Evangelicals and Science

I have a fundamental worry, which can be summed up this way: the vast majority of American evangelicals disbelieve the story of evolution. Almost all scientists take it as gospel.
If the issue were merely an argument over one scientific theory, I would worry less than I do.  However, the gap between evangelicals and science has large sociological and world view implications. Let me illustrate with three stories.
I have a young friend who studies geology. He was raised in a Christian home, but had doubts and questions about a committed faith. Several years ago, just out of high school, he got a summer job at a Christian conference ground. He made strong friends there and it seemed likely to me that this community of peers, committed Christians, would help him grow in faith.
However, many of these peers went on to a conservative Christian college. When they met up with my young friend in subsequent years they found it troubling that he was studying geology. Didn’t geology teach that the earth was millions of years old? That contradicted what they had learned about the Bible, so they began to urge my friend to get out of geology, a field that they believed a Christian could never agree with. They were stubbornly concerned and would not drop the subject. Eventually my young friend wearied of pointless discussions with people who knew nothing about geology. He let the friendships lapse.
Another friend of mine is an outstanding microbiologist. He became a Christian when we were both in college, and has maintained his faith while rising through the ranks of academic research. He and his family joined a conservative Bible church where they were nurtured and encouraged. My friend joined the music team, and was in a long-standing men’s fellowship that helped him through family crises. However, he never felt that his work was fully accepted. Like virtually all microbiologists, he considers evolution a given.
Seeking to bring his worlds together he led a church adult education class on the subject. He did his homework by reading and studying many of the Christian critiques of evolution, and he tried his best to lead a dispassionate discussion of the issues. The results didn’t satisfy him, though. The others in his class knew very little about biology and were not able to engage the science involved. More, many approached science with suspicion, as though it set out to oppose biblical truth. There did not seem to be any way to engage the issues in a way that my friend found useful.
Over the years, this became problematic for my friend. He was loyal to his church and appreciated its work in his life. But his life as a scientist was completely excluded. Most of his day was spent in the laboratory. His ambitions and joys were largely wrapped up in his research, but he felt that talking about it with church friends was awkward, almost embarrassing—as though he were describing an intimate bodily function in mixed company. As the years went by, and he became an increasingly prominent scientist, this split existence became more and more uncomfortable to him. He grew increasingly detached from the life of the church.
One more story. At my church we have a summer lecture series where we ask Christians to come and talk about their work and their passion. We’ve had artists, movie producers, musicians, students of literature, scientists, theologians, engineers, psychiatrists, politicians, pastors—a wide variety of people. Last year we invited an atmospheric scientist from a well-known university. He was passionately concerned about global warming, and he gave an excellent lay-level talk that explained the scholarly state of knowledge. Like nearly all atmospheric scientists, he is greatly concerned.
Most people who attended were very appreciative, but a small group of people was very upset at his “one-sided” presentation. I mean, really upset. I know them pretty well and I had a hard time understanding their emotions. None of them really knew much about the subject. They had looked at a few debunking websites or read an article or two that claimed global warming was a hoax. But they weren’t scientists with any ability to evaluate the evidence.
I would have understood skepticism. After all, scientists are capable of being wrong. I remember the panic over population, not so many years ago. It would have made sense to say, “Well, that’s what they think, but I’m not so sure.”
What troubled me was their belief that scientists were trying to put one over on us. There seemed to be a willingness to see a vast conspiracy at work. Where did this conspiratorial view of science come from? Was it that global warming upset their world view, that nothing human beings do on a global scale can be harmful? That laissez faire is always the best policy? So far as I know no question of biblical interpretation is involved. But would I be mistaken to assume that similar beliefs in scientific conspiracy abound in many churches?
I’m not going to pretend that I know the answers on geology, biology, or atmospheric science. What I know is that our world is built on science. We endorse scientific thinking every time we buy food at the grocery store or drive in a car. And I know that scientists are not engaged in a willful conspiracy. It’s conceivable that they might be the victims of a massive mistake—that their core conclusions might be wrong. (As historians of science point out, even Isaac Newton has been proven wrong.) But that’s a matter for scientists to sort out. That’s what they do.
A large number of evangelical Christians in America (not Europe) are stuck in an intellectual trap. They live and breathe in a world built on science, but they are fundamentally suspicious of science and think of it as an alien force. Surely this is a problem for evangelicals. They are excluding themselves from our era’s prime intellectual force. It is also a problem for scientists because they are excluded from the resources of a robust, biblical faith, and left to an arid materialism.