Idle gossip between religion and science

BioLogos, it tells us, “explores, promotes, and celebrates the integration of science and Christian faith.” Here it is doing that.

Just as we can maintain the created order is God’s good creation warped by the fall, in a similar way we can maintain that Scripture—given through and to a fallen world through fallen men—is both beautiful and broken. No less than the creation, Scripture’s human authors, and the book that they wrote, stands in need of redemption.

That’s the integration of science and faith. Except for the science part.

BioLogos says it really does want to connect and join and link up the two.

BioLogos addresses the escalating culture war between science and faith, promoting dialog and exploring the harmony between the two.

But then it publishes material like “After Inerrancy” which is bound to be anathema to most scientists, so what do they mean by it? How do they think handwaving about how to read “Scripture” is promoting dialogue between science and religion? In what sense is it exploring the harmony between the two?

BioLogos represents the harmony of science and faith. It addresses the central themes of science and religion and emphasizes the compatibility of Christian faith with scientific discoveries about the origins of the universe and life.

Maybe that gives us a hint. 

It does it by limiting science to discoveries, while carefully not mentioning methodology and epistemology. It’s ok – there are just some Discoveries, and believers can chew them carefully one hundred times and then digest them without perturbation. Discoveries are discrete and fenced-off and can be manipulated until they no longer seem to interfere with cherished beliefs. How to discover discoveries, and how to evaluate discoveries and purported discoveries – that’s another story; that could lead to unpleasant questions about the “discoveries” that underlie religious beliefs. So BioLogos doesn’t go into all that. At least not on the About page it doesn’t.

Jerry Coyne discussed this yesterday.

9 Responses to “Idle gossip between religion and science”