Question
Hasn’t science made God unnecessary?
Science describes secondary causes. It does not abolish the need for a first cause, or the meaning of the whole.
The old ‘God of the weather’ shrunk as meteorology grew. That is not what Christian theism was ever about. God is the reason there is a law-governed world to study. The more science succeeds, the more we see an intelligible, mathematical, finely tuned order—which is exactly what a rational Creator would underwrite.
J.P. Moreland’s caution still holds: scientific forms of explanation (material and efficient causes) do not logically rule out final causes. ‘How’ questions do not eat ‘why’ questions.
See it
Shorts, slide decks, and infographics that belong with this page.
Talking points
- Methodological naturalism in the lab is not the same as ‘nature is all there is.’
- Progress in science is not a verdict on theology any more than progress in history is a verdict on mathematics.
Say this
I want more science, not less. I just refuse to pretend that a method which looks only at natural causes has thereby proved that those are the only causes there are.
If they say…
“We used to need God to explain lightning.”
Christians who used God as a sticker for ignorance were wrong to do it. The question of why there is a lightning-capable cosmos at all is not the same kind of question as ‘what ionizes the air.’
“In him all things hold together.”