“Aren’t science and reason incompatible with the Christian faith?” We explored this topic at our Open House on 7/25. Here are some additional personal reflection questions for group or personal use:

  1. Has this question about science, reason, and faith been a personal struggle for you, presently or at any point in the past? What issues in particular are difficult for you? 
  2. In your own words, how would you describe the relationship between science/reason and faith? How is it possible that “faith and reason are not, as many seem to be arguing today, mutually exclusive” (Dr. Francis Collins, Director, National Institutes of Health)?  
  3. Consider the following quotation from Prof. John Polkinghorne, a quantum physicist and former president of Queens’ College, Cambridge University: “Science’s own success in its own domain must not be allowed to impose upon us the assumption that there alone is to be found all that is worthy of rational enquiry. Absolutely no one, whatever their official beliefs, actually lives their lives as if this were so, for human personality is richer than so desiccated an account could ever encompass.” How do these words help us to understand how Christianity and science both seek knowledge of the world but on different levels?  
  4. How would you respond to a person who says, “I believe in God, but I don’t see how a modern person can believe in the miracles recorded in the Bible!”? 
  5. What are some assumptions about the world, uniquely provided by a Christian worldview, that the scientific method is routinely dependent upon? In other words, how did Christianity provide uniquely fertile soil in which modern science could grow and flourish, in a way that other advanced civilizations did not?

From our Sunday teaching/discussion series, REASONABLE DOUBTS: Our Common Questions about the Christian Faith

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