You glance at your dog. She looks back. You wonder, “What is it like to be born in a canine body, with that nose, those paws, and that evolutionary history?” She licks your hand and wonders: “Car? Fetch? Belly rub? Scooby Snack?”
The Gaps in Nature
Modern science is offended by gaps in Nature. Like the Dutch boy with his finger in the dike, scientists seek to plug all the gaps: from empty zilch to a universe, chemicals to protozoans, cells to organisms, hounds to humans. But the Book of Genesis claims it’s no mere gap between you and your pup, chimp, or bottlenose dolphin. It’s a deep chasm:
Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ (1:26)
Being made in the image of God means we reflect Him in our reason, language, creation, and the tending of things that can (I have argued) be called “cultivating.” And it also implies intellectual curiosity.
Socrates said “your dog is the true philosopher,” because he properly distinguishes between a stranger, at whom he barks, and an acquaintance, for whom he wags his tail. But a dog’s curiosity will have it sniffing for a pancake under a table. Socrates’ restless questioning about practically everything got him in trouble with the people of Athens.
Atheists often complain that “religious people” denigrate reason. To doubt Darwin is to be “anti-science.” Many suppose that the word “faith” for Christians mean “believing without evidence.” What could be more anti-science than that?
Science and Christian Theology
Yet modern science arose in countries deeply influenced by the Bible. Early scientists like Bacon, Buridan, Kepler, Boyle, and Newton, were often deeply pious believers. They claimed God had revealed Himself through the books of both Scripture and Nature.
Historians often trace the resurgence of science to Christian theology, much of it found in the Book of Genesis, as we have seen. Genesis says creation is “good.” God created by Wisdom, thus giving us the tool for studying his Creation. Twice that famous early cheerleader of science, Francis Bacon, quoted Proverbs, “It is the glory of God to hide a thing, and the glory of the king to find it out.” Adam and Eve were told to labor in the garden, and working with one’s hands has been described as a prerequisite for discovery.
It adds up to a view of reality unique to Christianity. It is why many historians have connected the rise of science with the maturing of Christian theology in the Middle Ages.
Scientists should not object even to “signs and wonders” in the Bible, even less than your dog should lose faith in you because you disappear and don’t come back till evening, to earn her chow and yours. For Christian miracles also reflect the Mind of a Maker, working for once out of sight, but rationally, not arbitrarily, and for our good.
Blaise Pascal, one of the greatest early scientists, pointed out that just those mental capabilities that allow us to do science, set us apart from other created things (like Fido). Even existential worry is a clue to our unique status:
Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him: a vapor, a drop of water is enough to kill him. But even if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than his slayer, because he knows that he is dying and the advantage the universe has over him.
The hard-core skeptic Richard Carrier, who wrote his doctoral dissertation at Columbia on the history of Greco-Roman science, said pre-Christian Greek thinkers were “motivated to pursue scientific inquiry” by their pious belief in “a Creator who had intelligently ordered the cosmos.” Whether all Greeks thinkers saw the cosmos that way is open to question, but the point remains: The pursuit of science is not at all divorced from belief in God.
A Love of Reason
Love of reason permeates the Judeo-Christian Bible. Jesus called his followers to think more clearly, to examine the Scriptures. He drew their attention to plants and meteorological phenomena. In the Acts of the Apostles, His followers “debate,” “baffle,” “speak persuasively,” and “vigorously refute” opponents.
The New Testament has many cords tying “faith” to “reason”: setting Jesus’ life in historical context, recording his debates with opponents, describing supernatural signs, but also honestly depicting moments we have to wonder about thoughtfully in the life of the Son of God: his sorrows and fears, and the cases when he asked “Who touched me?” or “Who made me judge?”
The authors of the gospels also honestly set down harsh criticism of their Master: “Madman!” “Blasphemy!” “The man is demon-possessed!” As a scholar of religions I can tell you, people who make up messiahs don’t make them up like that!
“That Was Its Name”
Furthermore, Genesis tells us that God appointed Adam to the first Chair of Biological Sciences:
Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. (2:19-20)
To name a thing means to recognize its character. In J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, the Ent (shepherd of trees) named Treebeard told the hobbits Pippin and Merry:
Real names tell you the story of the things they belong to in my language, in the Old Entish as you might say. It is a lovely language, but it takes a very long time to say anything in it, because we do not say anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time to say, and to listen to.
God spoke Creation into being, whether “hastily” like hobbits, or slowly like Ents. The actions of an object describe its character and thus its full “name.” So telling stories, whether of Peter and the Rabbit, or of Pre-Cambrian creatures from the Burgess Shale, is part of our calling as rational, verbal, creative beings, made in the image of God, and called to rule.
Naming is tantamount to classifying. How can one tell frog from toad, or shark from dolphin, without observing the traits that distinguish them? So by instructing Adam to name the animals, God in effect called into being the vast enterprise of the biological sciences.
Zoologists are still tracking down the last mammal species. We have only just begun with insects: The present estimate seems to be between from one to two million or so species of beetle! And ten million species of bacteria? Or is it a billion? No one knows. Adam and Eve still have their work cut out, even with disciples in every major university, and all the machinery of modern science.
Scientists From the Beginning
The sciences may grow corrupt and even threaten our existence. At their best, though, scientists do work which God assigned us humans “in the beginning.” The evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson, traveling the planet describing species of ants from Florida to New Guinea, could have made “Adam named the animals” his life verse (along with Proverbs 6:6: “Study the ant, thou sluggard!”). Even the dedicated naturalists at National Geographic work around the clock to obey this old biblical command.
Christians and even unbelieving scientists can find room for friendship in this. In different ways, we worship the Creator, who set “endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful” (as Darwin put it) into the patterns of waters, rocks, and living creatures. And we were called from the beginning to name and therefore describe those forms.
Please apologize to your dog, wagging her tail as you finish this essay and turn back to her. Human language might seem as long-winded as Entish to her. There comes a time to stop reflecting on the order of our making, and toss the ball, already. For as we will see next, Genesis also instructs us to take a break from our studies.
David Marshall, an educator and writer, has a doctoral degree in Christian thought and Chinese tradition. His most recent book is The Case for Aslan: Evidence for Jesus in the Land of Narnia.