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Science and religion: Exploding the Myth of Conflict

A Five-Part Series


Part Four: Whatever Happened to Theistic Science?

The 1633 trial of Galileo occurred right in the middle of the Thirty Years religious wars between Catholics and Protestants, which lasted from 1618 to 1648.  The causes of the wars were complex, but they started when Ferdinand II, the future Holy Roman Emperor, attempted to enforce Catholic orthodoxy on Protestant Bohemia.  The wars then proceeded with complex and shifting sets of alliances.  Eventually, Europe was exhausted after decades of sectarian conflict, and was receptive to new ways of ordering relations among the state, the church, and religious minorities.  Partly in reaction against efforts to impose religious orthodoxy by the use of force, there arose in the 17th and 18th centuries an intellectual movement which became known, somewhat ironically, as “the Age of Enlightenment.”  The intellectuals of that era thought they could end such strife by finding a source of moral authority independent of the Bible, and they thought they had found it in the power of human reason.

Human reason did not prove equal to the task.  Scholars were enticed into a number of intellectual blunders which set the stage for the embrace of Darwinism and the eventual outright rejection of the former synthesis based on the biblical doctrine of Creation, wherein a rational God had created man a rational being in God’s own image, capable of comprehending an ordered cosmos.

Continue reading “Science and religion: Exploding the Myth of Conflict”

Pearl of Great Price

Will Durant said it well: The portrayal of Jesus in the Gospels must be true, because no one could have invented such a character:

That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels.  After two centuries of Higher Criticism, the outlines of the life, character, and teaching of Christ, remain reasonably clear, and constitute the most fascinating feature in the history of Western man.

Will Durant, Historian1

But Simon Greenleaf said it even better:

Lastly, the great character they have portrayed is perfect. It is the character of a sinless Being; of one supremely wise and supremely good. It exhibits no error, no sinister intention, no imprudence, no ignorance, no evil passion, no impatience; in a word, no fault; but all is perfect uprightness, innocence, wisdom, goodness and truth. The mind of man has never conceived the idea of such a character, even for his gods; nor has history or poetry shadowed it forth. The doctrines and precepts of Jesus are in strict accordance with the attributes of God, agreeably to the most exalted idea which we can form of them, either from reason or from revelation. They are strikingly adapted to the capacity of mankind, and yet are delivered with a simplicity and majesty wholly divine. He spake as never man spake. He spake with authority; yet addressed himself to the reason and the understanding of men; and he spake with wisdom, which men could neither gainsay nor resist. In his private life, he exhibits a character not merely of strict justice, but of flowing benignity. He is temperate, without austerity; his meekness and humility are signal; his patience is invincible; truth and sincerity illustrate his whole conduct; every one of his virtues is regulated by consummate prudence; and he both wins the love of his friends, and extorts the wonder and admiration of his enemies. He is represented in every variety of situation in life, from the height of worldly grandeur, amid the acclamations of an admiring multitude, to the deepest abyss of human degradation and woe, apparently deserted of God and man. Yet everywhere he is the same; displaying a character of unearthly perfection, symmetrical in all its proportions, and encircled with splendor more than human. Either the men of Galilee were men of superlative wisdom, and extensive knowledge and experience, and of deeper skill in the arts of deception, than any and all others, before or after them, or they have truly stated the astonishing things which they saw and heard.2

1From The Story of Civilization, Vol. III: Caesar and Christ, by Will Durant, p. 557.

2Simon Greenleaf (1783-1853), The Testimony of the Evangelists: The Gospels Examined by the Rules of Evidence (Full text: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34989/34989-pdf.pdf (last visited 4.5.24).)  (Greenleaf, of course, one of the founders of Harvard Law and the Nineteenth Century’s foremost authority on the law of evidence, set out to refute Christianity and became a follower of Christ instead.)

He is Risen!

     On this Easter weekend it pleases me to share with you something of what I’ve learned from Gary Habermas’ On the Resurrection: Evidences (B&H Academic, 2024).

     There is virtual unanimity among scholars, both liberal and conservative, that the details of the events which gave rise to the Gospel story probably happened  – with the sole exception of the empty tomb, which is accepted by “only” a clear majority of scholars.  That is to say, more particularly, that the scholarly community agrees that the disciples believed they had seen the risen Christ, it transformed them from cowering fugitives into on-fire evangelists, and many of them were martyred for it.  None recanted. 

     As to the Resurrection itself, a strong minority of scholars believe Jesus arose.  For those who do not, there are no plausible naturalistic explanations for the events described above.  Their only theory is a hidebound naturalistic prejudice that there is no God and hence no miracles.  But if God exists then naturalism is false and miracles can and will happen whenever God wants them to. 

     Applying well-accepted historiographical criteria for historicity, it would be almost impossible for the evidence for the Resurrection to be any stronger than it is.  Indeed, considering that we are at a distance of 2,000 years, it is astonishing how extensively documented are the events of the New Testament, such that one can only ascribe it to a meticulous providence.  What are those criteria?  (Time permits only a cursory recounting; I hope to flesh out the following in future posts.)

  • Early attestation. (Check.)
  • Eyewitness testimony.  (Check.)
  • Multiple attestation.  (Check.)
  • Dissimilarity.  (“[A] particular saying may be attributed to someone . . . if it cannot plausibly be [attributed to] . . . the words or teachings of other roughly contemporary sources.”  Habermas, 47.)  The very idea of imagining the sayings of Jesus as coming from anyone else is ludicrous.
  • Palestinian origin.  (Sayings in the Aramaic language, for example.)  The raising of Jairus’ daughter and the cry of dereliction come to mind.
  • Embarrassment.  (Frankly acknowledging words or events which place the author or others in a negative light may reflect a commitment to truth-telling.)  Mark and Peter, for example, are unflinching in describing Peter’s repeated failures.
  • Enemy attestation. The Jews to this day claim that the body was stolen, which means the tomb must have been empty.

He is risen!