Evidence for biblical events in scientific research and archaeology

¶ … Science and Christianity

Introduction common factor linking science and Christians in the debate about the existence of God, a hereafter - which is the Promise of God - and the history of Christians contained in the Bible is evidence. Both sides ask: is there evidence that science is wrong about evolution, creation, and that the Bible is right. Science, the professionals agree, and the Christians point out, is built upon models of "what if," in many cases. Most of the what if models were built around those questions that, if solved, and when solved, do more to link science and faith than to divide them in a decided way. For all the posturing about the accuracy of math and numbers being the only reliable evidence about anything in the universe, the revealing discoveries about ourselves as humans from a science approach, has often been proved wrong. The bold statement of scientists early in the argument, wherein they perhaps smiled mischievously and said, "Prove it," is no longer said with the smile or the conviction with which the two words were once uttered across the debate table to the Christians. For many of the events described in the Bible, which are significant events in the lives of Christians, science has proven did occur, or demonstrated how those events, including the parting of the Red Sea, could have occurred. Recent hypothesis and archeological ruins uncovered in recent decades, link science and faith in an almost inextricable way.

This paper is going to examine the connection between science and Christianity. Regardless of the position one wishes to take, be it science or faith, the examination of the hypotheses and evidence is intriguing and interesting.

Science and Christian Theories

Four thousands years ago, in the land of Canan, monotheism emerged as the Jewish tradition. Judaism was the first monotheistic religion. Since that time, science and faith have collided in their respective efforts to make sense of the beginning of the world, humanity, evolution, and things life on the planet. The Theory Intelligent Design, simplified, holds that the creation of the earth, its ability to sustain animal and human life, functions like an impeccably designed machine, an engine. In this way, it cannot have been the product of chaos, or, as science holds, the Big Bang Theory. When we think about this theory in terms of what science cannot explain about the world in which we live, then it becomes tempting, if not easy, to agree with intelligent design. William Dembski wrote that contemporary science no longer must explain the past in terms of the enlightenment; rather, science must reconcile religion in terms of a failed enlightenment (Dembski, William, 1960, 12-14). As the comparison is made to the science argument, the Big Bang Theory will for some be less tempting and less easy to agree with.

The Big Bang Theory is based on decades of studying the universe. It is a study that must be approached with caution. The tremendous volumes of data that have been collected over the past two decades alone will take decades more to fully analyze it. Philip M. Dauber and Richard a. Muller (1996) says that the violence of the Big Bang that brought about the creation of the universe and our planet was intensely vicious, far exceeding any violence man has ever committed against man (p. 2). We lack the vocabulary to define and describe it, so we settle for the simplest description, which at the same time helps to create the sense of the event, and it is the Big Bang Theory (p. 2). From the first Big Bang, the universe was created (p. 3). Out of the chaos of that most violent event, the planets formed, and then, two subsequent and violent events on a lesser scale than the first, and the planet Earth was chemically balanced with the elements to evolve and sustain human life.

William Dembski (1960) says that intelligent design is the bridge between science and religion (p. 14). As the body of archeological evidence is uncovered in the search for the past and the beginning of mankind, so, too, is uncovered the evidence that has lessened the gap between religion and science. There is a noticeable change in the attitude of science and religion. Both sides of the argument are less adamant in refuting the other today, and with good reason, too. Science continues to be the investigator that disproves itself, and religion waits patiently to take the glory away from the science each time a new archeological or biological study proves a religious myth no longer to be a myth.

The Religion of DNA

One of the most prominent statements of Biblical creation is, Genesis 1:27, "And God created man to his own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them." Recent work on decoding the human genome led to a religiously significant discovery that has since become known as the theory of the "mitochondrial Eve (Witham, Larry a., 2002, 89)."

Mitochondria is a genetic tracer that in 1987, using research that was not in a preliminary stage, experts on both side of the evolution argument ran with that the ancestor of mankind was traceable to a 2000-year-old woman in Africa (Witham, 89). While main stream scientists were reticent about engaging in discussions which might suggest that scientific evidence existed that would call into question evolution, the concept nonetheless came up in science circles again.

This is the specialized world of those who track the genetic timetable backward from the present. It presumes a steady rate of genetic mixing and then calculates mathematically from the modern diversity of human DNA back to its simpler forms in the past. The theory of the mitochondrial Eve was proposed again in 1991 by biochemist Allan Wilson, who "turned back the clock" by using a specialized computer program to study multiracial DNA samples of mitochondria (specialized cell structures that have their own DNA), nearly always inherited from mothers (Witham, 89)."

While some religious leaders simplified the science, saying that it was evidence of creation because it takes mankind back to Eve; the science is not that simple. A Spanish American immigrant who had pioneered work in DNA at the same time that Allan Wilson was discussing his "turned back clock," Francisco Ayala's research actually took the mitochondrial connection back further even than the Biblical Eve (Witham, 89).

That [immune] molecule existed sixty million years ago," he says, "about when the dinosaurs became extinct, before the origination of modern monkeys, let alone humans." By 2001, in fact, Ayala was publishing studies that questioned "whether there is a molecular clock at all," since he found proteins that "evolve erratically," some fast and some slow, despite the neutrality theory that molecules evolve at an even pace -- and thus can pinpoint past branching of organisms (Witham, 89)."

Ayala moves the discussion of the "mitochondrial Eve" back into the realm of science. The challenge from Christianity, however, can counter with a plausible explanation of how the mitochondrial Eve can be older than the Old Testament Eve, and still be the "Christian Eve." James Hope Moulton (1917), in his book, the Treasure of the Magi: A Study of Modern Zoroastrianism, takes the discussion on Christianity back to Persia, and the pre-written word time of the monotheistic Zoroastrians, which some religious historians suggest is the precursor to Christianity.

NINETEEN hundred years ago... Far away in Media, it may be, as they watched the skies for tokens of the future which they believed to be written therein, they had seen a star their practised eyes discerned to be new. It was the Angel of some Great One newly born. In visions of the night it was expounded to them that they should seek a King in Jerusalem and offer treasure in worship. Directed thence by the interpreters of prophecy, they set forth on the south road when the night fell; and the Star rose as they started, and moved to its low culmination, so that as they drew near to the hill on which was the City of David they saw it hang like a golden lamp over the place where their Saoshyant, the 'Future Saviour', lay (Moulton, 2)."

The Magi were Zoroastrians, out of Persia, and their monotheistic faith pre-dates Christianity. As we can see from Moulton's description above, the Magi believed that the birth of their Savior was foretold to them, and they traveled to offer gifts at the feet of the one that they recognized as their King; that was the Christ child. Here, for science, is a connection to Christianity that takes the idea of a mitochondrial Eve back before Judaism, since Zoroastrianism pre-dates even the Jewish Tradition, although it does not have a written book as do the three "book" religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

THE traditional date the Zoroastrians assign to their Prophet is '258 years before Alexander', and for the Persian or Iranian the name ' Alexander' can only have meant the sack of Persepolis, the extinction of the Achaemenian Empire, and the death of the last of the kings of kings, Darius III. This occurred in 330 BC, and Zoroaster's date would then be 588 BC, and this date we may take to refer to the initial success of his prophetic mission which consisted in the conversion of King Visht-spa when Zoroaster was forty years old. Since he is traditionally said to have lived seventy-seven years, we will not be far wrong in dating him at 628-551 BC. It seems also to be generally agreed that the Prophet's sphere of operation in which his message was proclaimed was ancient Chorasmia -- an area comprising, perhaps, what is now Persian Khorasan, Western Afghanistan, and the Turkmen Republic of the U.S.S.R. (Zaehner, R.C., 1961, 33)."

Ayala's science takes the mitochondrial Eve back even before what we know about Zoroastrianism, but we really have no accurate date of the monotheistic tradition as it arises out of Zoroastrianism, because there are no written artifacts that support its origins as going back further than 628-551 BC. This means, if we are going on a purely evidence basis as it relates to mitochondria, that science must be credited with taking the mitochondrial Eve to a historical marker that could suggest an evolutionary connection as opposed to a creation connection. Until there is more "science" to explain the mitochondrial Eve, it remains a mystery to be explained by either side of the argument; but it also remains a connection, or a bridge, between science and Christianity.

Cosmic Evidence of Intelligent Design

Neil Shanks (2004) writes that the standby arguments for and against intelligent design are absurd when made along the lines of statements like:

There aren't any intermediate fossils" and ignorant absurdities like "Evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics (Shanks, vii)."

Shanks examined the facts for and against the arguments of intelligent design in the cosmos. Shanks discounts any kind of biological evidence connecting the intelligent design to the genetic arguments that some people claim support the theory (Shanks, 191). Shanks cites Dembski in what Shanks describes as a poor argument in favor of intelligent design, saying that Dembski and others have chosen not to take the evidential high road (Shanks, 225).

The problem with Shanks is that he is fanatical in his defense of science, and researchers Barbara Forrest and Paul Gross (2004) say that fanaticism, religious, political, or cultural is the nemesis to research and discovery new truths. Forrest and Gross, unlike Shanks, remain opening minded, do not discount that which could be the reality that science might itself one day be the proof that supports creation and intelligent design.

If we look at where life is in the universe, the only place that we are sure of is the planet Earth. If there is life elsewhere, it is a distance so far from earth that the life form's communication processes and modes are beyond man's understanding and reach. Reaching for intelligent design to explore and explain it, the hypothesis is that if life on earth came out of the chaos of the Big Bang, then where is the rest of the life or other earth-like planets? Should not earth-like planets and other life - even if it is life that is not familiar to humans - be elsewhere in the relatively close universe? Intelligent designs answers the question of why we appear to be alone in the universe.

Intelligent design suggests that those whom God created in His image are one of a kind.

The fact that Earth remains the only planet known to mankind where there is life, supports the theory of intelligent design. If the Big Bang theory explained the universe, explained the creation of the world in which we live, it would, then, too, ostensibly explain why there is not life elsewhere in the universe, or even our own galaxy. To suggest that the planet Earth is one of a kind of formation out of the chaos of the most violent explosion that can be imagined is absurd. If the Big Bang was an action through which a planet such as Earth came to be, even if Earth was at first an environmentally hostile planet; then to suggest that the event did not manifest itself in more than one Earth-like planet that could eventually sustain life, is not good science. For this reason, the existence of the cosmos without life as we know it or understand existing elsewhere is the cosmos argument in favor of intelligent design. Like the science of evolution, until such a time as it is disproven, it remains for Christians the evidence in support of intelligent design.

Conclusion

Recently, scientists have attempted to recreate in the lab some of the physical conditions that have been described in the Bible in conjunction with major events. As science works to explain some of the natural things that are described, it seems that they are creating a stronger link between Christianity and science. Science does not yet understand the beginning of the universe. They do not have the answers as to how it came about, and that makes it remarkable that even though science cannot prove its own theories anymore than religion can prove its theory of creation, science has a place in the formal education of our young people that religion is not allowed to have at a public education level of teaching the origins of the universe and mankind.

Physicist, Dr. Stephen M. Barr, says that the controversy between religion and science keep both in the forefront of contemporary debate, and, for that reason, they serve one another well. This provides yet another link between Christianity and science. The links between Christianity and science is important to both sides of the debate, but it does not change the lives of Christians whose faith is unquestionable. Nor is the focus of science to prove or even disprove the theology of Christians. One of the most recurring statements that Christians make about their loss of faith, or their lapse in the practice of their faith, is that there is proof, and they would like a sign that their blind faith is not a waste of time (Dembski, William and McDowell, Sean, 2008, 14). Christians become fatigued, might leave the path of their faith because they feel if naturalism is true, then Christianity is false (Dembski and McDowell, 15). If Christianity loses Christians to science, science does not celebrate it, or even acknowledge it; but each time that science creates another link to Christianity, it is celebrated loud and with much ado in order to help those Christians who departed for the lack of proof come back into the Christian fold.

The link between science and Christianity is more important to Christians than it is to science. For Christians whose faith remains unshakable, the scientific links are not necessary to sustain their faith, but it is for them signs from God that their faith is solid as the rock upon which the Church was built upon. Dembski and McDowell write that the most effective way for science to promote naturalism, is to promote Darwinism. Darwin's theory of evolution, which is taught in schools even though it is not proven that the premise upon which Darwinism exists, that all life on earth is descended from a single ancestral life form, and mutation and natural selection is how the life forms evolved differently (Dembski and McDowell, 15). Darwin himself, however, expressed his difficulty accepting a pure science without the hope that can only be found in religious faith. Darwin wrote:

The view now held by most physicists is that the sun with all the planets will in time grow too cold for life unless indeed some great body dashes into the sun and thus give it fresh life... Believing as I do that man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than he is now, it is an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress (Dembski and McDowell, 20)."

Here we find an expression of hope, a looking towards faith, perhaps, that evolution cannot end with the annihilation of the highly evolved human (Dembski and McDowell, 20). Dembski and Colson (2004) say that intelligent design holds only that things, the origins of life and the development of life, is explained by intelligent design in a way that science cannot yet explain these things, and that intelligent design, therefore, makes sense where science, unproven as yet, does not necessarily make sense because it creates those things around a theory that cannot be proven to have existed, or to have happened (Dembski and Colson, 34).

As it remains unproven, science, then, is a link to Christianity that remains unbroken.