I want to start by asking a question. Will the sun rise tomorrow morning? Think about it and we’ll come back to it later.
I would like to consider two things: What is ‘FAITH’ and what does the word to ‘KNOW’’ mean.
Faith is trusting in someone or something over a situation which could be serious or even life threatening. This sort of faith is not necessarily a Christian faith as it’s part of everyday life. When you go to the supermarket to buy food, or go to see a doctor, or have a car serviced you are exercising faith that whatever service they have provided will not harm you or others.
There are five different meanings of the word to ‘KNOW’’. You can know OF something, you can know ABOUT something, you can know a PERSON through a relationship, or you can know something through an EXPERIENCE. The last example is different. If something happens over and over again, we might be inclined to assume it will happen again in the future. This is where we go back to the first question about the sun rising tomorrow morning. We will assume it will rise again tomorrow, even though it has not happened yet and we have not seen it. The meaning of the word to know here is knowing by FAITH. So, we say yes, the sun will rise again tomorrow based on past evidence. The same is true for science as we believe that all the scientific laws that we rely upon today will work tomorrow, even when we haven’t seen the evidence for this.
So, God and science are similar in that they don’t change with timebecause God’s nature is embedded in what He has made. If faith did not exist as a general idea, then science would not exist either. In fact, FAITH precedes science. So, having a Christian faith and accepting scientific laws are bonded together as they both depend on FAITH. So, it is possible to have a faith in God and accept science if you have the FAITH to believe.
An After thought:
When scientists today talk about how the universe and the world came into being they give the impression that they KNOW how it took place. Their enthusiasm and commitment suggests the particular KNOW they use is the 4th type of knowing. This one is based on experience. However, they were not there when it took place. They have assumed that the laws and principles they are relying on to make certain deductions existed all those years ago and did the same thing then as they do today. So, really what they are saying is they believe that is what took place. They don’t actually know.