None of the articles of faith that a Christian must accept can be tested by empirical experiment or theoretical proof. On the face of it, the Christian faith doesn’t even overlap with science, so there cannot be a conflict.
That leaves out the shaky “social sciences,” which almost never prove anything and rest on ideological assumptions, and the so-called human sciences such as history-which are really liberal arts dressed up in white lab coats. Please note that I am using here the contemporary definition of “science,” which covers only fields where hypotheses can be tested by empirical experiment, such as chemistry, or theoretical proofs, such as physics. Leaving aside the vague impressions that linger in your mind from old, biased history books and Monty Python sketches, what would faith possibly have to fear from science? Let’s examine the assertion that Christian faith is incompatible with science. Alas, many Protestants fell for that tactic, and uncritically accepted frankly false notions of history-not realizing that the pig they’d bought in a poke would lead them snuffling straight to secularism.
As Baylor sociologist Rodney Stark (among others) has shown, there is precious little truth in those stereotypes, which were mostly warmed-over lies left lying around from the “Enlightenment”-a complex movement whose loudest and most successful self-publicists (such Voltaire and Diderot) were radically anti-Christian.īut most of these self-proclaimed “ philosophes” (e.g., wise guys) knew they couldn’t admit what they really thought about Christianity in general, so they focused on speaking ill of the Catholic Church in particular, counting on hard feelings left over from the Reformation to convince Protestant readers that their beef wasn’t with Jesus or the Bible-just with the papacy. For centuries in English-speaking countries, mainstream history and science textbooks have taken it for granted that the Catholic Church was one of greatest single forces that kept the “Dark Ages” dark, by suppressing free inquiry, persecuting innovators, and keeping books out of the hands of ordinary people.
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