Sermon Transcript
Bible Reading
Psalm 19:1-14
Good morning, friends. This morning, I'm reading from Psalm 19, which is about halfway through your Bible. I can't give you a page number because I didn't look it up. So Psalm 19.
The heavens declare the glory of God. The skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day, they pour forth speech. Night after night, they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words, no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens, God has pitched a tent for the sun.
It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other. Nothing is deprived of its warmth.
The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes.
The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. The decrees of the Lord are firm, and all of them are righteous. They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold. They are sweeter than honey, than honey from the honeycomb.
By them your servant is warned, in keeping them there is great reward. But who can discern their own errors? Forgive my hidden faults. Keep your servant also from willful sins. May they not rule over me. Then I will be blameless, innocent of great transgression.
May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight. Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Has Science Made God Irrelevant?
Well it's great to be back at Deep Creek again, to be with my grandchildren, and to talk to you, and I do need to congratulate you, don't I? We come from St Alfred's, North Blackburn, and it's about three years ago now that we stole Ben and Emily and their girls, and now you're paying us back and stealing them back again, so congratulations. We love them a lot and we're very glad for Deep Creek that they're coming back here. We did wonder when we knew that Megan was moving on, we did wonder whether that might be a possibility.
Well my name is Chris Mulherin, if you haven't met me, I am the director of ISCAST, Christianity and Science in Conversation, and if I can get this clicker to work, no, it's not working. Have you got the script back there? Why don't we just follow the script and I'll forget about the clicker, that'll be much easier. So if we could go on to the next slide, that'd be great.
ISCAST is an Australian organisation that brings together people who love science and also who love Jesus. So the senior members of our organisation are scientists in churches and in universities around the country. Three of them have won the Prime Minister's Prize for Science and I hope to introduce you to them if we get some slides going.
So we love science and we love Christian faith, but the question is, has science made God irrelevant? I'm not sure what you think about that, but to many people in the street and certainly students in schools, the answer to that question is yes. So let me ask, what would you say to your friend or your next door neighbour or somebody at work or your grandchild or child who says that science has disproven the existence of God or at least made God irrelevant?
Today we're going to ponder the wonders of the universe and we're going to think about Psalm 19 and we'll also meet some of the Christians who are big names in science. But let's start with the big picture.
We do live in an amazing universe and if we had slides I'd show you a photograph of it. From the very small at the subatomic level to the very large in a universe of billions of stars, indeed billions of galaxies, each one with billions of stars, it is simply incomprehensible and it's a reason to praise the Creator.
But of course not everybody sees it that way. When I attended the World Atheist Convention, I remember clearly as the most famous atheist in the world, Professor Richard Dawkins, started his talk like this. The fact of your own existence is the most astonishing fact you will ever have to confront. Don't you dare ever get used to it.
Professor Dawkins then went on to tell the audience that we live in an amazing universe and that we ought to give thanks for our existence. But he said, there is no one to give thanks to. It's gratefulness in a vacuum. However for the Christian, the universe is filled with meaning and a cause for wonder and praise of the Creator. The heavens declare the glory of God and the skies proclaim the work of his hands, says the psalmist.
In my work as director of ISCAST, I mix with people who love both science and the Creator. But I also regularly come across people in schools often who say there is a total conflict between science and faith. I believe in science, they say, so I couldn't be religious. In fact, of our surveys of over 2,000 students, 60% of students in secondary faith-based schools say that science and faith are in conflict. It makes me sad and frustrated too because they just don't understand either science or Christian faith. If they did, they would realise that science and faith can get along.
Eight Seconds to Midnight
Let me give you a bit more of a taste of the universe we live in. We're finding some slides, but meanwhile I said there were billions of stars in our galaxy, in the Milky Way galaxy, hundreds of billions in fact, and hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe. There are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on all the beaches and all the deserts of this planet.
Meanwhile, according to the best science, the universe is about 14 billion years old. That is to say, the universe has been around for about that long, the earth has been around for about four billion years, and life on earth has been around for most of that time, but not life as we know it.
Life on earth, if you compress life on earth from its four billion years into one year, it would look like this. The first signs of life appear about Easter time, but then you have to go to November before you get multi-celled organisms, and you have to go to Christmas time, the day after Christmas, before you get the dinosaurs dying out, and then you have to go to the last half hour of this year to find human beings.
Jesus was born at about eight seconds to midnight on New Year's Eve, and all of us live all of our lives, even the youngest of us, in the last second of this year that is the earth's lifetime. That's the picture that mainstream science gives us of this universe that we live in.
Let's turn now to ask, how have Christians thought historically about the relationship between science and faith? Well for centuries, Christians have talked about God's two books, about the two ways that God reveals himself to us. One way is in the Bible, another way is in the work of his hands.
Study Both God's Word and God's World
Do you think we've got the slides working? Look at that, but it's different up the back. Goodness me, I'm really confused now.
Go to slide number six. Slide number six, I've already talked about this. Leave it on there, leave it on there, I'll tell you what that is.
This is part of our galaxy. This is the Carina Nebula. There are about 3,000 baby stars here. They're only a couple of million years old.
Go back to that, there it is. They're only a few million years old, and that picture that I was showing you before, it's about 20,000 light years away. We are looking back in time 20,000 years when we look at that photo.
Next, this photo, much closer to home. This is known as the Horsehead Nebula, at least that's the non-technical name for it.
It's a region of space where the dust is being pulled together by gravity to form stars. You can see all that dust, it's called a nebula, to form baby stars out of this dust.
And this photo is a vast, vast photo. Light travels around the Earth about seven times in a second. It takes 10 years for light to go from one side of this photo to the other side of this photo.
And we're looking back in time about 1,600 years ago. This is what it looked like in the time of Augustine. What it looks like now, well, we'll find out in 1,600 years.
So let's zap on to slide number seven. There it is, there it is.
If you talk about a conflict between science and faith, this book probably represents the conflict, Charles Darwin's Origin of Species. Now, I talked about Christians talking about the two books of God.
Look carefully at what Charles Darwin put opposite the title page of Origin of Species. He quoted Francis Bacon's words, and let's blow it up on the next slide.
Francis Bacon said, and this is my paraphrase, be sure to study both God's word and God's world. Both science and Christianity help us to know the truth about life, the universe, and everything.
So there is a long history of Christians seeing the works of God, the creation, as showing us something about the creator.
Now, let me introduce you to the person who took those photos that we eventually did see. Jennifer Wiseman works for NASA. She's a senior member of our organization, but she's an international member.
She's the senior project scientist on the Hubble Space Telescope. There it is. It's about the size of a bus, and you can see the doors open, so it's taking a photo.
She's a public Christian who grew up loving nature, the stars, and who sees God's hand in the amazing photographs that we've seen taken by the Hubble over the last 30 years or so.
History is also full of giants in science who were committed believers, some of whom actually did more theology than they did science. If you studied science at all, you'll know some of them, although you mightn't know their photos.
At the top right is Johannes Kepler. He was going to be a Lutheran priest, but he thought that he could glorify God more by doing science. It was Kepler who gave us the laws of planetary motion.
He said, no, the planets don't revolve in circles. They revolve in ellipses.
Under Kepler is René Descartes. You have all met René Descartes, even if you don't remember.
Do you remember the XY plane in mathematics? What's it called? The Cartesian plane, named after René Descartes, the mathematician.
René Descartes, the philosopher, gave us those famous words, I think, therefore I am. René Descartes, committed Christian who wrote lots about how faith and his science and his philosophy all fitted together.
Last person in the middle row on the left is Isaac Newton, maybe the most famous scientist ever. He gave us the laws of gravity and force and calculus, and he also wrote more theology than he did science. Mind you, his theology wasn't very orthodox, so I recommend his science, not his theology. I could go on, but I won't go on right now. You get the gist. The giants of the scientific revolution, almost all of them, were Christians, who we know as scientists today.
And fast forward, Australia too has its giants of science who are also Christians. As I said, three of the people involved in ISCAST have won the Prime Minister's Prize for Science.
Graeme Clark gave the world the first successful multi-channel bionic device, fulfilling his dream that children born deaf would be able to hear and speak. He has changed the lives of millions of people around the world.
And it's lovely to hear him speak about the difficult journey developing the bionic ear. Here in Melbourne, it was a matter of constant prayer, he says.
His goal, as he describes it, was to help people and to do God's will. Graeme lives and goes to church about four kilometres in that direction, in Eltham, in that direction, in Eltham.
Ken Freeman is a cosmologist who also won the Prime Minister's Prize for Science for being at the forefront of proposing that the universe is mostly made up of dark matter and energy. Ken is up in Canberra. And Cheryl Praeger in Perth is an eminent mathematician, as well as someone who's paved the way for women in mathematics in the last 50 years. All of them committed Christian people.
Here's another famous scientist who you probably don't know. He's a Christian. No, not the man on the left. It was Georges Lemaître, mathematician, physicist, priest, who gave us the theory of the primeval atom. Today, we call it the Big Bang theory. It's the accepted theory about the history of the universe.
What do all these people I've been talking about have in common? They believe that God speaks through the creation, through the work of his hands. For many of these people, like Johannes Kepler, their science was explicitly a way to glorify God, uncovering the truth about the world we live in, the book of God's works. Throughout history, Christians have referred to these two books. Hear the psalm as it begins by proclaiming the book of God's works. And then it turns to the book of God's word.
The Universe Speaks
Psalm 19:1-2
The heavens declare the glory of God. The skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day, they pour forth speech. Night after night, they reveal knowledge.
The universe speaks. And we hear an echo of this again in Romans chapter 1.
Romans 1:20
Since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, his eternal power, and his divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.
Something of God is revealed in the natural world.
The psalmist continues, first recognizing the metaphorical, pictorial language, and then launching again into praise of the creator and the creation.
Psalm 19:3-4
The skies have no speech. They use no words. No sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.
And it goes on in that sort of metaphorical language to praise the way that the creation speaks of God. Sure, the heavens don't literally speak. They don't have a voice.
God has not pitched a tent for the sun. The sun doesn't actually rise and make a circuit. Metaphorical language, poetic language, to declare the truth, the truth that the awe and wonder we experience connects us in some way to the creator, to God.
And by extension, science, uncovering the book of God's works in the creation, can also lead us to worship the creator.
And now at verse 7, God speaks in another way. The psalmist turns to the words of God found in the Torah, or the law, the first five books of what we call the Old Testament.
Psalm 19:7-8
The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes.
We won't dwell on the rest of the psalm today, but note that the psalmist who started with God's first book, the book of nature, of creation, then moved to God's second book, the book of God's word, finishes by pointing to the need for more than just knowledge of God. Read it again later for yourself. You'll see that the problem of sin and the need of forgiveness have to be dealt with. And as Christians, we know it's God's revealing himself in Jesus Christ that will deal with the problem of all that is wrong with us and the world.
What Science Can Never Answer
Now let me finish with a couple of thoughts about how we might understand the science-faith relationship so that we have a clue or two in our pocket next time somebody asks us, or if we even have a niggle about it ourselves.
We know the atheist naturalist view of the world. Here's the most famous atheist in the world, Professor Richard Dawkins.
In a universe of blind physical forces and genetics, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil, and no good. Nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
This is the view of life and the universe without God.
Right now, we're all aware of the astounding growth of artificial intelligence. It's a massively expensive and powerful technology led by a group of tech billionaires who recently locked in, one of them recently locked in, a $1,000 billion performance bonus.
That's Elon Musk. $1 trillion if Tesla goes well. Next slide.
This is Sam Altman. He's the one on the right. He's the leader of the AI race who gave us ChatGPT. He also happens to be my nephew-in-law, but that's another story.
Cutting-edge technologies, including AI, are raising huge moral questions, many of them around what it means to be human. People like Elon Musk, Sam Altman, seem to think that if we just have more science and technology, all our problems would be solved. The problem is that they don't have a clear moral framework to guide the way that they use their technological powers. And we know, don't we, that more science will not answer the moral questions. Science can never answer the most important questions of life.
So let's be very clear about the limits of science. Anyone who thinks that science will have all the answers is wrong. Anyone who thinks that science is the only way to truth is wrong. There are a host of questions that science cannot answer and never will. And the foundations of science itself rest on assumptions that science cannot prove but must take for granted.
Let me mention three types of questions that science cannot help us with. Firstly, moral questions. Science can make nuclear weapons, but it can't tell us whether it's right to use them or not. Science can make artificial general intelligence, or maybe we're heading in that direction, but it can't tell us how we should control it.
Secondly, philosophical questions. What are the limits of AI? How do we know that science leads to truth? These are not scientific questions, they're philosophical questions. And science can't answer them.
And my third category of question, existential questions. Existential questions like the questions that our family asked when our oldest son, Ben, came home from the doctor and said, hey mum, I might have cancer and died five months later.
Where is Ben now? Why does God allow suffering? Why Ben? What's the meaning of life?
Ben's youngest brother, Matthew, came home three months later and he said to Lindy, my wife, hey mum, you're not gonna die, are you? And she said, no, why? And he said, well, Ben died, so anyone can die.
When these questions come along, and if they haven't yet for some of you, they will, we don't turn to science for the answers. We have to look to religion, to philosophy. As Christians, we look to our faith.
Having said all that, let me ask, why are people so confused about science and its relationship to faith? Why do people think there is an irreconcilable conflict between faith and science? Well, I think we're puzzled because we confuse questions of meaning with questions of mechanisms. We confuse questions of purposes with questions of particles.
Let me finish with an example that you may know well, an example that might help us capture the right way to understand the relationship between science and faith. You go into the physics classroom, and the teacher asks why the water is boiling. A bright student pipes up and says, the water is boiling because the chemical energy of the gas is being converted to heat energy, and the heat energy is being transferred to the molecules, and the molecules are sort of jiggling, and the molecules jiggle enough that some of them turn into vapour, and the gas is released, and that's why the water is boiling. Then the teacher takes out a tea bag and says, actually, it's boiling because I want a cup of tea.
There are two questions there, aren't there? And both answers are correct. One is a question about mechanics, what causes the water to boil? The other is a question about meanings. What is the purpose of the water boiling? And if we confuse questions of mechanics, that's science, with questions of meaning, which our faith deals with, then we may think that science and faith collide.
Yes, science is great, but it can only answer certain sorts of questions, and Christian faith is not science. For the most part, it deals with the big questions, the philosophical and moral and existential questions, and not scientific questions. So the next time your friend or your neighbour or your child or your grandchild ask you how your faith can be reconciled with mainstream science, remind them of the difference between questions of meaning and questions of mechanism. I think you can see there are different sorts of explanations for those different sorts of questions.
Christianity is not science. Christianity offers answers to what I might call the big questions. And for the most part, it's not interested in the how questions.
In the words of Galileo, the Bible teaches how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go. So what are you going to say next time somebody asks you?
Remind them that Christianity is not science and that science has got on very well, thank you, with Christianity for millennia. And remind them that most of the giants of the scientific revolution and many prominent scientists today were and are also convinced Christians.
And remind them that science is limited and it can't answer our most profound questions. And perhaps give them my email address or point them to the ISCAST website where there are 800 pages of resources and articles dealing with science and Christian faith.
Let me finish with that often used final verse of Psalm 19.
Psalm 19:14
May these words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, Lord, our rock and our redeemer.
Amen.
