Must We Have a Separation of Church and Science?
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Talk of the Nation, August 4, 2006 · Can a world class scientist also be a devout Christian? Some big names in science say "absolutely." But balancing a scientific career with religious beliefs does involve some challenges.
Guests
Francis Collins, author The Language of God; director, National Human Genome Research Institute (National Institutes of Health)
Owen Gingerich, author, God's Universe (forthcoming from Harvard University Press); senior astronomer emeritus, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory; research professor emeritus (astronomy and history of science) Harvard University
But balancing a scientific career with religious beliefs does involve some challenges. Balancing a scientific career with the atheism requires much harder challenge as science itself is based on the Christian worldview.
The Origin of Science
...as Whitehead pointed out, it is no coincidence that science sprang, not from Ionian metaphysics, not from the Brahmin-Buddhist-Taoist East, not from the Egyptian-Mayan astrological South, but from the heart of the Christian West, that although Galileo fell out with the Church, he would hardly have taken so much trouble studying Jupiter and dropping objects from towers if the reality and value and order of things had not first been conferred by belief in the Incarnation. (Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos)
To the popular mind, science is completely inimical to religion: science embraces facts and evidence while religion professes blind faith. Like many simplistic popular notions, this view is mistaken. Modern science is not only compatible with Christianity, it in fact finds its origins in Christianity. This is not to say that the Bible is a science textbook that contains raw scientific truths, as some evangelical Christians would have us believe. The Christian faith contains deeper truths-- truths with philosophical consequences that make conceivable the mind's exploration of nature: man's place in God's creation, who God is and how he freely created a cosmos.
In large part, the modern mind thinks little of these notions in much the same way that the last thing on a fish's mind is the water it breathes. It is difficult for those raised in a scientific world to appreciate the plight of the ancient mind trapped within an eternal and arbitrary world. It is difficult for those raised in a post-Christian world to appreciate the radical novelty and liberation Christian ideas presented to the ancient mind.
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The Origin of Science)
Way back in my university years I attended a lecture by Owen Gingerich on historical astronomy. After the lecture a number of us retired to a lounge and got to chat with him. I recall I asked about the upcoming potential of the Hubble telescope still at that time years away from launch. Nice guy he was.