The great debate between Ken Ham and Bill Nye attracted huge attention. It also presented a false dichotomy.
By focusing on silly questions like the precise accuracy of the Bible's account of Noah's ark, it conveyed the idea that faith and science are at odds. God is pro-creation. Science is pro-evolution.
Perhaps it is time to look at a new way of thinking. Perhaps we have been asking the wrong questions. God and science are not opposites. Perhaps God uses science as a means of creating and sustaining human life.
The most articulate representative of this school of thought is Frances Collins, the former head of the Human Genome Project and an evangelical Christian.
How God Creates
Dr. Collins wrote an astounding book about DNA called The Language of God. Collins argues that biology does not undermine God. It illustrates God's creative powers because it shows God implanted within nature a way to evolve.
In other words, faith and science are not at odds. They depend on one another. Each reveals the other's power.
Of course some scientists would argue against this view. How can one prove a supernatural creator implanted the ability to evolve within organisms? Yet, they would have great difficulty finding a counter-argument to it. The beginnings of life remain shrouded in mystery, and will remain so.
As Max Planck, one of the twentieth century's most celebrated scientists put it, "Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve."
A Psalm Praising Nature
As scientists have learned more about evolution, they have also recognized a truth the Bible described long ago. Creation is vast and almost infinitely diverse.
Consider, for example, that earth contains 40,000 types of beetles! The Bible celebrates this diversity in the Book of Psalms, where we read,
How manifold are your works, O God.
You have made them all in wisdom.
The earth is full of your creatures. There is the sea, vast and wide.
There the creeping things beyond count, Living things great and small." (104:24-45)
As we learn more about the world, we are uncovering the vastness God implanted within it. Even more astonishing, this diversity shares a common source. Every organism shares the same genetic code. To use a literary metaphor, we are all part of one dictionary.
As science writer Matt Ridley put it, "Wherever you go in the world, whatever animal, plant, bug or blob you look at, if it is alive, it will use the same dictionary and know the same code. All life is one... This means -- and religious people might find this a useful argument -- that there was only one creation, one single event when life was born."
The Fingerprints of God
The final area of convergence is language. Language is not simply the words we speak. It is a series of symbols used to structure reality. Recall how Dr. Collins entitled his book The Language of God. That language, in Collins metaphor, is DNA.
DNA are strings of letters array in different orders. The arrangement of the letters creates life. Is it coincidental that God's creation of the world begins with the words, "God said 'Let there be light, and there was light?"
To continue this metaphor, we can understand creation as a result of different permutations of letters. We call these letters DNA, and they are really the building blocks of life.
Science may not prove God to everybody. Yet, the more we learn, the more we can grow in our awe and amazement at the beauty of God's creation.