Has Science Killed God?
Graham Tomlin has a good entry on Science and Faith. Alister McGrath was giving an annual lecture at St. Paul’s Theological Center entitled: Has Science Killed God? Richard Dawkins and the Meaning of Life. They are planning on making the lecture available through the SPTC website, in both audio and video format.
From my understanding, the problem with science is a bit more subtle than the one for which most seem to give it credit. The problem, for me, lies in the eschatology of it. If you go back to the history of the rise of modern science, it truly had hopes for coming to “know everything”, therefore “control everything”, and in the END “make everything better” (this is the tekton, and the dynamics between modern science and modern technology). This is a very different vision from the one given in Revelations! In that sense science then becomes, and has become, an idol.
I think it seems obvious, however, that science doesn’t necessarily prove or disprove the “existence of God”, even though some of its statements/substance may seem to claim otherwise. I do think that as soon as we take on the mask of the scientist, because of the discussion above, and because of the SYSTEM into which we are then automatically thrust, the order of the cosmos is immediately thrown out of wack. The whole framework from which modern science sees the world attempts to put man in the PLACE of God. The basic essence of modern science belongs to the basic essence of sin; the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil was in the CENTER of the Garden. God belongs in the center, and man has wanted to dis-place Him ever since “the fall”.
This is why it seems out of order to me to discuss whether or not science “kills” God. Becomes sort of a, for me, dumb discussion that distracts from the real problem. Of course you can’t kill God! To argue whether science kills God is to submit to the scientists and address them on their turf. It was the modern scientists and not the church, for example, who attempted to separate faith and reason in order to further their own purposes (to with “reason” come to know everything, by which we can control everything, and then “fix” everything – “God, please take away all of my problems!”). Eventually somehow the church ended up arguing with itself about the issue that was raised by a foreign spy in the first place. Meanwhile the spy is smiling slyly!