Science and God

There has been a lot of debate concerning the Christian faith and religion in recent times most especially Ghana. People are questioning to verify and authenticate Christianity. Such occurrences were mostly heard of in the Western World but now it is here with us in Africa and Ghana. There is a tug of war between science and religion which are cantered on how the world perceives them. Christianity is interestingly seen as the white man’s religion that has been imposed on us. We are accused of being brainwashed by the white man’s ideas. There is a lot of valid simple to complex questions about our Christian faith that need to be answered. It’s time to study and to show ourselves approved – it’s time to speak and defend our faith in meekness. I am inspired by great Christian Apologists like Ravi Zacharias, Prof. John Lennox, Hugh Ross, etc. They took the lead in making way in hostile environments.

ORIGIN, MEANING, MORALITY AND DESTINY

There is a lot of information about COVID-19 from published to unpublished manuscripts and about 6000 religions, which are mostly grouped into 5 major WORLDVIEWS. According to the American Scientific Affiliation, worldview is how one perceives the world as he/she as a fiddle.  A worldview is a mental model of reality — a comprehensive framework of ideas & attitudes about the world; ourselves and life;  a system of beliefs;  a system of personally customized theories about the world and how it works — with answers for a wide range of questions.
John Schwarz identified Naturalism (Atheism, Agnosticism, Existentialism), Theism (Christianity, Islam, Judaism), Pantheism (Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, etc), Polytheism and Postmodernism as the 5 worldviews. Every worldview must give answers to Ravi Zacharias’ framework based, where one comes from as human (Origin), the meaning of life, how do we distinguish between good and evil or how do we define good and evil? Where do we go from here?
Christian Worldview has by far the only worldview that provides adequate answers that pass the 3 tests for truth and the answers it provides correspond to reality, and when put together provides coherence. Is there an incompatibility between Science and Faith in God? Some non-believers of God claim science and God are not compatible – that is really a laughable claim. I see a good number of people find a problem with Christians praying amidst the COVID-19 scare and in fact, some have gone to the extent of criticizing our President (Ghana), for calling a prayer meeting first at the Jubilee House. Secondly, calling a nationwide prayer & fasting. They claim whilst other nations are looking for scientific solutions we are praying as if it’s an either-or situation.

Louis Pasteur who described the principles of vaccination was a Christian and believed in prayers. Christianity is not against science and science is not against Christianity. It’s a war of WORLDVIEWS. Naturalism (Atheism) on one side and Theism (Christianity) on the other side. That is the real war. Why do I say that? There are scientists on both sides of the divide, Christian scientists and atheist scientists. There are Christian Nobel prize winners and there are Atheists Nobel prize winners and for each of these – especially the Christian ones – their belief in God has not prevented them from discovering new stuff. In fact, there are so many scientists past and present who are believers of God. From the earliest days to the present now. Let me present to you just a few;

Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543): Heliocentric system (The sun is stationary).
Francis Bacon (1561-1629): Scientific method.
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630): Laws of planetary motion.
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642): Father of modern science, Telescope.
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662): hydrostatics, Pascal principle of Pressure.
Isaac Newton (1643-1727): Gravity, Newton’s laws of motion.
Robert Boyle (1627-1691): Father of modern chemistry, Boyle’s laws.
Michael Faraday (1791-1867): Faraday’s constant.
Gregor Mendel (1822-1884): father of genetics.
William Thomson Kevin (1824-1907): Temperature, Kelvin scale.
Max Planck (1918-1947): Planck’s constant.
Louis Pasteur (1822-1895): Principles of vaccination, germ theory.
Carl Linnaeus: (1707-1778): Father of taxonomy, binomial nomenclature.

The above list is not exhaustive though, there is still a lot to add more especially those within our century as well. We should all, therefore, agree with the Italian Prime Minister to call on God to stand in the gap for calmness to be restored.

Author:
Peter Ansah Boaitey
University of Gothenburg – Sweden.
School of Public Health and Community Medicine.