<u

rE

THE FOURTH CHURCH PULPIT

CAN I TRUST GOD AND SCIENCE?
September 19, 1999

John M. Buchanan

In the classical scheme, God is indeed above all, with a throne so high it cannot even
be seen from the earth .. .What about the God who is not only above all but also
through all and in all? Where is God? All over the place. Up there. Down here.
Inside my skin and out. God is the web, the energy, the space, the light. . revealed
in that singular, vast net of relationships that animates everything that is. It is not
enough for me to proclaim that God is responsible for all this unity. God is the
unity—the very energy, the very intelligence, the very elegance and passion that
make it all go. This is the God who is not somewhere, {up there, down here) but
everywhere, the God who may be prayed to in all directions at once. This is also the
God beyond all directions who will still be here (whatever ‘here’ means) when the
universe either dissipates into dust or swallows itself up again.

Barbara Brown Taylor
“Physics and Faith: The Luminous Web”
The Christian Century

FOURTH
PRESBY
TERIAN
CHURCH

Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago
126 East Chesinut Street, Chicago, IL 60611-2094
(312) 787-4570

et)

~

CAN I TRUST GOD AND SCIENCE?

JOHN M. BUCHANAN, PASTOR
FOURTH PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
September 19, 1999

John 1:1-5
Genesis 1:1-5, 26-31

‘Xs. 8

Startle us, O God, with your truth, and speak your saving, liberating word to us this day,
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

In 1633, a 70 year old man was summoned to a Dominican Convent in Rome. There, in

the presence of the Inquisition, he got down on his knees and read a statement they had
prepared for him.

“Wishing to remove from the minds of your Eminences and of every true Christian this
vehement suspicion justly cast upon me, with sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I do
abjure, damn, and detest the said errors and heresies, and generally each and every other
error, heresy, and sect contrary to the Holy Church; and I do swear for the future that I
shall never again speak or assert orally or in writing, such things as might bring me under
similar suspicion.”

His name was Galileo Galilei. He was an astronomer. He believed, on the basis of his
observations, that the sun, not the earth, was at the center of the solar system, and that the
earth was one of the planets that revolved around the sun. He was influenced by the work
of a Polish scholar by the name of Copernicus. Copernicus knew that his ideas would stir
up a lot of trouble with religious and civil authorities, and so he kept them to himself,
arranging for their publication after his death.

It has been said that Copernicus is the only thing Catholics and Protestants agreed on in
the midst of the Reformation. He was condemned by all, including John Calvin and
Martin Luther. The earth had to be at the center: the sun moves, not the earth—that’s
what the Bible says.

In 1616, the Catholic Church banned all books that suggested that the earth moved at all.
Galileo got in trouble by doing just that—publishing a book in 1632 based on Copernican
ideas and his own observations.

There is a wonderfully ironic post script to his story. After he recanted, the Inquisition
sentenced him to house arrest and to listening, each day for the remainder of his life, the
seven psalms of penitence. He lived for eight more years and as his daughter read to him,
he sat by his window watching the planets revolve around the sun through his telescope.
(See Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Luminous Web,” The Christian Century, June 2-9, 1999)

tlh,

It is not one of the penitential psalms but I do hope that every now and then she slipped in
Psalm 8:

“O Lord, our Sovereign,
how majestic is your name in
all the earth...

When I look at your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that
you have established;
What are human beings that you
are mindful of them? .. .”

The story of religion and science is not pretty. In an article about science and faith in the
Chicago Tribune a few weeks ago, Ron Grossman observed that, “Science and religion

have been battling for 400 years now. Science has won every round.” (The Chicago
Tribune, 9/5/99)

Mr. Grossman’s article was a good one but that statement is something of an over-
simplification. Some science and some religion have battled and are battling today. But
Some science and some religion are not only not battling, but never have. And today there
is a remarkable new climate characterized by dialogue and respect. Some religion does
not see science as a threat at all, but welcomes inquiry and discovery into the nature of
things as a way to more fully appreciate God’s amazing creativity. Some religion is
embarrassed by the attempt to appropriate all of us in the most recent version of the 17"
century Inquisition, namely the continuing effort by Creationists, and self-styled “Creation
Scientists,” to replace authentic science with religious ideology.

The issue, of course, is evolution, Charles Darwin’s theory that we are here, not as a result
of a single act of creation, which according to careful calculation, based on the Bible,
happened on the evening of October 22, 4004 BG, but as a result of a slow process of
evolution, spanning millions of years, guided by a principle he called “natural selection.”
Darwin did not attack religion. There is some disagreement, but there is some evidence
that he remained a believer all his life. And he is buried in Westminster Abbey. But he
has been demonized in a way that would probably amuse him. His theories were attacked
and defended in the Scopes Trial which in 1926 featured two popular and dramatic
protagonists: Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan—a Presbyterian, by the way,
and unsuccessful Moderatorial candidate, who was a distinguished and brilliant
American who should never have been in that courtroom in the first place.

The demonization continues, recently-in-the decision of the School Board-of the State of
Kansas,-to-diseourage the teaching of evolution hy eliminating-questions-about it-from
student-tests. A spokesperson for the Board said that the decision was made because
evolution is just a theory accepted by some scientists; no one was there to observe it. The
first part of that statement is true. Evolution is a theory—that’s what science is: theories
based on the best current evidence we have. Science is science precisely because it knows
that the best ideas we have can be refuted by new evidence and frequently are. The
second part of the statement that some scientists accept evolution, is patently false. The

th,

vast majority of scientists accept evolution as the best theory about how we got here, based
on current physical evidence.

Stephen Jay Gould, Professor of Geology at Harvard, wrote in Time that evolution is the
“central concept of biology, as well documented as any phenomenon in science, and
eliminating it is like trying to teach American history without Abraham Lincoln.” We
should cringe in embarrassment, Gould wrote, at the “suppression of one of the greatest
triumphs of human discovery.” (Time, 8/23/99)

What has happened is that the anti-evolution folks, in the name of Biblical religion, have
become extremely well organized, adept at using the political process to get their people
onto school boards. Kansas is simply the most recent skirmish. The Institute of Creation
Research, based in California, is a large and effective resource center and political lobby
for what is known as “Creationism,” or “Creation Science.” It’s current strategy is to
persuade school boards to replace evolution with the creation story in Genesis 1 and 2, or
at least to present both concepts on an equal footing. What’s wrong with that? Why not
present both evolution and Genesis 1 in public school classrooms?

The trouble is that Creation Science is not science. Science examines evidence, sifts, sorts,
and then elevates just a handful of ideas to the status of theories which are constantly
critiqued, examined, questioned and replaced when the evidence warrants. Creationism
begins with a doctrinal position and then seeks for evidence to prove it. It’s all right to do
that, by the way. It just isn’t science.

Second, what Creationism teaches is wrong. Evolution is not an undocumented theory
being foisted on us by a few godless liberals. The fossil and geological evidence for
evolution is simply overwhelming. We may not know the whole story of how we got here,
but the vast majority of scientists are confident that we did, in fact, evolve.

Third, the Creationists are misusing the Bible. The objection to Biblical fundamentalism
or literalism has always been that it is the wrong way to use scripture. The Bible is not a
scientific or historical text book. It is a collection of books written by God-inspired people
telling the story of their experience of God and God’s relationship to the creation. And if
we insist on making it into something it is not—a scientific text—we will miss what it is,
and what it says, which is God’s word to us.

Fourth, I object to Creationism for the same reason I cringe every time I hear the story of
Galileo and the Inquisition, or any effort to impose an ideological or theological screen on
academic freedom. True faith is not threatened by scientific inquiry, but welcomes and
celebrates it. Very near the heart of my faith is the conviction that in Jesus Christ I/we
have nothing to fear, certainly not scientific inquiry. In fact, my faith welcomes new
scientific discovery as even more evidence of God’s amazing and mysterious creativity.

Did you know, for instance, that in some places on the earth great flocks of migratory
birds assemble to fly thousands of miles over the ocean? And all sorts of birds which prey
on one another normally, are in those flocks: hawks and sparrows. But the larger birds do
not prey on the smaller ones during the migration: almost, someone said, as if the “peace
of God” had been imposed.

In the meantime, there is a whole new environment between scientists and theologians in

spite of the evolution battle. Albert Einstein once said that “religion without science is
blind, but science without religion is lame.”

In the near future, scientific advances will continue to precipitate questions of value and
ethics and morality. Genetic engineering, for instance, cloning. Medical researchers
predict that treatment for aging will probably be refined by the middle of the 21" century
so that human life can be significantly extended—perhaps up to 500 years. But should it
be? Is that a good idea? For those who long to see a World Series in Wrigley Field—it
does sound reasonably hopeful. Much closer to home and reality is the decision, made
everyday in the Intensive Care Unit, to use or not to use available medical technology to

prolong human life: a moral as well as a practical decision made necessary by advances in
science.

While some folks are fighting about whether creation happened in six days or six billion
years, a quiet revolution is happening within the scientific community. I don’t pretend to
even begin to comprehend it, but what I do understand fascinates me. It has enormous
implications for how we think about the world and it makes the scientists, more and
more, sound like theologians.

Until just a few years ago, we understood the universe in terms of Newtonian physics, the
theories of Sir Isaac Newton, who lies right beside Charles Darwin in Westminster Abbey,
by the way. Newton’s universe is mechanical, predictable, operating on the basis of four
mathematical laws. There is no room in a Newtonian universe for random, surprise,
unpredictability: not much reom for God except as the creator of the machine, who simply
observes its regular and predictable operation.

Today, however, something called Quantum Physics and Chaos Theory has replaced
Newton’s ideas. In Quantum Theory, the way I understand it, stuff happens, not always
predictably. Instead of a machine, Barbara Brown Taylor says, the universe is most like a
web, which shakes and moves and responds to every single stimulus on or in it. “Physical
reality,” she says, “refuses to be compartmentalized. As hard as we may try to turn it into
a machine, it insists on acting like a body, animated by some intelligence that exceeds the
speed of light.” (op.cit.)

And so, suddenly, instead of a universe with no place for God, we find that we are living
in a universe that is alive, responsive, full of spirit, full of energy, full of something—

How about this?
“In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth
was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep,.... Then

God said, ‘Let there be light;’ and there was light.”

That is not scientific theory about the beginning of the universe. It is proclamation,
written to express a bold, new and revolutionary theological affirmation. Furthermore, it

aM

was written to address a very real historical situation—which was to find a reason to keep
on trusting God at a time and place when there weren't many reasons for doing so.

Those words were written in the 6" century BC for a community of Jews living in exile in
Babylon: living in what seemed like a hopeless, God-forsaken, God-abandoned situation.
“Where is our God?” they surely asked. “Mayhe there is no God?”. “Maybe the gods of

Babyion are just as real and useful as our God, the God of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac,
Jacob.”

Professor Walter Brueggeman says that the Genesis Creation story was written to evoke
the faith and trust of a community of desperate people, a life saving, life affirming
confession like that wonderful question and answer in the Heidelberg Catechism:

“What is your only comfort in life and in death?

My only comfort is that I belong, body and soul, in life and death, not to myself, but
to my faithful savior, Jesus Christ.”

To people who feel God-forsaken, abandoned, without hope—and who hasn’t felt like
that?--the words of Genesis 1 are good news. You belong to God. Creation belongs to God.
God is still God.

The reality of God is life saving news to oppressed people in all ages. Ron Grossman's
Tribune article was about science, religion, the Big Bang theory and the evolution-Bible
debate. And at the very end, Grossman made what I thought was a remarkable personal
faith statement. He admits that he doesn't know whether he believes all the words in the
Bible are true, or whether the mandate to fast on Yom Kippur are Ged’s words. But he
will fast anyway. He writes:

“It’s not that I’m all that consistent. But one thing I cannot doubt is that amid the
horrors of the Holocaust, other Jews clung to the Day of Atonement and fasting.
Even in the extermination camps, those who lived in the shadows of the gas
chambers fasted. Elie Wiesel reports ‘Some argued that fasting at Yom Kippur was
too dangerous because they were already half-starved to death.

But others said it was necessary to fast precisely because of the danger. It was
necessary to show God that, even here, in this miniature hell, we were capable of
singing God’s praises.’” (“For Some, the Big Bang is a Leap of Faith,” The Chicage
Tribune, 9/5/99)

The text speaks a word of hope to people who have given up. God is the Creator. The
world belongs to God. And you, men and women, are God’s agents, given dominion and
responsibility. The creator is counting on you. And furthermore, the whole project is
good. God rejoices and delights in the beauty and goodness of creation.

That was a very different word for the exiles. No one believed creation is good. Life is
mean and short, full of injustice, suffering and death. Goodness is somewhere and

“=

something else. No one believed that human being were responsible agents, God’s
partners in the management of creation. Everybody knew human beings were
insignificant, unimportant, living and dying at the whim of the gods.

It was new and revolutionary, and still is. The precious words of Genesis are a
“declaration of the Gospel: there is a new world surging with the mystery of God.” (See
Brueggeman Genesis, An Interpretation, p. 26)

How sad to miss it, to be distracted by the controversy and arguing over evolution. How
sad not to hear the glory and hopefulness of what we believe. It is God’s world. Itis a
good and beautiful world because God made it. Creation is good. Physical reality is good.
Human flesh, human appetites, are God's creations. How sad to miss the music and
poetry and laughter of God’s good creation—a creation full of suprising grace, a creation
poet Wendell Berry discovers on his Sabbath walks in the hills of Kentuck

“Hunting them, {the Lilies} a man must sweat, bear
the whine of a mosquito in his ear,
grow thirsty, tired, despair perhaps
of ever finding them, walk a long Tae
He must be led along the hill-as by a prayer....
I found them here at-first without hunting,

by grace, as-all beauties are first found . . .”

A creation full of the beauty Vincent Van Gogh saw when he looked deeply into the faces
of Dutch potato farmers or a field of sunflowers.

A creation full of passionate gratitude to which e.e. Cummings gave incomparable
expression:

“i thank You God for most this amazing

day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes ....”

A creation full of mystery that I experience every summer when I walk down to the end of
the deck at the ocean and lie back on a bench and look up into the star-filled, infinite
darkness, and find myself saying words I’ve known since childhood—

O Lord, our Lord,

How majestic is thy name
When I look at your heavens,
The moon and the stars...

A creation full of God and God’s love, into which God came and comes in the life and
death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, our brother, our Lord and Savior—about whom a
poet long ago wrote:

-_=
“*.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He
was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him
not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was
the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not
overcome it.” (John 1:1-5)

O Lord, our Lord, How majestic is your name. Give us eyes to see the beauty of your
creation; give us ears to hear the music you play for us; give us the senses to know the
goodness of all you have made, O God, in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

-

Prayers of the People - Sunday September 19 1999

8.30 a.m. and 11 a.m.

In the beginning before time,
before people, before the world began,
God was.

Here and now,

among us, beside us,
enlisting the people of earth
for the purposes of heaven,
God is.

In the future,

when we have turned to dust,

and all we know has found its fulfillment,
God will be.

Almighty and ever loving God,
in whom we live and move and have our being,
hear our prayers for the world and for each other.

Creator of all things,

we praise you for the knowledge given to us to search out and harness the hidden forces
of nature.

Bless the work of those who carry on the work of science in all its forms.

Grant with increasing knowledge,

increasing wisdom,

that they may use their discoveries and inventions for the welfare of all

and the relief of those who suffer most.

We pray for those who push back the bounds of technology;
programmers, medics, designers, creatives,

all who provide us access to the speedy global communications
we have become accustomed to.

But we remember, Lord,

that most people in our world are excluded from this network;
that their needs are more basic,

not the newest chip or the fastest modem,

but food and water, healthcare and shelter,

freedom from violence and fear.

Lord, put our technologies at the service of the poorest.