Objection #2:
Science Has Disproven
Christianity

Philosophical naturalism: the idea or belief that only natural (as opposed to supernatural or
spiritual) laws and forces operate in the world.
o

Nature exists on its own and nothing beyond a scientific explanation is necessary.
Though philosophical naturalism says that there are no gods, no angels, no spirits, etc.,
philosophical naturalism cannot itself possibly refute theism because it is simply a denial of
theism.
o

It is simply a philosophical view.
While theism is clearly incompatible with philosophical naturalism, this fact in no way proves
that theism is incompatible with science.

Theology: the study of the nature of God and religious belief.

Theology sees the laws of nature as descriptions of the orderly process that God instituted and
maintains.
o
Theology tries to answer the question of why nature exists at all, and why nature has
the orderly characteristics that science investigates.
o
Science and theology do not have to be essential rivals, because the explanations they
offer are not of the same type or on the same level.

Science tries to tell us what goes on and how it goes on.

Theology tries to tell us why the whole thing goes on and who stands behind it.

Psychological argument against religion aims to prove that religious beliefs stem from deep
psychological needs.

Freud has some main points to his argument.
o
First, religion helps calm our fears of the uncontrolled order of nature by personifying
that order, or at least by viewing nature as being under personal control.
o
Second, religion helps us accept the costs of civilization.

Religion both sanctifies the rules and institutions of society and promises future
rewards which compensate for the pain these restrictions bring on us.
o
Freud believes that religion is an allusion that provides positive benefits to humans in
an infantile state.

If Freud is right, then humans have a deep need to believe in God. But the existence of such a
need does not show that God does not exist.


Freud’s argument might go something like this:
o
Religious beliefs are held solely to satisfy deep psychological needs.
o
Beliefs which are held solely to satisfy deep psychological needs are usually false.
o
Therefore, religious beliefs are probably false.
Premise 1:
o
Religious beliefs do satisfy deep psychological needs, but it is hard to see how one could
establish that this is their sole basis.
o
Not all religious beliefs are comforting or psychologically reassuring.


Many people find some religious ideas to be unsettling and challenging.

West – a god who allows suffering

East – a god that says to forgive everyone
Premise 2:
o
People have deep psychological needs to believe in the reality and constancy of the
physical world.

To question these beliefs (truths) because of this psychological fact would be
absurd.
o
If believers sometimes show a deep psychological need to believe in God, nonbelievers
sometimes show an equally deep psychological need to reject any authority over them
and to assert themselves as their own lords and masters.
This is Charles Darwin. In short, he is responsible for the discovery and teaching of evolution.

Dawkins claims that religious beliefs are evolutionary in origin.

If religious beliefs can be shown to be purely natural, then it will thereby have been
demonstrated that religion is a delusion, and that once we understand this, it is then irrational
to continue to hold such beliefs.

There is no good reason to believe that religion is false or irrational just because it has a
natural origin.
o
If Darwinian evolution is correct, all of our faculties have a natural origin.
o
Then we can’t even trust our own minds to believe in anything, including atheism, if
our brains are simply a collection of atoms.

Evolutionary science assumes that more complex life-forms evolved from less complex lifeforms through a process of natural selection.

You might be surprised that millions of Christians today believe God brought about life this way.
1) On October 27, 2014, Pope Francis issued a statement at the Pontifical Academy of
Sciences that "Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation," warning
against thinking of God's act of creation as "God [being] a magician, with a magic wand able
to do everything."
1) Genesis 1 teaches that God created all life-forms in a period of sex twenty-four-hour days just
several thousand years ago.
a. Earth was created with age
b. Flood caused the earth to look older
2) God was the primary cause in beginning the world and after that natural causes took over.
o
The days in Genesis 1 are metaphorical
3) God created life and then guided natural selection to develop all complex life-forms from
simpler ones.
o
God is the top-down cause.
4) God performed large-scale creative acts at different points over longer periods of time.
o
The days in Genesis 1 are metaphorical.
o
Humans were in existence through evolution when God created Adam and Eve.

Let’s examine the Genesis 1 creation account.

Goal of interpretation: discover the author’s original meaning.

Different genres

o
Psalms – poetry
o
Luke – eyewitness account (history)
The Genesis account was written by Moses to the audience of Israel who had recently came out
of Egyptian bondage. The Israelites were uneducated and surrounded by Egyptian polytheism
for centuries (400 years to be exact). It is possible that Moses wrote the creation account in a
way that these people could understand and come to know a different way of understanding
the creation of the world than how they had understood it in Egypt. Thus, Moses could have
employed rhetoric that metaphorically described the events of God’s creating acts.

Evolution is compatible with the biblical account.

Not everything is literal.

“The biblical account cannot be trusted because it contains accounts of miracles.”
o

Hidden premise: “Science has proven there are no such things as miracles.”
It is one thing to say that science is only equipped to test for natural causes and cannot speak
to any others. But it is quite another to insist that science proves that no other causes could
possibly exist.

Claim: some scientists believe that miracles, past and present, are just results from natural
causes (philosophical naturalism).

The statement which says, “There are no supernatural causes for any natural phenomenon” is
a philosophical presupposition rather than a scientific finding.



To scientists
o
No test method = miracles can’t exist.
o
Circular reasoning
“There can’t be a god who does miracles.”
o
“If the Creator God does exist, what is illogical about miracles?”
o
Creator can rearranged the created.
To be sure that miracles do not exist, one must prove that God does not exist.
o
Not possible.
No, science has not disproven Christianity. Some theories of science, though they are contrary to
Christianity and thus cannot coexist with the faith, are simply a denial of Christianity or the existence of
God and therefore do not empirically disprove either.