“It’s a perceived tension, but not a real tension,” said Blackhawk church teaching pastor Tim Mackie, as he welcomed 450 people to Blackhawk’s Science and Faith seminar last Saturday morning. “We believe there is no inherent conflict between a deep religious faith and science.”
Yet the perception persists. Mackie, senior pastor Chris Dolson, and University of Wisconsin professors Jeff Hardin and Cynthia Carlsson all talked about working through the tension, or helping others work through it.
But the daylong series of presentations featuring top University of Wisconsin faculty offered strong evidence to counter some of the typical tension points.
The Creation/Evolution Continuum
Hardin, the chairman of the UW Department of Zoology, tackled one of the trickiest topics, the question of origins. With degrees in both biophysics and theology, Hardin adeptly covered the broad range of viewpoints from Young Earth and Old Earth Creationism through Intelligent Design and Evolutionary Creationism to Materialistic Naturalism. While refraining from giving his own opinion, he explained strengths and weaknesses of each view.
Science offers no clear conclusions when it comes to origins. “The mechanisms that underlie the world need to be kept separate from our metaphysical conclusions,” he said. “There are times when we need to be forthright. When science is being used inappropriately, we need to push back.”
Myths About Science and Religion
Hardin was preceded by Ronald Numbers, Hilldale Professor of the History of Science and Medicine at the UW. Hardin described him as “the world’s leading expert on the history of Creationism.” Numbers’ topic was Myths in the History of Science and Religion and was drawn from the Harvard University Press book that he edited, <Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths About Science and Religion.
“Strictly speaking there was no conflict between science and religion before the early 19th century because there was no science,” Numbers said. Before science became science it was called Natural Philosophy. And one of the purposes of Natural Philosophy was to learn about God.
When the standards of modern science developed, the top criteria stated that supernatural methodologies cannot be invoked. Yet that still does not mean that science and religion have to be in conflict. Numbers blamed two 19th century authors, Andrew Dickson White (the founder of Cornell University) and John William Draper for promoting the conflict for their own selfish reasons.
Creation and the Bible
Using quotes from popular culture — “My lips hurt real bad.” (Napoleon Dynamite) and “Beam me up Scott” (Star Trek), Mackie began the day’s presentations by stressing the importance of reading the Bible in the context of how it was written. Reading the words that have been translated to English from ancient Hebrew doesn’t necessarily mean we understand all that the writer was trying to say. One hundred years from now those movie quotes will be meaningless to anyone who reads them without understanding late 20th century and early 21st century American popular culture.
“The fact that there are two different stories of creation in the first two chapters of Genesis should be our first clue that a strictly literal view is not the best perspective,” he said, as he explained the meanings of some of the Hebrew words in the text. Mackie was the only presenter who was not a UW-Madison professor. However he does have a Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible and Semitic Languages from the UW-Madison.
Cynthia Carlsson is an Assistant Professor of Medicine conducting clinical research in Alzheimer’s prevention. She talked on Faith-Based Approaches to Medical Research. “Scientific research is a way to discover God’s truth,” she said.
She also acknowledged the limits of medical research. “There is only so much that medical research can do,” she said. “There are unique aspects of what makes us human that medical research cannot explain.”
Creation Care and the Bible
The final presentation, on Creation Care or Environmental Stewardship, came from Rick Lindroth. Lindroth is a professor of Ecology and Associate Dean for Research at the UW-Madison, as well as an elder board member of Blackhawk Church for much of the past 25 years.
Talking about the ecological footprint of the earth’s inhabitants, he said that it’s 25-percent greater than the size of the earth. “That means it takes the earth one and a half years to replenish what we use up in a year,” he said. “Our society is ruled by narcissistic consumerism and most of us as Christians are not that different from the world.”
Despite offering an admittedly grim message, Lindroth said that Creation Care as the best hope for the earth’s future. “It’s not a right vs. left issue,” he said. “It’s right vs. wrong issue.”
After the presentations participants broke up into question and answer sessons with the speakers. Even though many who attended were college-aged (the church rented a bus to bring students from the UW campus), the audience included young school kids as well as senior citizens.
Blackhawk has offered similar seminars twice previously, in 2000 and 2007. “A lot of us think about these issues on a regular basis,” said Cynthia Carlsson. “It’s how we integrate our faith with our lives.” The seminar offered plenty to think about, along with bibliograpies on each topic for further investigation.
Audio from the sessions will be posted on the Blackhawk Church website.