There seems to be a big debate lately about God and Science… and God seems to be losing. There is a huge anti-God backlash in America which is led primarily by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Pharyngula. As a Christian, you would think I would be really upset about it, but I’m not. I think it is really healthy for Christian beliefs to be challenged. The church seems to only thrive when it isn’t complacent.

However, I strongly disagree about how both parties are conducting themselves. It seems that these “debates” often escalate to the point of personal attacks. Although we are dealing with a volatile subject, I don’t see any need to resort to this kind of behavior.

I think the root of the problem is the lack of respect for the opposition. I think the first misconception is that Religion and Science can’t co-exist. The Christian view of science has been skewed for a very long time. I do not agree with creationism, intelligent design, or any other pseudo-science. I am not saying that God is “incapable” of creating the universe in this manner. However, we are not given any evidence that this is actually how the universe was created. Although many people would disagree with me, the truth is that there are no scientific journals publishing articles supporting creationism or intelligent design. This isn’t because scientists are ignoring the evidence towards creationism or intelligent design, either intentionally or unintentionally, but rather because there is indeed no evidence supporting these world-views.

However, after saying that, I don’t believe that Evolution somehow disproves God’s existence. If you are a reductionist, I can see how you make that conclusion. However, I don’t believe truth can be reduced to the scientific method. There are very convincing arguments against reductionism and I don’t believe a person should be deemed “irrational” if they aren’t a reductionist.

If we could get past seeing our opposition as “irrational” or “evil”, I think we could have more fruitful discussions. The goal of these debates shouldn’t be to smite our opposition, but rather to learn something about the world and ourselves.