Jesus vs Science

(For context see the previous entry.)

Jesus vs. Science

Demanding a choice between Jesus and science is like asking whether steel or butter is better. Well, it depends on whether you are making cookies or a knife.

If we are looking for God, meaning, purpose, moral guidance or wisdom, science offers nothing. If we are looking for information or techniques for improving crop yields, straightening crooked teeth or reducing the incidence of water-borne disease, Jesus offers nothing.

When we talk about science “improving life” it is easy to come up with many examples of the benefits science adds to life. However, if we are setting up a “contest” between Jesus and science it's fallacious to list only the benefits of science.

Science has dramatically decreased infant mortality. That's good. Science has provided the calories and leisure driving the global obesity epidemic. This is much less obviously good. Science provides the energy for our comfortable way of life. Science is the cause of 200,000 gallons of petroleum spewing in the Gulf and the cause of the massive garbage patches in the Pacific and Atlantic. Science is pouring the hundreds of detectable chemicals found in Puget Sound. Science gives us atomic weaponry, IEDs and all the vast machinery of modern war. Science gives us coal mining which kills miners with disturbing frequency. Perhaps the most dramatic example of the danger of science is the “scientific atheism” of communism. The most powerful apostles of science in the twentieth century were monsters: Stalin who was responsible for ten to twenty million excess deaths, Mao with his fifty million and Pol Pot with his two million. These three men venerated science. They explicitly rejected the claims of religion.

From within science, it is not possible to criticize their actions. Who is to say the world is not a better place because of the activities of these men. Science can give us tools to count their victims. Science can give us tools to mount defenses against the monsters of our day. However, science cannot make any statement about the morality, the “oughtness” of any action or system. Science cannot offer an opinion about whether or not we ought to do something about the garbage patches in the ocean or the destruction of the ozone layer or CO2 build up in the atmosphere. Science can help us predict the consequences of various courses of action or inaction. It can give us tools for taking action. But science itself cannot make any statement about what course we ought to take.

Science is not “good.” Science is a tool. Whether it is good or not cannot be measured by any standard within science. Judgments about whether a particular scientific endeavor or outcome is good or bad must be based on criteria the lie completely outside science. Which brings us back to Jesus.

Jesus taught quite explicitly about what people ought to do. You can agree or disagree with the content or applicability of his teachings. But it is certainly reasonable to speak about what ought to be done based on what Jesus taught. Of course, lots of bad things have been done in the name of Jesus. People have fought wars, persecuted their neighbors, beat their children all in the name of Jesus. But a very good case can be made that these are distortions of the teaching and philosophy of Jesus BECAUSE Jesus talked about what people ought to do and ought not to do. Killing enemies was on his list of prohibited behaviors. Neglecting the needy was immoral according to Jesus.


A final point. Science has made food, water and health more secure for us who live in the developed world. Science has not altered the basic facts of human existence: we are born, we live, we die. And during that time we look for meaning, purpose and significance. If science was completely successful—that is, if all the physical elements of life were under our control—it would us bring to the place where the only thing that mattered would be the stuff addressed by Jesus—meaning, morality, love.

People can live fulfilled, happy lives without science. Most of us (like 95 to 99 percent of us) cannot live without the sense of meaning, purpose and spiritual connection offered by Jesus (and other spiritual figures). Given Jesus' concern for the physical well-being of people, Christians are obligated to use the power of science to enhance health and relieve pain and suffering. improve the world they live in. Given Jesus subordination of physical well-being to spiritual perspectives, Christians naturally insist that science, as powerful as it is, is subordinate to faith, hope and love.

So knives or butter? I'll take both. I will eat the cookies and chop nuts with my knife.

Jesus vs. Science? I will look to Jesus for hope, wisdom and knowledge of God. I will look to science for tools to enhance the quality of life both for myself and others. (And just because I'm curious, I will look to science for information about geology.)