is science going the same way as faith?

I've just watched Paul Nurse on BBC's Horizon programme, lamenting the fact that the public no longer seem to believe scientists. He looked nostalgically back at the 300 year history of the Royal Society, with it's mantra of examining ideas and theories by collecting and analysing data, and mused that this approach to discovering truth no longer seems to be universally trusted. I could not help but hear echoes of the erosion of trust in religion. Nurse called for the scientific community to become more aware of the way in which our culture operates, and instead of assuming that the public should change to understand scientists, there needed to be a change on the part of the scientists. This seems so similar to those within the Christian community who are asking what it means to be missional. We have known for a long time that the way we used to do things just does not have much credibility to 21st century people. Rather than us becoming defensive, retreating and becoming increasingly fundamentalist, should we instead stop to listen to the sceptics and ask how we should change?

Comments

  1. AnonymousMarch 18, 2011 at 8:17 PM

    Faith and science have core values that cannot be abandoned, but both of them have a lot of room to egage the general public in creative ways. For example, St. Paul's sermon about the Unknown God in Acts 17:22-31 begins with a direct reference to a then-current topic of discussion in Athens. Science can address the current interest as well. Is America safe from radiation coming from Japan's damaged nuclear plants? Science can provide those answers.

    For further reading, I recommend the book "Unscientific America", by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum. Much of the book is about communication, and who are the best parties to fix what's broken. They state that there is no necessary conflict between faith and science, and I strongly agree.

    Carl Drews

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

advent day two

Advent Day TWO~ Every one of you, hide among the rocks and in the ground, Because the LORD is fearsome, marvelous, and glorious. When the LORD comes, everyone who is proud will be made humble, And the LORD alone will be honoured. The LORD All-Powerful has chosen a day When those who are proud and conceited will be put down Isaiah 2: 10-12 What are we waiting for? Its good to remind ourselves  of who God is. What words would you use to describe God? Glorious?...Marvellous?...Fearsome? Try to spend some time today in a place where you can see something of God’s glory– it might be at the sea, under a starry night sky, watching a sunset or down on your hands and knees with the insects. God created this world we live in. He controls it, orders it, sustains it. He breathed life into our bodies– and He will decide when life leaves us. This is the LORD we worship. And he has chosen a day to return to earth in unmistakable power and glory. The angel choirs who sang to shephe...
Read more

Peter- walking a rocky road

Sometimes reading self help books or well-meaning blogs can make us feel that adopting a regime, a mantra or a new habit will lead to measurable results in a steadily increasing way. We feel as if we should be drawing a progress chart that climbs steadily upwards- but real life is just not like that. Maybe that's why so many of us find Peter an encouraging character in Scripture. When Jesus changes Simon's name to Peter, meaning the Rock, we cheer for him as we see Jesus recognising his strength of character. Jesus replied,  ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter,   and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades [  will not overcome it.   I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be  bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be   loosed in heaven.’   Then he ordered his...
Read more

Isaiah 8

Why do people not read the Old Testament more? I imagine it's because of passages like this one- it's full of incomprehensible Hebrew names and places, which seem to have had some sort of significance to the first people to read them, but are off-putting to us today. Is the only way to read a passage like this to get out a concordance or commentary, and work out who all these people are? Or should we just ignore the stuff we don't understand, and skip straight to a verse or two that we can make sense of? One thing that reading through Isaiah one chapter at a time is showing me, is that the second option is not a valid one. the bits we might chose to pull out rarely mean what we might expect them to. It is worth pausing and asking what message they gave to the people of the time- even if that doesn't seem to be a message that is relevant to us today. This is a book that tells us about God, not offers us a quick fix for our problems and concerns. So in the middle of this ...
Read more