Liquid worship - Tim Ross’s talk on Christianity and science. Part2

Is the argument like a Skylark?

Here are two descriptions of a skylark:

Latin name - Alauda arvensis

A small brown bird, somewhat larger than a sparrow but smaller than a starling. It is streaky brown with a small crest, which can be raised when the bird is excited or alarmed, and a white-sided tail. The wings also have a white rear edge, visible in flight. It is renowned for its display flight, vertically up in the air. Its recent and dramatic population declines make it a Red List species.

Where to see them

Found everywhere in the UK. Likes open countryside, from lowland farmland to upland moorland. Often inconspicuous on the ground, it is easy to see when in its distinctive song flight.

Ode to a Skylark. by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.


Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun,
O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
Thou dost float and run;
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The first thing to note is that the two completely different descriptions are used for completely different purposes. One is a scientific description the other is poetic, yet we would never imagine scientists arguing with poets about the truthfulness of Shelley’s account of the Skylark. We know that these are two completely different but complementary ways of describing the same thing.

The same is true of science and theology. They are completely different disciplines. The ways they approach and explain the world in which we live are as different as poetry and zoology. They use different terminology and have a different way of looking at things. They are not contradictory but complementary.

Theology is not a competing view of life it is a complementary view of life.

It is important to understand that Genesis is principally a theological document, not a scientific one. As a theological explanation of the origins of the cosmos, it sits in parallel with a scientific explanation. Its language, imagery and terminology are expressed to answer theological not scientific questions.

The answers you get to any question depend on who is asking the question, and how and why they are asking it. The same is true of creation. Science asks scientific questions of creation, and that is all it can do. The answers it gives to questions like “Where did the universe come from?” are only ever going to be scientific answers. Theology and religion can only ever give theological answers to the question of where the universe came from.

One way of looking at it:

Science explains what God has done and how

Theology explains why.

The conflict happens when scientists try to use science to answer theological questions or when theologians use theology to answer scientific ones.

In discussing the attempt by some scientists to eliminate God through a complete explanation of everything by science, cosmologist Paul Davies says this:

“At the level of popular, Sunday-school Christianity, God is portrayed simplistically as a sort of Cosmic Magician, conjuring the world into being from nothing and from time to time working miracles to fix problems. Such a being is obviously in flagrant contradiction to the scientific view of the world. The God of scholarly theology, by contrast, is cast in the role of a wise Cosmic Architect whose existence is manifested through the rational order of the cosmos, an order that is in fact revealed by science. That sort of God is largely immune from scientific attack.”
And

 “You can’t use science to disprove the existence of a supernatural God, and you can’t use religion to disprove the existence of self-supporting physical laws.” Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma, p247

Continue to the third part of the talk