Christianity Today

Anderson: I believe that God made a perfect creation. It is pretty obvious to all of us that it no longer appears that way. And the reason is that man in the form of Adam sinned. Some scientists see a world that is no longer perfect and tend to blame God for it, or to ask, if it is this bad, how could any God have ever existed? The great advantage that the Christian has over the scientist who will not look at the Word of God is that the Christian believes in the sovereignty of God; he can live in this world with thanksgiving and with some degree of wonder. Several prominent writers now say, and I agree, that the solution to the environmental problem will not come from technology alone. There must first be the step of admitting the seriousness of the problem. The second step is repentance, a change of heart. This is central to really getting at environmental problems and environmental change. But then as a third step we need a sense of hope to replace the discouragement that sometimes sets in. We need to point out that in God there is hope, in this as in other areas. One further comment about genetics. Some people appear to believe that it would be possible to breed out human sinfulness. Wouldn't it be nice if we could breed out war? I doubt that it can be done. I accept the evidence for genetic differences in behavior, but sinfulness resides not so much in human frailty as in deliberate disobedience toward God. So here again, technology alone is not enough. What we need is a renewed faith in God as Creator and a new realization of man as steward of all that God has given him.

Buerger: I can only speak with regard to crystallography, a very small field. I feel very confident not in the entire field but in most parts of it. Generally speaking, this is the fate of any scientist. He knows his field, he is an authority in it, but he does not see the entire picture. You many scientists sounding off about things that they really have no right to say anything about. Many of us as scientists tend to bite off more than we can chew, more than we can deal with authoritatively. We must understand that the whole universe is created by God, and that even our reasoning process has been devised by God, our mathematics has been devised by God. I would say, with Amos, to all who are students and all who are scientists, "Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion. … The Lord is his name."