Insights from hindsight: resolving seeming conflicts between science and Scripture
Leonard Brand, PhD
Department of Earth and Biological Sciences
Loma Linda University
Abstract
How do we resolve conflicts between science and the Bible? In some apparent conflicts clear understanding can only come with the passage of time, after time and study provide a more balanced perspective on the issue, and a clearer view of the relationship between science and faith. I suggest this process goes through three stages: Stage 1. Conflict and confusion; Stage 2. Research in science and deeper Bible study, with hindsight; Stage 3. Resolution and insight. The paper discusses this process, with examples, illustrating an approach to resolution that maintains Scripture as our reliable guide, while also respecting the scientific process.
The challenge
The Christian understanding of the Bible has suffered a series of challenges from scientific conclusions throughout history. Copernicus disturbed the long accepted geocentric understanding of the universe with his theory of an earth that turns on its axis and revolves around the sun. Then Galileo ended up in house arrest because of his advocacy of Copernicus’s novel idea that didn’t square with beliefs of the church. If that wasn’t enough, Darwin shook up the Christian world with his claims that species aren’t fixed, but evolve through time. Along the way it appeared the earth isn’t flat after all, there are two conflicting creation accounts in Genesis, and Moses was wrong about the universe being like an upside down bowl holding the stars up in the sky. Joshua 10:13 makes claims about God disturbing the movements of the sun just so the Israelites can win their battle. How can we believe that, when the heavenly orbits are so clearly consistent and reliable?
Now in the 21st century we are faced with radiometric dating over millions of years, ice cores with tens of thousands of annual layers, a fossil record showing evolution of life forms, and archeological evidence claiming the biblical Exodus didn’t happen, at least not the way the Bible describes it.
This long series of conflicts between the Bible and science has, for many individuals, shaken theirconfidence in the reliability of Scripture. Can we trust its message about history? And if its claims about historyare not factual, what about its claims of a new earth to come?
The scholarly Christian world is rapidly coming to a consensus that the story of a literal creation and worldwide flood, a few thousand years ago is only a myth; life has evolved through the millennia, and evil did not result from sins by Adam and Eve, but was just a part of the evolution process. Is this shift of belief inevitable, or have many scholars missed something? A central issue isthe relationship between faith and science. Especially, how can we evaluate conflicts between science and the Bible without letting our personal biases derail our better judgment?
A conceptual framework to address the challenge
I suggest that careful study of science, the Bible, and the historical and sociological context of the conflicts, with the benefits of hindsight can bring greater clarity to our understanding of the conflicts and their solution. In some conflicts clear understanding can only come later, after time and study provide a more balanced perspective.
We will begin with Galileo. The Galileo affair is often portrayed as exhibit A, illustrating the dangers of allowing Scripture to influence our understanding of science, and showing how sciencecorrects theologically biased ideas about nature. During Galileo’s lifetimethe geocentric theory, with the sun orbiting around the earth, was still standard science, and also orthodox Christian belief. In that context some Bible texts appeared to support the geocentric theory, with the sun moving and the earth standing still.1
It may have been difficult for them to see through these texts and the church dogmas associated with them. For us, long after Galileo, we have the benefits of hindsight, along with much more knowledge of the relevant science and the historical and biblical context. In Ps 19:6 and Eccl 1:5 the sun rises and moves across the sky. We still use the same expressions about the sun rising and setting. We know the sun doesn’t “rise;” it doesn’t move in relation to us, but such expressions simply describe how it appears to us. It seems they were using similar expressions in the same way. Other Bible texts describe the earth as established; it will not move. But if we consider the immediate context of these statements, they are not within descriptions of cosmology; they are in chapters with the theme of the greatness or majesty of God (PS 93:1; 104:5) or a song of praise to God (I Chron 16:30), and the descriptive statements about the earth are simply incidental to the theme of the chapter. The theme of Ps 119is praise of God’s law, including the laws that establish the earth and make it stand.
Before Copernicus and Galileo there was no reason to wonder whether these verses were making a scientific claim about cosmology or just describing how things looked from our position on earth. Now we can evaluate that. Before Copernicus their understanding of cosmology and a simple description of the heavens seemed to be in agreement – the earth stood still. However, from our perspective today, several hundred years later, we see it differently. We can better understand the Bible texts in their immediate context, and recognize that they simply describe appearances in the same way we do today. They are not theoretical scientific statements. It is evident from the historical context that the geocentric theory in fact came from Greek philosophy, not from a deep understanding of the Bible.2 Those Bible texts are not descriptive creation accounts, in contrast to Genesis 1. We can also see that Galileo’s difficulties arose more from conflicts within science, religious politics affecting Pope Urban III, and from Galileo’s own abrasive personality than from any real conflict between science and the church. Other astronomers of that time were discussing the heliocentric theory without sharing Galileo’s fate.3 According to one historian, one of the most common myths about the Galileo affair is that “he was condemned by the Catholic church for having discovered the truth,” and this myth is “used to justify the incompatibility between science and religion.” He concludes that “this thesis is erroneous, misleading, and simplistic.”4
These things were probably not readily understandable three centuries ago, but our increased knowledge of the situation, with the benefit of hindsight, allows us to gain better insights into the Galileo affair. There are some things we can learn from that historical episode. It alerts us to the dangers of basing our interpretation of Scripture on current scientific beliefs, as the church did in the pre-Galileo era. We can now see that science really did improve our understanding of the Bible, because it showed the errors of Greek cosmology that were being read into the Bible and suggesting untenable interpretations of texts whose meaning was not so clear at that time. We can also learn to be more careful to respond to seeming conflicts by more careful study to see if we might also be reading something between the lines of the Bible that actually is not there.
I suggest there were three stages in our understanding of the Galileo affair:
Stage 1. Conflict and confusion
Stage 2. Researchin science and deeper Bible study, with hindsight
Stage 3. Resolution and insight
This three stage process expands on the meaning ofa diagram I have previously used to describe a constructive approach for the integration of religion and science.5
In the process represented in this diagram, science does not test religious concepts, or vice versa. But on the other hand,science and religion are not kept isolated from each other. Instead, conflicts are analyzed in the thinking process called the Interface. Seeming conflicts between Scripture and science challenge us to more careful study of both, seeking a resolution of the conflict. The addition I am now making highlights the benefit of hindsight in finding a resolution. It is possible that considerable time must pass before we can adequately understand the context and resolution of some conflicts, moving from conflict (stage 1) through research (stage 2), to resolution (stage 3) in a thoughtful interface between scientific and biblical interpretations. Today, after much experience with this process, we can in some issues, move through the process faster.
Revelation and the created universe both came from the same Creator God, but we don’t adequately understand either one. The method of study described here allows use of a coherent methodology for examination of both sources of evidence.
Science correcting biblical interpretation
There are other historical conflicts in which science also improved our understanding of the Bible. In Darwin’s time it was thought that every animal and plant species was created fixed and unchangeable. Darwin’s theory challenged this concept of fixity of species, and appeared to weaken confidence in the Bible. Now with the benefit of careful study and the perspective of hindsight we can see that nothing in the Bible can be legitimately claimed as evidence for fixity of species. None of the wording in Genesis is specific enough to say whether species are fixed or changeable. Fixity of species was another idea traceable to Greek philosophy, not to the Bible. In the 19th century this conflict generated much confusion, but now we can see that science has improved our biblical understanding by showing that species do change, and byalerting us to notice that the Bible rejects large-scale evolution, but does not proclaim fixity of species. It does not say that species, like the Mexican free-tailed bat, the Grevy Zebra, the Galapagos Mockingbird, and the Sycamore tree never change.
Other Bible-believing scientists in Darwin’s day had already come to the conclusion that organisms do change, and they limited the change to within created kinds, perhaps within families. Even Linnaeus, who is generally described as an advocate of fixity of species, gradually recognized evidence of change, not only of new species, but finally deciding that change may have extended to the family level. Darwin apparently was unaware of the work of these scientists.6
Another example comes from the work of early 20th century creationist George McCready Price. Price rejected geologists’ claims of glaciation and of geological overthrusts, in which mountain-sized masses of rocks were thought to have been pushed up, or thrust over the top of younger rocks. He didn’t think these geological claims were consistent with his belief in the biblical creation.7 At that time he did not have access to sufficient information to resolve that conflict any other way. Now, with the benefit of more research and hindsight we can recognize that the Bible never spoke to these issues at all, and Price was just hanging on to his limited human ideas. Science helped others to recognize the reality of more extensive glaciers in the past and of overthrusts. We can now realize that it is not surprising for a global geological catastrophe to result in mountain-sized overthrusts and episodes of unbalanced climate. These ideas, in reality, never were a genuine conflict between science and the Bible.
In these cases science helped us rid ourselves of ideas that came not from the Bible at all, but from elsewhere (e.g. from Greek philosophy or our limited geological knowledge) and were read into the Bible, between the lines, without our being aware of what we were doing. Also our Bible study reveals that heliocentrism, speciation, glaciation and geological overthrusts are not in conflict with the Bible themes of the Great Controversy and salvation history. The claims of science on these issues are generally realistic and are not contrary to any biblical belief .8 These issues have gone through stages 1 and 2, and are now, for us, in stage 3 – resolution. Careful research, with benefit of the wider perspective provided by hindsight, has revealed that they are not in conflict with the Bible.
Careful study, with hindsight, eliminates some false conflicts
Three items mentioned early in this paper have had a little different historical background. One of these concerns the two creation stories. Study of the Hebrew text reveals that the two creation accounts are not in conflict, but are complementary. For example, Genesis two is talking about the origin of agricultural plants, not the general creation of plants described in Genesis one.9 This removes the supposed conflicts between the sequence of events in Genesis one and two.
It has often been claimed that Christians all through the Middle Ages believed in a flat earth, and that the Old Testament accepts a false, archaic concept of cosmology – describing the sky as an inverted bowl, sitting on the flat earth, with the stars held in place by this bowl. However, historical research has now shown that the Christian scholarly community always knew the earth was round, and never did believe in a flat earth.10 The idea that Christians had advocated a flat earth was invented bycertain 19th century scholars, and unfortunately became widely and uncritically accepted.
The myth of the Old Testament belief in the archaic, inverted bowl cosmology has had a similar history. In Old Testament times there actually wasn’t any particular theory about cosmology. It was in the 19th century that some scholars advocated their theory of the Old Testament upside-down bowl cosmology. Many scholars now think the Bible advocates this supposed error, but that is another concept that has been “read into” the Bible, and is not supported by more careful study.11
In these three cases the conflict originated not directly from science or from the Bible, but from erroneous claims by scholars that the Bible was scientifically incorrect. Research is now bringing resolution by showing that the Bible and Bible-believers actually didn’t hold the beliefs that some claimed they did, or that Genesis did not contain the contradictions that some claimed.
Confidence in the Bible yields insights for science
In some cases we have described, like cosmology and fixity of species, our growing scientific understanding improved our interpretations of the Bible. Now we will turn to other situations in which the conflict (stage 1) was resolved or is being resolved (stages 2 and 3) in the opposite direction - confidence in the truth of the Bible has resulted in better insights for science. In these cases seeming conflicts between science and the Bible suggested new hypotheses for scientific study, which have resulted in successful scientific research and publication of insights that might not have occurred otherwise.
In this type of research we do not attempt to explain supernatural actions by science, as some critics have claimed. However, if a miracle (e.g. divinely caused, catastrophic global flood) had a detectable effect on our earth (e.g. rapidly formed sediments), we should be able to find evidence for that, especially if we are willing to benefit from what the Bible tells us.12
If the 1960’s and early 1970’s the fossil forests in Yellowstone National Park were commonly portrayed as exhibit A showing that the Bible is wrong about time – the evidence in Yellowstone demanded a very long time, for that one fossil deposit alone, in addition to many other geological formations. It was believed that over a hundred forests grew, one above another, with each forest being killed in turn by volcanic deposits. Each forest would take up to a thousand years to grow and then be killed before the next forest could begin to grow on top of its buried remains. However, research efforts by creationists accumulated evidence that the forests did not grow one after the other as was claimed.13 It is more likely that the process involved transport of dead trees into their position of burial by volcanic flows.
The Coconino Sandstone (SS) in northern Arizona is interpreted as an accumulation of ancient desert sand dunes, which have been cemented into sandstone. The only fossils in the Coconino SS are fossil animal tracks. These tracks have been argued to be evidence supporting the desert origin of the Coconino sand deposits. However this evidence was investigatedbecause of a desire to understand how the Coconino SS fits into a global flood process. The evidence resulting from this research can only be explained if the vertebrate animals made their tracks while entirely underwater.14