This video by Tim Barnett highlights some crucial points about the relationship between science and Christianity. Many of the founders of modern science actually became scientists because they expected nature to be orderly and intelligible, as the result of its creation by an orderly, intelligent creator. Despite what many people say today, Christianity and science are not competing explanations for the natural world, but rather, belief in God fueled the curiosity about the world that became modern scientific inquiry.
Oxford mathematician and philosopher of science John Lennox makes a similar point about the relationship between science and belief in God. He suggests that in the same way the law of internal combustion and Henry Ford are not competing explanations for a Ford motor car engine, God and science are not competing explanations for the universe. They are fundamentally different kinds of explanations that, when put together, offer a more complete picture of reality.
If God were not behind the universe, we would have no reason to expect nature to be orderly or intelligible, but if God is behind the universe, science can justifiably be called, as Johannes Kepler called it, “…thinking God’s thoughts after him.” God is the reason science is possible in the first place, not a gap-filler that Christians use to explain things we don’t understand.
Tim says:
“God was the inspiration for their science, not a hindrance to it. Christianity and belief in God are not science stoppers. In fact, they were the modern science starters.”