Bible VS Science

Dr. Saneesh Cherian

           There is a common notion among the educated people that the Bible contains numerous scientific errors. Because of this, many Bible-believing people have tried to compartmentalize the whole outlook. They say that there is a "Scientific truth" believed by the Christians. We have reasons to maintain that such a split-belief leads one to error both in science and in theology.

The best view on the Bible and science has to be an integrated whole, not a split picture. For developing such an approach we must start with a right view of science as well as the Bible.

Science is a collection of facts and interpretations of varying degrees of reliability. They can be classified into two groups: the unquestionable "facts and laws of science" and the fully questionable "theories of science". Out of these two, only the "facts of science" have permanence, so only they should be used for a legitimate examination of any Biblical passage. A theory should be allowed to mature till it becomes an established law of science before it can be used to question the Bible.

The Bible is the inspired word of God. Its primary purpose is spiritual, so it should not be looked upon as we look upon a textbook of science. However, since God is all-knowing, He cannot err when He pronounces something. Hence, when the Bible is interpreted properly (taking attention of common usages and grammar, etc.) then it will show no conflict with the fully established facts and laws of the science.

Though the Bible is not meant to be a textbook of science, yet it comments upon topics related to many branches of the natural science. Whenever such a comment is examined under the pertinent facts and laws of the Bible, the conflicts generally resolve. If anything is not fully settled, it is generally due to incomplete understanding of either science or the Bible, or both. The history of Christian apologists provides numerous such examples where further understanding of either the science or the Bible has helped us to settle the seeming conflict. This has happened more often with the science rather than the Bible i.e. more conflicts were solved with the development of scientific understanding in comparison to the development of Biblical understanding.

Psalm 19 is an example of the above statement. In verse six the psalmist seems to say that the sun is a moving object which travels from one end of the sky to the other. Many people used to point out this verse saying that here is a contradiction. They claimed that since we know that the "rising" of the sun is in the east and its "setting" in the west are effects produced by the  earth's rotation about its axis (and not due to the East-West motion of the sun), the passage under consideration is an error.

A closer examination of the passage will reveal that it does not say anything about the east-west motion presumed by the critics. It only says that the sun moved from one end to the other of the earth.  Now, this is a fact of science that the sun is indeed moving through the heavens at tremendous speed about the center of our galaxy. So there is no conflict with the facts when the Bible says that the sun is running across the skies.