfold.

The book groups topics thematically, allowing a reader to get a global sense of the issues connected to each topic. Throughout the book, we built carefully on each topic, hoping to take the reader by the hand, so to speak, from one topic to the next in a way that would let them dig steadily deeper without feeling like they were getting in over their heads.

The book begins with the evidence for evolution and the great age of the earth. As readers of this blog know very well by now, this evidence is compelling and must be taken seriously. In fact, it is the strength of this very evidence that requires books like this and projects like BioLogos. If the evidence was weak and piecemeal, then we could simply withhold assent and maintain a more traditional view. But the evidence does not let us do that, and we make this case in the first two chapters.

Once we accept this evidence, the questions emerge and are the subject of the next two chapters, which look at ways to relate science and religion in general, and science and scripture in particular. Unless a harmony can be found, there can be no “coming to peace with science” as BioLogos president Darrel Falk titled his wonderful book on this topic. We believe, of course, that harmony can be found, and we lay out that case. But this leads to another question: If harmony can be found so readily, why is Darwin’s theory of evolution so controversial?

The controversy surrounding Darwin’s theory is a complex sociological and cultural problem, which we unfold in a chapter. From atheists who want evolution to be a weapon against religion, to biblical literalists who want the Bible to be a weapon against evolution, there is no shortage of people with agendas to create controversy.

The constant presence of controversy creates the impression that this discussion is an endless quarrel. This is far from true, and we include a chapter on the fine-tuning of the universe to make exactly that point. The many features of our universe that are fine-tuned for life do not explain themselves and, while we caution against leaping to the conclusion that “God is the explanation for fine-tuning,” we do suggest that the universe appears to have the sort of deeply rational, purposeful character that a Christian would expect, even before looking at it from the perspective of science.

The final chapter, titled “The Grand Narrative of Creation,” offers a speculative look at the scientific creation story through biblical and theological lenses. We suggest, tentatively, that the affirmations Christians want to make on behalf of Genesis resonate nicely with what science has discovered about origins.

The Language of Science and Faith does not seek to break new scholarly ground. Our target audience is the evangelical church—the tens of millions of Bible-believing Christians who are prepared to engage contemporary science, rather than simply reject it. We were thus quite thrilled when Dr. Joel C. Hunter -- pastor of the Northland Church in Longwood, Florida, an enthusiastic participant in our New York Workshops, and one of America’s religious leaders -- gave us this endorsement for the cover of the book:

"As a pastor, I am constantly searching for resources that will guide people to the fullness of God. I care that my congregation be attracted toward God's artistry, moved by his majesty and intellectually challenged by his sovereignty. This book is at the top of my recommendations both as an evaluation of theories of creation and as a devotional that prompts us to revere the Creator."

Over the course of the next few weeks, I will be offering reflections on the development of this book, some excerpts, as well as exploring some of the themes of the book in greater detail.

Be sure to bookmark the new landing page for The Language of Science and Faith to stay up to date with the latest news about the book!