Faith and Reason, Science and Religion

Faith and Reason are not separate. They are just different, just like the body and soul are different, and you can no more operate fully on one without the other. The philosophies which drive today’s universities establish a false dichotomy between faith and reason. Reason, they say belongs to science, while faith is the realm of religion. This conclusion is the result of a prior dismissal of anything that cannot be seen or touched or subjected to experiment and investigation. All phenomena can be explained by material and physical laws, according to the modernistic philosophies. There is no room for miracles and the supernatural. This viewpoint is known as naturalism. Some say it is “scientific naturalism,” but I can’t see how this viewpoint can be truly scientific if it chooses to ignore outright whole bodies of evidence and phenomena just because they can’t be seen or subjected to repeatable experiments. Thus, “scientific naturalism” is inherently atheistic, since no one can summon God to the laboratory so that He may be probed and examined to satisfy the scientists’ standards and methods of knowing.

In contrast, we believe that Christian faith is reasonable. The laws of logic and the rules of evidence are not violated when applied to the way we come to knowledge about God. We do not practice a “blind faith” or “take a blind leap of faith.” Our faith is based on evidence that any careful and unbiased searcher for truth will find. We have to look, and not dismiss the sources of evidence outright just because somebody said those sources are “unscientific.” The world and the universe contain some knowledge about God, but not everything we need to know about God. The existence of the world itself, the order and design inherent in it, the grandeur of man and animal and nature, point to some intelligent design, and a Designer. This is known in Theology as General Revelation. To learn more about the Designer, we need to turn to Christ and the Scriptures. This is known as Special Revelation.

Furthermore, Scientific Naturalism and its adherents are not so devoid themselves of Faith in their thinking. Notice how they are quick to ascribe the origin of the Universe to the "Big Bang." The "Big Bang" just happened! Out of nothing, there came the Universe! Now that sure takes a lot of Faith! Or take their assertion that there is no God! Has anyone of them ever searched the entire universe to see and prove that God doesn't exist or has never existed? Has any one of them been there in the beginning of time to tell us that he has never seen God ever?! Or take their assertion that there are alien intelligences other than human in the Universe. Or take Darwin's evolutionary theory, that it is accepted as fact despite the absence of evidence for transitional forms! There sure is a lot of faith being exercised in the scientific community!