A Christian View of Science: What is Science?

The Christian is tasked with being a citizen of Heaven while living in a broken world alongside sinful men and women within the context of a given culture or society. One aspect of that living that has seemed to transcend all cultures or societies throughout time has been a fascination with and study of the natural world. And so it behooves the Christian to think rightly about not only the natural world but also our study of it. This thinking has often tended to swing to the extremes, as is often the case in a fallen world. At times we have rejected science or scientific discovery; other times we have wholesale accepted it without any critical thought. I’ll be posting the occasional article highlighting various aspects of the intersection between science and the Christian faith. My hope is that they may be helpful and thought-provoking discussions, perhaps offering perspectives that readers haven’t considered in the past. Future articles will look at aspects of the historical development of modern science and how Christians of past generations have contributed to it, either positively or negatively. Of course we’ll examine Scripture and how it views the natural world. We may even touch on the occasional scientific controversy.

But to begin, I want to offer a simple definition of science that helps us define what it is and what it is not. Science is the pursuit of real and provable knowledge about the universe gained by proper experimentation and revision. This definition is my own, taken both from my own journey in professional science and from over a decade of teaching undergraduates through various sciences. It covers three important aspects of science: why, what, and how.

Why? Science is the pursuit of knowledge. It is why for millennia men and women have spent their lives engrossed in the natural world – they seek knowledge. The very best scientists have a natural curiosity about the world around us, a curiosity that encompasses both hobby and profession. A scientist is driven by the desire to better understand how things work or why things exist as they are in nature. Yet that pursuit of knowledge isn’t always done within the setting of a lab or university; science can be done in the confines of the home. Gregor Mendel, who discovered traits of heredity, was a monk curious about the peas in his garden. Yet it was his curiosity that led him to discover basic tenets of biology that are fundamental to many basic parts of our lives, and even to the survival of men and women throughout the world. But the knowledge pursued in science should be real and provable knowledge. We’ll come back to provable in the ‘how’ discussion, but there are some pursuits of knowledge that are outside the bounds of science. Topics such as the possibility of a multiverse, the possibility of living in a computer simulation, or any number of other theoretical discussions fall outside the proper bounds of science as they are either unreal or unprovable.

What? Science is the pursuit of knowledge about the universe, the cosmos, the physical realities in which we live. As such, it is the bounds of the physical universe that set the bounds of scientific pursuit, so long as we have real and meaningful ways to study it. From the most distant galaxy to the depths of the ocean, from the largest star to the smallest subatomic particle – if we have a way to study it, it is within the realm of science. Therein lies the rub of course: we must have a way of studying it. There are aspects of the cosmos which, while observable, are impossible to study. While observation is itself meaningful, it does not offer the opportunity to say something which is knowingly true. Science is pursuing things which are knowingly and provably true. The rest is mere speculation, which is definitively not science, or at least not the whole of it.

How? The heart of science is the method used to discover those real truths about the cosmos. Proper experimentation is the key to discovering real truths. Once again, the best scientists are those who can design an experiment to test a given hypothesis (a hypothesis is essentially a proposed and educated guess at the solution to a given question). Oftentimes this takes creativity and critical thinking. A proper experiment is one which eliminates as many variables and biases as possible so that upon completion, the only reasonable answer is clear and definitive. This isn’t always an easy task to accomplish, and the growing advance of technology has made it possible to experiment in ways that scientists even a few decades ago could have never thought possible. But technology is no substitute for creative and critical thinking. And perhaps just as vital as creativity in experimentation is the ability for a scientist to revise his/her thinking once the answer is made plain. Good science demands that the scientist amends their thinking to include the results of the experiment, even if those results were unexpected or contrary to previous thinking. Conceivably a scientist could become so ingrained in their way of thinking that they either refuse to accept the results of an experiment or simply misinterpret those results to fit within their own framework. This is not only detrimental to the scientific enterprise but can be quite dangerous or harmful. Proper experimentation and revision are what not only ensures the integrity of scientific results but also maintains the trustworthiness of the scientific enterprise.

Good definitions help us think rightly about any given topic, and so it’s important to lay out a good definition of science itself. But what is science from a Christian perspective? That is the topic we’ll look at next time.

Keith Kauffman attended University of Maryland (B.S.) and Capital Bible Seminary(M.Div.). Keith currently works at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD, working in the Laboratory of Parasitic Diseases studying the immune response to Tuberculosis. Keith serves as an elder at Greenbelt Baptist Church.