Who Really Speaks for Science?

Please consider with me the origins of the universe, and the presence of our God at the beginning and even before.  John 1 says:
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.2He was in the beginning with God.3All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.4In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.
He was there at the very beginning - the Bible teaches that He spoke the world and the entire universe into life.  He created humanity in His own image and breathed into them the breath of life.  He is also the God who has given life to each one of us.  When we consider the heavens and the earth, the beauty of creation and the intricate design of each human being, we can be convinced in our minds that these things did not happen by chance, but were the incredible product of a magnificent Creator God who has called us, who has chosen you, to be in a relationship with Himself.

Hebrews 11 refers to God as the Creator, a powerful starting point as we consider and discuss where we came from:
3By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.

There's a new survey out on what is described by TheWire.com as one "which asked a series of questions on politically controversial scientific inquiries." It is an Associated Press poll, and several prominent scientists who were presented the results by the AP were "depress[ed] and upset" by the findings.

What could cause such consternation? Well, the poll found that people believed smoking causes cancer - not an earthshaking outcome there. Or, how about that who we are is influenced in part by our genetic codes?

No, here's the kicker - a slim majority of Americans aren't so sure about the "Big Bang" theory of the origin of the universe. A slim majority also believed that "there must be a supreme being guiding [the universe's] creation" because of its complexity.

According to the results, just 21 percent of Americans were "extremely" or "very" confident in the Big Bang theory, which posits that our universe was born in a violent expansion about 14 billion years ago. Another 25 percent were "somewhat" confident in the theory, while 51 percent were "not too" or "not at all" confident.

TheWire.com goes on to pontificate:

So we, as a society, seem to strongly agree that "smoking causes cancer," that "a mental illness is a medical condition that affects the brain," that "inside our cells, there is a complex genetic code that helps determine who we are," and that "overusing antibiotics causes the development of drug-resistant bacteria." Although the first fact used to be politically controversial, the rest of these seem to be basic scientific observations about the world that transmit from person to person without very much political baggage. While some religions challenge the above definition of mental illness, there's not really a big policy argument at the national level questioning this scientific conclusion.

It also says, "Then it gets complicated: Just 53 percent of Americans are extremely confident that vaccines are "safe and effective" for children..." And the article states, "... the results get worse for science when you go down the list of science "controversies:" 33 percent of Americans are certain that greenhouse gasses are contributing to a rise in average world temperature (another 28 percent are somewhat confident); and 31 percent are comfortable with evolution (24 percent are "somewhat" OK with it).

"Confidence in evolution, the Big Bang, the age of the Earth and climate change decline sharply as faith in a supreme being rises," the AP writes about the poll's results.  A total of 54 percent of those surveyed were very confident or somewhat confident that a supreme being was guiding its creation.

In a piece on the WORLDmag.com website, Steven Meyer of the Discovery Institute said the results concerning origins shouldn't be surprising. He said: “...I don’t find this surprising, and I think it’s overall evidence of the public’s good horse sense in being able to distinguish ideology from scientific facts and evidence.”

WORLD reports that scientists surveyed by the AP dismissed the public’s skepticism of Darwinian evolution as “scientific ignorance”—facts versus faith. Nobel Prize winning biochemistry professor Robert Lefkowitz of Duke University attributed the poll results to “the force of concerted campaigns to discredit scientific fact,” citing significant interest groups—political, business, and religious—campaigning against scientific truths on vaccines, climate change, and evolution.

Meyer said that view under-represents the real facts being discovered in evolutionary biology.

“Very few leading evolutionary biologists today think that natural selection and random mutation are sufficient to produce the new forms of life we see arising in the history of life,” Meyer said. “And then when the public is catching wind of the scientific doubts of Darwinian evolution and expresses them in a poll like this, these self-appointed spokesmen for science say that the public is ignorant. But actually, the public is more in line with what’s going on in science than these spokesmen for science.”

And, I have to go back to a Gallup poll on origins from just under 2 years ago, where 46 percent of Americans indicated they believed in the creationist view that God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years. The prevalence of this creationist view of the origin of humans is essentially unchanged from 30 years ago, when Gallup first asked the question. About a third of Americans believe that humans evolved, but with God's guidance; 15% say humans evolved, but that God had no part in the process.

So, the takeaway for us is multifaceted.  For one thing, I believe that the evidence shows that there is still a sizable percentage of the population that believes in a theory of origins that is consistent with a Christian worldview - even though people like Bill Nye would want to discredit those that believe in a Creator, it seems that his extreme views are definitely in the minority, and as Meyer says, "the public is more in line with what's going on in science that these spokesmen for science."   This should cause us to be confident in our system of beliefs and not to be intimidated into silence about our belief in the existence of God.

Recognize that a discussion of origins can be a first step in a process of someone coming to faith in Christ.  I am an enthusiastic supporter of intelligent design, and I will have guests regularly on my radio show, including Dr. Meyer, who embrace that perspective.   But, there is a connecting of the dots that has to take place - intelligent design presents compelling evidence of a designer and effectively discredits popular theories, such as Charles Darwin's writing on the origins of species.  It's up to us, as believers in Christ, to provide the Biblical perspective on the identity of that designer - a loving God, who created humanity for fellowship with Himself.  A humanity that fell away from God, but who was being wooed back to Himself throughout the ages, to the point of sending His Son to die so that we might be reconciled to Him. He is God whom we can know, and who expresses Himself through us - our God Who is at work in and through us, and manifesting Himself all around us every single day.