Laws of Nature and God's Word for Creation

The "laws of nature" were mentioned in Tony's post regarding the meaning of the word "evolution".  Since I have written on that in a paper entitled "Laws of Nature and God's Word for Creation" (see Sikkema 2007 under "collected papers" in the sidebar; a direct link is here), let me present a few quotes here.  I invite you to read the entire piece and give me your feedback on it.

"It is important to develop a Christian perspective or worldview on how the world 'works' and about how God relates to the creation. Without such grounding, we join in some of the fallacies plaguing today's culture, such as philosophical materialism, naturalism, and the dualisms between science and religion and between the natural and the supernatural. In this article, I will discuss what we --- both scientists and members of the general public --- mean when we speak about natural scientific laws, or laws of nature, as well as what the Bible says about God's ordinances for creation, particularly in terms of his showing covenant faithfulness toward his creation." (p. 27)

"From a Christian point of view, science would not be possible were it not for the fact that its foundation is in God's covenant faithfulness to his creation, for there can be no consistent naturalistic explanation for the regularities of the world which are explored within the natural sciences." (p. 36)

"One of the main things we've inherited in the scientific enterprise is the concept that the laws of nature, and nature itself, are mechanical. This conception, however, is not consistent with a Christian understanding of the world or of how God relates to the world. God doesn't 'simply' set up a mechanism and have that mechanism carry on over time.  That would be a world of deism, a world where God is not personally, intimately, covenantally, faithfully relating but simply has set it up in a certain way and then no longer engages it." (p. 38)

Is "Creation Science" Reformed?

Recently, the Clarion editors have rejected this article by Tony Jelsma (listed in our "collected papers" in the sidebar, along with other background papers relevant to the topic). It discusses the history of "creation science" as a movement, and points out a number of serious issues with its approach to Biblical hermeneutics. It is important to remember that the Canadian Reformed churches have not taken a particular position on young earth creationism, and that there is a rich tradition within our background which allows for serious thought in which many of the results of mainstream science regarding historical astronomy, geology, biology need not be considered opposed to Scripture. Over the past few decades, young earth creationism has been understood by many to be the default position of our church members. However, this article suggests we ought to oppose young earth creationism on both theological and scientific grounds. We invite your comments on this article, and in some of the upcoming blog entries we will be highlighting some its main arguments.

What is meant by the word “Evolution”?

A major challenge to Christians studying the biological sciences is the concept of evolution and how it is presented to them. Part of this challenge is that the word “evolution” means different things to different people. Further, sometimes these different meanings are conflated, intentionally or unintentionally, which adds to the confusion.

One meaning of evolution is “change over time.” In population genetics terms the change that is meant is in allele frequencies in a population. In time I hope to write a separate post describing population genetics but the incidence of a particular allele or gene variant in a population changes from generation to generation for various reasons, including natural selection and random variation. In this sense you evolved from your parents because your allele frequencies differ from those of your parents. While this may be an attractive concept for teenagers :-), its relevance to the grand evolutionary scenario is limited.

A second meaning of evolution is this grand evolutionary scenario, “From Monad (single celled bacterium) to Man” as the Darwinist philosopher Michael Ruse coined the phrase. This is also commonly called macroevolution. The distinction between microevolution and macroevolution is not straightforward and probably deserves another blog post. This is the evolution which Charles Darwin proposed in his Origin of Species and later evolutionary theory has expanded to include the origin of life (yet another post?).

Finally, the word evolution can be used to describe a naturalistic worldview, one that denies the existence of a Creator who plays any role in the evolution of life. It is this worldview held by the atheist Richard Dawkins, who stated that evolution allowed him to be an “intellectually fulfilled atheist.” In a naturalistic worldview, the “laws of nature” is the only game in town, regardless of the evidence.

As Reformed Christians in science we have an obligation to listen to what the creation tells us, recognize God’s hand in creation (Romans 1:20) and strive to honor him in our study of the creation. When it comes to evolutionary biology, what the creation tells us may not be straightforward and the evidences might not always be what we “want” them to be. But that will have to be the subject of future posts.