Navigating Science, Faith, and Education in Today's World

It’s extremely constructive to teach the arguments and the controversies that have been part of science and which continue to be part of science. Science as an enterprise advances as scientists argue about how to interpret the evidence. And what we often do in teaching biology or physics or any of the sciences is we’ll teach students the outcome of controversies, or we’ll teach them the consensus view about a controversial topic, and we won’t teach them how we got to that point of view or why there might still be controversy. [00:01:10]

One of the things that’s very constructive is we call it teaching the controversy. You don’t have to teach a particular point of view. When you teach something, you don’t have to tell students what to think, but you need to tell them the competing views and allow them to weigh the arguments as they are made by their chief proponents. That’s just good science education. You need to know what people think and why. [00:03:28]

The different schools of apologetics—presuppositionalism, evidentialism, and classical apologetics—offer various methods for defending the faith. Each approach has its strengths and challenges, and understanding these can help Christians engage more effectively with skeptics. Presuppositionalism argues that you must presuppose the existence of God to have a sound argument for the existence of God. Evidentialism presents concrete empirical evidence for the existence of God, arguing from nature and history. Classical apologetics say that the case for the existence of God can be proven demonstratively, rationally, and formally. [00:06:13]

My personal opinion is that the college campus today is the most hostile ground in America towards a biblical worldview. And that hostility comes not just from the classroom, but the hostility comes from the campus itself and the party life and all of the other things that accompany it. At the same time recognizing that we’re dealing with 18, 19-year-old people, and if we think in terms of Christian or Christian kids who have been raised, and let’s assume they’ve been raised in an intact family. [00:13:15]

We must get serious about equipping our young people for the battle because I do not believe we’re doing a good job of that. And so from a military perspective, it’s like we’re sending our children into the fiercest part of the battle, and we have not… they don’t have a flak vest. They don’t have combat boots. They don’t have a helmet. They’re not armed. And the consequences are severe. [00:14:44]

The age of the earth has become a strangely toxic issue within the Christian church. I had an opportunity a few years ago to attend a creation conversation that was set up to try to sort out these differences among advocates of the young earth, and advocates of the old earth view of creationism. They were all creationists. And I was asked to give an opening talk on the methods by which we weigh evidence. [00:48:03]

The first issue is the reality of God. Is God real or imaginary? This is the issue that Romans 1 speaks to. And in our time, the primary apologetic challenge to the church is coming from this dominant secular, materialistic worldview. And while we Christians have been busy arguing with each other over how long ago it was that God created, we’ve given the secularists a pass on the fundamental issue of the day, which is the reality of God versus this materialistic worldview. [00:50:03]

I think as I’ve surveyed the discussion both on the biblical exegetical side and on the scientific side, I’m content to allow that discussion to take place but in a context where we can lower the amperage on it. And that’s primarily what I’d like to contend for in a setting like this. If people want to ask, you know, me or you, or we have a discussion, they’re fascinating issues, and there’s no reason we shouldn’t be talking about them because we all do revere the Word of God. [01:08:31]

I think there’s a lot more in this issue than the caricature, cookie cutter, cutouts that each side has of the other. And I think we need to have some appreciation of that when we approach this, so that we don’t fall back into the same kind of pitfalls in rupturing unnecessarily Christian unity over issues that are, you know, I agree if there’s no historical Adam, you can’t have a fall, you can’t have an atonement. There are some things that are really central. [01:07:57]

I believe firmly that all of truth is God’s truth, and I believe that God has not only given revelation in sacred Scripture, but also in the sacred Scripture itself tells us that God reveals Himself in nature, which we call natural revelation. And I once asked a seminary class of mine that was a conservative group, I said, “How many of you believe that God’s revelation in Scripture is infallible?” And they all raised their hand. [00:43:50]

I think that we can learn from non-believing scientists who are studying natural revelation. They may get a better sense of the truth from their study of natural revelation than I get from ignoring natural revelation. So I have a high view of natural revelation is what I’m saying. However, if something can be shown to be definitively taught in the Bible without question, and somebody gives me a theory from natural… that they think is based on natural revelation that contradicts the Word of God, I’m going to stand with the Word of God a hundred times out of a hundred. [00:45:47]

I think one of the problems that we have in the observation of the natural realm is that if you do not begin with a primary understanding of special revelation, then we can view the natural world from a wrong presupposition. And let me give you one example. It is my personal opinion that the second law of thermodynamics, the law of entropy, was a law that came into being at the fall. I do not believe that God created a universe that was dying. [01:00:10]