Most would say conflict. They would say that faith and science are fundamentally different views. One sees the world through exact measurable data, while the other is based on feelings and the supernatural. We cannot prove God, so He must not exist. God cannot be placed under a microscope or in a test tube, and the only people who believe in Him and reject science are too ignorant to understand science and its perfection.
This view is called methodological naturalism. It says that science is the only way to understand the world. Matter is all that is, was, or ever will be. The world began 13.7 billion years ago, in a big bang, and has been gradually evolving ever since. It leaves no room for the supernatural. And though it neither denies nor acknowledges God, it says that faith and all forms of religion are unreasonable.
Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, disagrees with this. In his speech "The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief" he says that science and faith are both correct and that they complement each other. This is not a belief he was raised with. In college he was an agnostic, and in graduate school and medical school an atheist (methodological naturalist) . But one day in medical school one of his patients, who was dying of heart disease, shared her Christian faith with him and then asked him what he believed, and he could not answer her. This sent him on a quest in search of evidence for or against the existence of God. And what he found surprised him.
First, he looked to nature for evidence and decided that "nature provides some interesting pointers to God". For one thing there is something instead of nothing. And how could there be something if there wasn't always something, because nothing can come from nothing. The matter in the universe didn't just appear. It had to come from somewhere. Another piece of evidence is "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics". The very fact that math, physics and chemistry all work and have exact answers is amazing. There are also the constants of the universe such as the speed of light and the gravitational constant. These numbers are not random. They are exact constants that would make life and the universe impossible if they were tweaked just a little bit. But how could this be if the universe was created by completely random forces?
This question then takes him to the big bang, which, Francis Collins says virtually all scientists agree took place 13.7 billion years ago, but no proof of life or matter or anything, before that time, has been found, which basically means something came from nothing. But we have already decided that that is not possible. So, if the "universe cannot create itself, how did it get here?". Something natural could not have created it, because where did that natural force come from? This brought Francis Collins to that idea that something supernatural, that is not bound by space or time, must have created the universe.
We are now at Einstein's God, a deist's God. Collins then brings up right and wrong, the Moral Law. People have an innate sense of right and wrong. That doesn't always mean we follow it, but most people would agree that murder is wrong and helping an old lady cross the street is right. But the evolutionary idea of selfish genes completely contradicts this idea. This idea says that our genes' goal is to pass themselves along to the next generation, and they cause us to do things that will help ensure that.
Sure, helping your family or people in your same social set would make sense because that would help you pass your genes along. But what about acts of altruism, complete strangers from different social sets and back grounds saving each others life, such as an African American construction worker saving the life of a white graduate student at a subway station.We all know events like this happen. And not only do we know that they happen but we also applaud them. If evolution were correct in that our genes and their desire to survive completely drives our life then anytime we had a chance to do something completely selfless we would either ignore it, or under the influence of their genes, everyone around us would condemn us for helping someone else selflessly.
With this Collins realized that for all of this to be true there must be a God. Not just an impersonal, distant God, but a God who loves us and is perfect.
Though I agree with much of what Collins says while getting to this conclusion, I do not agree with all of it, mostly that the theory of evolution and Christianity agree with each other. I do not mean to say that evolution in its most basic definition, which is simply change over time, is wrong. What I mean is that I do not believe that the world was created in a big bang 13.7 billion years ago, either by God or not. And I do not believe that this belief can be reconciled with Biblical Christianity.
Also Genesis 1:27 says that we were created in God's own image, which seen either as physical or spiritual doesn't leave room for us to have started out as single celled organisms or monkeys or another kind of animal that doesn't have a soul. We could not have been created as animals and then evolved over time into people and then granted a soul. We had to have been given souls when we were first created.
Francis Collins made the point that our evolution would maybe make sense if we didn't read Genesis 1-3 in a literal sense and thought of it more as very abstract. But if we view Genesis as abstract and not literal, what is to keep us from viewing the whole Bible in that way? If one part is abstract why can't another part we don't like be abstract? We can not pick and choose which parts of the Bible we agree with. The Bible is the Bible. And no matter how much we debate and theorize, it is God's word and must be taken as such.
Francis Collins and I clearly disagree on this issue, which is what makes him a theistic naturalist and me a Biblical naturalist. Theistic naturalists believe that there is a God and that He is supernatural, but that he created the world through the big bang and Darwinist evolution and intervenes in the world occasionally through miracles. This belief tends to put science first and God second. And even though Collins says he puts God first and science second, I still think he falls under this category.
I am a Biblical naturalist. I believe that the Bible is the word of God and it is the source of all truth. This however does not mean that I believe that science is pointless or evil. It's actually quite the opposite. Science is a tool for understanding the natural world around us. It is not higher than God and it cannot prove His existence, but it can help us find cures for diseases and design safer cars. So, yes science and faith are compatible, but they are not equal. God is the head over all things and science is simply a way to understand this amazing world He has created.
