The Two Faiths Tied Together

Scientist Donald MacKay offers a second opinion.

In the previous article, Robert Jastrow says that as a “man of science” he is looking for help from the “man of faith.” He believes strongly in the need for dialogue between the two kinds of men. Of course, there are many men and women who pursue truth along both paths.

Donald MacKay, a British specialist in brain physiology and an evangelical Christian, is both types of man. He believes that accurate science and biblical faith live in fundamental harmony. Chairman of the interdisciplinary Department of Communication and Neuroscience at Keele University in England, Dr. MacKay has for the past 20 years led a research team of physiologists, psychologists, physicists and computer scientists in examining the brain. His most recent book on the subject is Brains, Machines and Persons (Eerdmans, 1980), in which he distinguishes between the mechanism of the human brain and the person embodied in that mechanism.

CT recently questioned Dr. MacKay about some of the issues that also concerned Dr. Jastrow.

Is science capable of telling us the meaning of life?

I see science as the best way that’s been developed of trying to test your ideas about the real world and to come up with a map of the world that can be trusted by other people—a map of the physical world, that is, of things you can observe. So, both as a scientist and as a Christian, I am proud of science.

The scientific discipline, was inspired by Christian thinking in the first instance. (For example, most of the founders of the Royal Society were Christian believers.) It is simply a way of trying to be as obedient as we can to the data God gives us about the physical world.

But the idea of looking to that scientific description for the meaning of the world would be as stupid as looking in the chalk particles to find the meaning of a message on a blackboard. If we are concerned with what our life is all about—if we ask what it means to have this life of ours with the possibility of making choices for good and evil, and finding in ourselves tendencies to wrong that we’re ashamed of and need putting right and so on—we won’t find the answer by doing science.

Do science and the Bible conflict over the origin of the universe?

In terms of the biblical doctrine of Creation, to ask about the origin of the universe is really to ask two questions in one. When we look at our universe as a going concern, the question, Does this universe have an Author? is quite different from the question, What sort of a past do you find if you extrapolate back from the present to the beginning of the universe? The Bible is answering the first of these questions: Whose idea is the Universe? How come it even exists? Scientific cosmology isn’t designed to answer this question at all, and its findings have no quarrel with the Bible’s answer to it.

How do you evaluate the “seemingly random character of events” taught by evolution?

I think it’s important to distinguish between the biological theory of evolution with a small “e”—which from the Christian point of view is merely one attempt to read the story of the past that God has written into the world as we find it—and Evolutionism with a capital “E.”

Evolutionism is a kind of religion—one that says: “God had nothing to do with the origin of the species, it was nothing but chance and natural selection” or something like that. Now, as I see it, biblical Christianity doesn’t recognize that as a real either/or, because, from the biblical point of view, even events we call chance in a scientific sense are disposed of “according to the will of the Lord,” as Proverbs says.

Should evolution be taught in school?

As a strictly scientific theory, I believe it should be taught on its scientific merits. But there is a way of teaching physical, scientific cosmology and evolutionary biology that carries with it strong overtones of atheistic, humanistic propaganda. This is as much a disgrace, in my view, as it would be for Christians to violate constitutional principles and use a science lesson as an occasion for making Christian propaganda.

There is no valid argument from the sort of data we have in cosmology or biology to the belief that God doesn’t exist or that man must find his meaning in science, or any such nonsense. That would be as crazy as to suppose that when you examine the chalk in which a message has been written and prove it is nothing but chalk, you would then be justified in telling people there was no meaning in the message and they would have to find meaning somewhere else. I’m afraid there is a distressing amount of illegitimate, dishonest, atheist-humanist propaganda of this kind being put in front of school children today in the name of science all over the world.

Can science establish the dignity of man “through the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers” (Carl Sagan)?

I regard that as whistling in the dark. The basic question is, Is there a God, or isn’t there? If there isn’t a God, then you’re in the dark and you had better whistle as cheerfully as you can, because that’s all there is to life.

But if our world is the creation of a God who is so interested in you and me that he took the trouble and pain of coming among us in Jesus Christ to reconcile us to himself, then you don’t have to whistle in the dark. He has taken the initiative to tell us the meaning of our lives. He has come among us to do something we could not do for ourselves. In Christ’s suffering and dying on the cross and rising again to life, he has made it possible for our self-centered kinks to be straightened out, our priorities to be revised and renewed.

So, to come back to your question on the dignity of man, I’d say that it is in that stupendous fact that we find our true dignity, and not in any theories of science.

How would you advise a Christian when he discusses the reality of God with agnostic scientists?

I think it is very important to make clear that if there is anything to this Christian teaching, the test is not something you can ram down another man’s throat by pointing to things outside himself. As Jesus himself indicated (e.g., in John 7:17), the test of whether he was talking the truth and sober reality is what happens to you and me, to our priorities and the whole of our lives if we let God get a grip on us. In other words, it’s almost like a scientific experiment—but you and I have to be the laboratory. It is in ourselves that the experiment has to be made.

When I’m talking with scientific colleagues, I try to emphasize that we Christians are not expected to believe something just because we find someone saying it, or because if only we swallow it we’ll like the taste of it. Rather, to our astonishment, it is because if we give God the chance, he actually brings his word true.

Do you distinguish natural forces from supernatural forces?

The Bible never mentions the word supernatural. As far as the Bible is concerned, the only reality is God and what God brings into being. To talk about supernatural forces and so on suggests a picture of the world where, on the one hand, there are “natural” forces with which God has nothing to do, and on the other hand, there are “supernatural” forces that are God’s. I don’t think this is what the Bible is saying. Even the events we call natural need God’s upholding power for their very existence.

Do you accept the idea of a “plurality of worlds” and life on other planets?

I see no need to worry about whether there might be other planets with creatures with more capacity than ours. That’s God’s business. He is the Author of the show, and if he has written other parts of the story with other creatures in it, good luck to them. For my own part, I believe I have a Christian duty, when short of data or theological issues, to keep mind open and mouth shut.

What is the future of the relationship of science and biblical faith?

As I see it, many pitfalls for our thinking about the relation between science and biblical faith are gradually being identified, and some of them are being filled up. But I think we always run the risk of sliding backwards. If we will not learn the lessons from the confusion of the past, there is a real danger that we will set the clock back a hundred years.

I hope, however, that in God’s providence we can yet win through to the sort of harmony there was three centuries ago when modern science was founded in the days of the first Royal Society members. I really believe that in my children’s generation, if not in mine, that kind of harmony can be restored.

Bill Durbin is a producer for the Christian Broadcasting Network’s “700 Club” in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

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