“Follow the science.” That’s a good idea, I’d say. Why? Because good science tells us true things about the world around us. Scientific thinking has always been on the side of theism, and of Christianity in particular.
In fact, while questions about the world around us have been asked by almost everyone everywhere, people who believed in God were the driving force behind the development of the scientific method. If you’ve studied science at all, many of their names will be familiar:
- Robert Boyle
- Michael Faraday
- Gregor Mendel
- Isaac Newton
- Carl Friedrich Gauss
- George Washington Carver
- Blaise Pascal
- Charles Babbage
- Werner Heisenberg
- Samuel Morse
- Francis Bacon
- Galileo Galilei
- John Dalton
- Louis Pasteur
- Lord Kelvin
- Freeman Dyson
I could go on and on, listing hundreds of names of those who contributed significantly to the advance of scientific thinking, whose work exposed the nature of the world we live in. Science and faith are not natural enemies, as so many poorly-educated atheists like to claim. Faith is what drove these brilliant people, as they sought to understand God by studying His creation.
Michael Egnor and Jerry Coyne have been having an online discussion. Egnor is a pediatric neurosurgeon and a Christian. Coyne is a biologist specializing in genetics, and an atheist. Egnor blogs for the Discovery Institute while Coyne wrote a book called Faith Versus Fact. In this part of their discussion, Egnor suggested that people pray for those who have COVID-19. Coyne believes that such prayers are actually harmful.
The debate is really about science, and about the existence of God. Coyne doesn’t believe, Egnor does. Coyne discounts arguments that show that God must exist… and, in his blog post, Egnor explains a couple of the arguments. While many atheists will simply wave their hands and discount the arguments, I’ve seen no valid reason given for thinking that they’re insufficient. Having spent some time studying Aristotle and Aquinas, I’m passingly familiar with both… and I consider both arguments watertight.
What do you think?
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