In the talk, the speaker really painted very clearly the limitations of science. He righted three very common misconceptions about science. Firstly, science is not self-interpreting. It comes with the assumption that what you observe is reality.
Secondly, science is descriptive, not prescriptive. And thirdly, science alone cannot be the basis of true knowledge. Science can only operate within what can be observed. As such, science has its limits, beyond which science can never answer. Since science is only a description of what is out there, then who put the things out there? Put very clearly, God is the basis for science. Put another way, science is man’s attempt to make sense of God’s creation. Studying science will only let us increasingly see what we do not understand, and what we only think we understand. Creation is a reflection of the creator’s imagination and intellect. Thus studying science can only result in giving glory to God the creator, whose wisdom no one can comprehend.
I took an astronomy module in NUS that taught more about the universe. The teacher showed us a video of how big the universe is and how big the stars can get. The earth is about 1/100th the size of the sun, and the sun is in turn 1/700th the size of Betelgeuse, another star. And the list goes on. The furthest known galaxy is 13.3 billion light years from earth. (One light year is roughly 9,461,000,000,000 km). And this is only within the known universe, there is even more beyond what we can see. Taking this module really helped me understand a small fraction of the universe more. And as my knowledge of the universe grew, so did my admiration for God the creator. God really is the basis for science.
The speaker also said that science can only tell us how things work, it cannot tell us why things work this way or the cause of it. Religion can. In this way they should not contradict, but in fact complement. But to begin with, science and God are not even on the same level, and thus there is no basis for direct comparison between the two. Comparing the two is misunderstanding the nature of science and is an example of man’s arrogant rebellion against God.
Jesus said that the greatest commandment was to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. I had always wondered what love God with all your mind means. Someone told me that to love God with all your mind means to love God intellectually. The Christian faith is not a blind faith, and as the speaker said, information and investigation are the singular characteristics of humans, animals do not have these. To use our God-given intellect to investigate the claims of God, to learn more about His creation, among others, would be a form of showing our respect and love for the all-knowing and wise God.
Laziness; to not want to dig deeper into God’s word, to not want to investigate what God has said or made, is to not give God the glory. In fact, the deeper you dig, the more you investigate, the more you learn about and the closer you get to God. And indeed, as we learn more intellectually, one can only but give all glory to our intelligent God, whose intellect is beyond even the smartest human.
Elvira Tan
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