The success of modern natural sciences has convinced many people that science is the only reliable path to truth. Today, most people accept the myth that science and faith have always been at odds, and that the more we learn about science, the less we need faith or “God”.
This is verifiably not true for the early scientists. Newton, Keppler, Copernicus, Galileo, Boyle and many others were all professing Christians. They all firmly believed that the reason for working to understand nature was to understand nature’s Creator. Sir Isaac Newton is considered the founder of modern science. He believed that one of the goals of science was to develop convincing arguments for the existence of God and to demonstrate how God is reflected in his Creation.
“This most beautiful System of the Sun, Planets, and Comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being.”
Sir Isaac Newton, Introduction to The Principia
There’s no conflict between faith and the accepted tenets of physics, chemistry, or even most of biology. Faith only conflicts with biology in the areas of the Origin of Life and evolution, and with good reason. Evolutionists claim that life is just an accident, and that science will eventually demonstrate that an unguided physical process can account for life and biological complexity. In their minds, no Creator is needed.
We’re fortunate to live at a time when science is revealing a Creator in ways earlier generations could never have imagined. We can’t avoid the necessity of a Designer when we encounter the molecular machines that animate cells, the information in DNA, the irreducible complexity of the Krebs cycle, or the functional coherence of all living things.
Many leading scientists still cling to the evolution paradigm, but only because of intellectual inertia. Scientific discoveries over the past 30 or more years have consistently supported the necessity of a Designer. Life couldn’t have started by accident.
Skeptics and unbelievers especially like to take issue with the opening chapter of Genesis, claiming it doesn’t align with science. As the Creator of the universe, God’s knowledge of science is way beyond what humans will ever achieve. But God never intended the Bible to be a science textbook. The purpose of Genesis isn’t to explain to us how God created but why God created. At the same time, it is true to reality, so it doesn’t contradict valid science.
There’s a good analysis of the first chapter of Genesis in chapter 16 of “God’s Grandeur: The Catholic Case for Intelligent Design”. It’s a good illustration of what God wanted to communicate to us and shows us again that God’s thoughts are higher than ours.
“Obviously, Genesis 1:1 to 2:4, the account of the seven days of Creation, is foundational to all subsequent biblical texts on creation and the relationship between God and the material world.
The ancient sacred author, in images and language appropriate to the literary culture of his day, communicates through the account of the seven days of Creation that God’s process of Creation unfolded logically toward the predetermined end of worship.
After the initial act of Creation, simply described as God’s “[creating] the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1), we read that the initial Creation suffered from two major privations: “The earth was formless (Heb. tōhû) and empty (Heb. bōhû).” The Hebrew phrase used here, tōhû wa-bōhû, occurs once more in Scripture, where it is used to describe a region without order or inhabitant, an “empty wasteland” or “barren wilderness” (Jeremiah 4:23).
If we understand tōhû as “formless” and bōhû as “empty,” these two privations can be strongly correlated with the pattern of God’s creative activity over the six days. In the first three days, God addresses the problem of formlessness by giving form to the cosmos. On day one, God institutes the form of time, by creating the light and the dark and the alternation of the two that marks the passing of time, allowing the creative process now to be marked by days: “There was evening and there was morning, day one” (v. 5). On day two, God institutes the form of space, by creating what were, to the ancients, the great spaces: sea and sky. On day three, God creates the form of habitat, a livable space identified as the dry land, complete with vegetation to serve as food.
At the end of the three days, there are the forms of time, space, and habitat, but as yet no inhabitants. So God returns to each of these three domains and fills them. On day four, God populates the domain of time with the heavenly bodies: the sun and the moon and the stars. The Creation of the heavenly bodies comes with an extensive purpose clause: “Let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth” (vv. 14–15). God’s creative activity is not random or trivial, but driven by intentionality, purpose.
On day five, the great spaces are filled with the fish and the fowl. On day six, God fills the habitat — the dry land and its vegetation — with animals and human beings.
The concluding day seven is not an afterthought, but as Thomas Aquinas (following a general principle set forth by Aristotle) insisted, what is last in execution is first in intention. That is, the seventh day represents the telos toward which all was building. And what is the seventh day? It is the Sabbath, the holy day, the day of rest and worship.
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Rest creates the condition necessary for worship, and worship should be understood as the formal act of communion between God and his creatures. Thus, the whole creation was ordered, in a rational and methodical way, toward obtaining the conditions necessary for the communion of persons: specifically, the communion of God with his image-bearer “Adam”, the human race, including male and female (Genesis 1:26–28), an image-bearer who shares in the animal and mineral nature of the rest of creation and thus is able to represent the whole of creation in worship.”
Dr. John S. Bergsma, “Design in Scripture”, from chapter 16 of God’s Grandeur: The Catholic Case for Intelligent Design
In this view, God’s creation was purposeful, always with the needs of humankind in mind. First, living beings would require matter, so God created it in the form of the heavens and the earth. We would need time, as an organizer for our lives, and spaces to live, so God created time, in the form of days and nights, then spaces; the seas, sky, and dry land. Over the next three days, God populated the empty habitats with timekeepers, then with life, culminating with mankind. And on day seven we see God’s purpose: mankind would be able to connect with him. These are the ideas God wanted to bring to us through the Genesis creation account.
As the endpoint of creation, mankind was always God’s reason for creating the world. And God said it was not just “good”, but “very good”.