Intellectual Objections

Number 4 in my list of reasons to not believe you might perhaps expect to be higher up the list. Surely it's not logical to believe in something you can't see and what about the whole science versus faith debate?

Reasoned Faith

For me personally this is an odd one, because it's always seemed logical that there's a God. If you investigate the evidence for Jesus coming to this Earth, doing what He did, why He did it and the repercussions across history, there's nothing more reasonable and logical. I'm an engineer, with a PhD. As far as I can tell, I've never been brainwashed, I'm not gullible and I am able to look at things objectively, weighing up facts and coming to sensible conclusions.  Now I'm not saying I'm always right, but I am usually logical.  When I look at the existence of the Universe, the place of humanity in it and the problems of evil versus good, they all have reasonable descriptions in the Bible that are consistent and logical. Outside of scriptures I've read plenty by very intelligent Christian authors such as C.S. Lewis, Lee Strobel and Ravi Zacharias, to name a few. All three of these fellas give reasoned and compelling arguments for the Christian faith. My own faith in Jesus is a reasoned faith, it is not a blind one.

What's the Game?

So what gives? Why is there even a discussion of science versus faith? I am a person with a strong faith, who uses science and sees no need to pit one against the other. I think there are a number of reasons why there are apparent conflicts between science, reason and faith. I could probably write whole blogs on each (hey, material for a future series!), but here I'll just list them out with some brief comments:

1. Bad science - there I said it.  There is a lot of bad science, philosophy and rhetoric that claims to be scientific fact but really it's not.  Whenever a scientist starts a monologue with "We know..." or "Perhaps..." my skeptical radar kicks in.
2. Scientism. When science becomes a philosophy of life ("In the name of science"), that can be a dangerous thing.  I always think back to the classic line from the original Jurassic Park movie where Jeff Goldblum's character, Dr Malcolm says "Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should." If you recall the end of the movie, it didn't work out so well.
3. Pride. This comes from both people defending their faith and those defending science. They both want to win the argument and don't really want to discover the truth. There are many scientists and philosophers, good and bad with a lot invested in their ideas who get very emotional when they're challenged. They ignore the facts and throw stones rather than answering the challenges with rational proofs.
4. Ignorance. No-one can know everything but I think a lot of the talk of conflict between science and religion is bogus and comes from ignorance about what the other "side" believes to be true.
5. A hidden agenda. And this is the big one.  I've heard it said and I think it's true that many folks who state they have intellectual objections to Christianity, actually have moral objections. That is, they don't want to believe the Christian message, whether it's true or not. It's a heart issue, not a head issue.

Using Reason to Find Faith

I have a feeling I'll be quoting his book a lot, but I've just finished reading a pre-release copy of Abdu Murray's excellent new book "Saving Truth" which has the subtitle "Finding Meaning & Clarity in a Post-Truth World." Chapter 7 of his book is titled "Clarity about Science and Faith" and in it he breaks down what science is really about and what faith, in the Christian definition, really means.  Rather than disproving faith, Abdu makes a strong argument that the observations we get from science are actually part of discovering the wonder of God that can lead to faith. Whether it's the intricacies of the structure of DNA or the mind-blowing beauty of the stars, we can see God's fingerprint in nature and be in awe.

To wrap up this blog, here is a quote from the chapter that's pretty cool:

"Science confirms the truths in Scripture. Scripture unveils the poetry of science. The confusing fog of the false dichotomy between science and faith fades. The sea of glass mingled with fire that is the intertwining of faith and science becomes clear. The signals of transcendence reveal our relevance to the Transcendent One."

Further Reading?

So there you have my take on intellectual objections to believing in Jesus. Perhaps this blog took a different tack than you expected in that I didn't list a bunch of intellectual objections and give arguments against them.  There are plenty of books that do that much better than I could here. But to be fair, if you do have genuine intellectual objections here are a few resources that might be helpful from the authors mentioned in this blog and others:

• The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel
• Jesus Among Secular Gods by Ravi Zacharias and Vince Vitale
• Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
• Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton
• I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek
• Darwin's Black Box by Michael Behe

Enjoy!