Bible believers are often accused of running away from facts established by modern science. Some Bible believers think that science and the Bible can not go together. Therefore they refrain from being witnesses to Christ in the sophisticated society around them. But to me the Bible and science are complementary to each other and not contradictory.
I see science dealing with how the physical world functions, and as man understands more of the physical world and how it functions, man is able to manipulate it for his good. The Bible on the other hand answers the question why I am here and what is the whole purpose of my life. Science has nothing to say about that question at all and the Bible has very little to offer when it comes to the physical world and how it functions.
While science deals with the physical side of man’s existence, the Bible talks about the moral side of man. They are therefore complementary and they can never contradict as they deal in two valid areas of human experience. Like Physics and Chemistry which deal with two valid areas of science and thus becoming complementary to each other, the Science tells us about electricity, sodium chloride and life around us etc. which are very basic to our existence. Science has so permeated our modern lives that it is impossible for us to live without it. But science can not tell us about love and hatred, or about good and evil. Science can not enlighten us about righteousness or about murder or about kindness. These too are essential part of human experiences. Man is not merely a physical being. Man has more to his life than the physical. There is a clear moral side to man’s life and the Bible talks about it and tells us how best we can enjoy this life here on earth correcting our morals every day.
And now when it comes to creation and evolution, to me they are not contradictory subjects at all. After all, the Bible does not say that the whole creation came into existence simultaneously in just one second. The Bible clearly says that man emerged on the scene only on the sixth stage of creation. According to the Bible, first the physical world appeared and then came plant life. Animal life followed plant life and at last man came to the scene. So I see that there is agreement between the Biblical revelation and science. There is no need to go into details of this as the Bible and science are addressing two different questions altogether. I believe that God was the cause behind that ‘evolutionary process’ which we call creation. If some scientists can not see a cause behind that process, it is their own mistake as one of the scientific axioms is that there is no effect with out a cause.
As far as the age of the universe is concerned, again I see no contradiction between the Bible and Science there either. The Bible does NOT give us any hint whatsoever about the date of creation. I have no problem to learn from science that the universe is millions of years old. Bishop Ussher who dated Adam as created around 4004 BC came to that conclusion based on the genealogical data in Genesis. The Scofield Bible popularized this theory. Many think that that is what the Bible teaches about the date of the creation of the earth as well. But we know that Genesis does not deal with the whole history of man kind. Genealogy in the Bible often skips several generations in their counting as for example Christ is called the son of David. We can never count back from Abraham to Adam for exact dates as that period falls in pre-historic times. The Bible has only selected history and the purpose of Genesis is just to be an introduction to the story of human redemption explained in the Bibleis twenty four hours here on earth based on the relation of earth to our Sun. We all know today that a day is not twenty four hours in other planets, for example. And the Bible is very clear that the Sun and the Moon came into the creation story only on the forth stage (day) of creation (Gen.1:16). How dare any one say that a day was twenty four hours at least before the Sun came to the scene? In fact the Bible says that to God a thousand years is like a watch in the night (Ps.90:4), yes indeed, a day could be millions of years then. To me ‘day’ in Genesis represents a ‘geological day’ each consisting of millions of years to it. After all, what was God doing all through eternity if some one says that the earth was created only around 6000 years ago? It is not a question of whether God could or could not. He could have done the whole creation in one second, why six days? The question is: “What did God do according to the Genesis narrative”?
Though the universe is said to be millions of years old, modern science has not found any trace of any human settlement as having millions of years to it. According to Genesis Cain was the first city-builder (Gen.4:17) ie. the second generation of the civilized man of which stock we come from.
To talk about the Neanderthal man and others of that type, the Bible only talks about the modern civilized man. Whether there were pre-Adamic human race/s there or not, is out side the purview of the Bible and therefore the Bible is altogether silent about it.
I found the Bible and science complement each other so beautifully and together they made my life all the more awesome and wonderful.
