Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World's Largest Religion

by Rebecca McLaughlin

First, Galileo was a Christian.

Second, the prevailing cosmology before this controversy was not biblical but Aristotelian.

The third problem with the notion that Galileo overturned biblical literalism was that Christians had been exploring nonliteral views of biblical texts in relation to science for centuries.

Augustine argued the opposite: If [unbelievers] find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven?16

Isaac Newton,

Michael Faraday,

James Clerk M...

Lord Kelvin

A Belgian Roman Catholic priest named Georges Lemaître was the first to propose the crazy-sounding idea that the universe had begun as an incredibly hot, incredibly dense point: a “cosmic egg.” Like any scientific paradigm shift, the theory met with resistance. In this instance, some of the pushback was motivated by atheism.

Darwin’s closest collaborator and “best advocate,” Harvard professor and botanist Asa Gray, was a passionate Christian.

Gregor Mendel

nuclear science professor Ian Hutchinson,

professor of aeronautics and astronautics Daniel Hastings,

electrical engineering professo...

Artificial intelligence expert Ros...

Chemistry professor Troy ...

Biological and mechanical engineering professo...

mechanical and ocean engineering Dick Yue;

chemical engineering professor Chris Love;

professor of biological engineering, chemical engineering, and biolog...

history professor Ann...

and even neuroscientist and former MIT president (the first female president of the I...

The weakness of the claim that science has disproved Christianity is brought home by the testimony of one of the most influential scientists in America today, who came to faith when he was already a professional scientist. Francis Collins

Full-blown nihilism is one response to the reduction of humanity to component parts that some believe science has accomplished.

In both views, the premise is the same: if we have a complete scientific description of something, other descriptions are squeezed out. But what if this premise is wrong?

For Christians, therefore, the most important question is not What does science say we are? but Who does God say we are?

much as I value science, I do not believe that scientific knowledge is the most important kind.

The primacy of meaning-seeking over fact-finding illuminates the biblical creation accounts.

Christians hold a range of views regarding the genre of the creation accounts in Genesis and how they relate to science. But one thing is clear: Genesis is not primarily concerned with science.

If we are no more than the features that can be described by science, and our only story is the evolutionary story, we have no grounds for insisting on human equality, protection of the weak, equal treatment of women, or any of the other ethical beliefs we hold dear.

when atheists reject Christianity because of the evils done in the name of religion, we must recognize that evil has also been done in the name of science. And that it is ultimately only a religious worldview that enables us to diagnose evil as evil.

But all Christians must believe that humans are ultimately designed, intended, and purposed by God. So, the argument goes, imperfections like this discredit the Christian story. But there are two main problems with this argument.

First, you could make the same argument about history.

Second, the replay-the-tape-for-difference claim may not even represent the best science.

“If there is a God with whom we are meant to be in a personal relationship,” Barrett asks, “then how probable [is it] that engagement in such a relationship would happen to be good for us?”

Rees presents three possible explanations of this apparent fine-tuning.

The first is pure chance.

The second possibility is that there is a God who intended for the univ...

our universe is one among a mind-boggling number of parallel universes, each governed by different laws and defined by different numbers.

Christians and atheists are vulnerable to the same mistake: the idea that science will either prove or disprove theism. A more fruitful approach is to look at the world around us and ask ourselves, does this seem coherent with the possibility of God?

Wigner observed that “the enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and that there is no rational explanation for it.” He ends with gratitude: “The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.”

if a rational God made the universe and endowed humans with an intelligence that echoed his own, perhaps his image-bearing creatures would be able to discern his laws.

Justin Barrett, “Do Our Mental Tools Cause Belief in God?,” The Veritas Forum (video), December 17, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hR3B9hIP0sE].

John Polkinghorne and Nicholas Beale, Questions of Truth: Fifty-One Responses to Questions about God, Science, and Belief (Louisville: Westminster Knox Press, 2009),

William D. Phillips, “Does Science Make Belief in God Obsolete?,” Fair Observer, November 10, 2013, https://www.fairobserver.com/culture/does-science-make-belief-god-obsolete/.

Eugene Wigner, “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences,” Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics 13, no. 1 (February 1960), dartmouth.edu (reading materials), https://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html.

Women have disposed of unwanted babies in various ways since time immemorial. Indeed, as pediatric physician Paul Offit discovered to his surprise, it was only the advent of Christianity that made infanticide seem morally problematic.

Despite the complex and, at times, heartrending challenges raised by unwanted pregnancy, I do believe that Christian faith entails a pro-life position, and while there are certainly some who oppose abortion for misogynistic reasons, the claim that being pro-life implies being anti-women is unsustainable.

Paul Offit, Bad Faith: When Religious Belief Undermines Modern Medicine (New York: Basic Books, 2015), 127. See also my discussion of Offit in chap. 4, under “Bad Faith.”

blue-blood heterosexuality is not the goal of the Christian life: Jesus is.