Are there university trained Christian scientists who believe in, support and possibly teach creation – that God created everything; we did not evolve over billions of years? I ask this question due to Mr Nye’s assertion, stated below.
Mr Nye, ‘The Science Guy’ from the United States, stated “The teaching of creationism over evolution could create a generation of youngsters who ‘can’t think’ and ‘will not be able to participate in the future.’ These and other quotes make it clear that these leading evangelists of evolution believe Christians who do not believe in evolution are harmful.
Let’s look at this from a science point of view. Let’s look at the evidence and see what we can conclude about Mr Nye’s assertion. We will do this by looking at some scientists from history to see if they were harmful and ‘could not think’. If these Christian scientists of the past (and present) could think then it is safe to assume young people today who are taught as these scientists were can also think. In essence we prove Mr Nye incorrect by finding example that contradict his assertion.
Let’s begin…
Johannes Kepler was a German mathematician and astronomer living 400 years ago. He discovered Mars has an elliptical orbit around the sun. He invented an improved refracting telescope. He was an advisor to the Roman Emperor and King of Hungary Rudolf II. Mr Kepler believed in the God of the Bible, believing God created the universe about 7,000 years ago. Kepler said: ‘We see how God, like a human architect, approached the founding of the world according to order and rule and measured everything in such a manner’. Kepler further states that God was ‘the kind Creator who brought forth nature out of nothing’. Mr Kepler did great things to advance science. He was respected by his peers. From this one scientist we already have evidence against the claims of Mr Nye. Lets look further.
Isaac Newton (featured image above) is best know for the laws of gravity and inertia. He is credited as being ‘the greatest scientist who ever lived.’ Despite a harsh youth and living through the Black Death plague he graduated university and did research in mathematics, light, telescopes and theology. He developed his theory of universal gravitation. He developed his three laws of motion and proved mathematically that the same laws did, in fact, apply both to the heavens and the earth. While studying the motions of planets and the earth Newton wrote ‘This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent Being.’ On another occasion he stated ‘Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion.’ He was later elected as president of the Royal Society. These appointments and accomplishments clearly indicate his strong Christian values were very acceptable to government and science leaders of his day. Sadly, most remember Newton only for his work in the sciences of mathematics and areas of physics. In fact he wrote far more extensively on God’s Word, than anything else. He has written specifically on a young earth, a literal six-day creation and the evidence for a world wide flood.
Louis Pasteur, famous for the pasteurization process used to make our milk products safe, is another Christian scientist. From France, born in 1822, he studied chemistry to earn a Master’s degree in science.His research resulted in a new branch of science called microbiology, which is a very important area of science today. He stated ‘Microscopic beings must come into the world from parents similar to themselves.’ This discovery was a serious blow to evolution which requires life to come from non-living matter. Pasteur helped French farmers fight disease, including developing a vaccine for rabies. He developed a vaccine for anthrax in 1881. For all his work he as awarded the Legion of Honour, France’s highest award. Some pretty awesome accomplishments for a supposedly harmful Christian who said “The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator.”
William Thompson was the first British scientists to become a Lord, Lord Kelvin. This was for his work on the first transatlantic telegraph cable. He was a physicist and engineer in the late 1800’s. He is remembered for the Kelvin temperature scale but he also formulated the first and second law of thermodynamics. He did research, taught and published papers on the nature of atoms, light, sound wave, and electricity. Lord Kelvin was a committed believer in the God of the Bible. He believed that God created the universe and all within it. He was a contemporary of Charles Darwin and publicly disagreed with the ideas of evolution over a very long period of time.
Another extraordinary scientist is Michael Faraday. He lived in England during the mid 1800s. Faraday discovered the chemical benzene, which has become very useful in the manufacture of compounds like dyes, nylon and plastics. He discovered electromagnetic induction which is the foundation of modern transformers and generators. He is called one of the greatest physicists of all time. He believed in a single Creator of all things. Sadly in the many years since his death a great many minds in science have become biased. They distort nature, developing un-necessary assumptions, to suit their preconceived notions, without realizing it. Science teaches us many great things but, he said “… our science, whilst it shows us these things, should lead us to think of Him who hath wrought them;”
Moving to the 20th century we encounter Wernher von Braun, as well as many, many others. Mr von Braun, originally from Poland eventually moved to the USA . He is the icon of the space age, taking mankind from simple rockets all the way to the moon and back. He worked on Apollo missions, the Space Shuttle program, the Skylab space station and interplanetary unmanned travel.
He was the first director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Centre in Huntsville, Alabama. In a letter to the California School Board regarding their 1972 teaching of only evolution von Braun said “To be forced to believe only one conclusion—that everything in the universe happened by chance-would violate the very objectivity of science itself. Certainly there are those who argue that the universe evolved out of a random process, but what random process could produce the brain of a man or the system of the human eye?” He wrote “I find it … difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality, namely God, behind the existence of the universe”. The evidence of Wernher von Braun’s life speaks for itself again the uninformed statements of Mr Nye.
As a final example we turn to Samuel F.B. Morse, the co-inventor of Morse code and a key person in the setup of the telegraph system in the USA. He lived through most of the 19th century in America. A delay in him being informed of his wife’s illness, of which she died at age 25, motivated him to find a better, faster way of communication. This eventually led to inventing a single wire telegraph. On May 24, 1844 a message was sent between Washington and Baltimore which said “What hath God wrought.” This was chosen in recognition of Mr Morse’s faith in God who guided and inspired him. He stated “The nearer I approach to the end of my pilgrimage, the clearer is the evidence of the divine origin of the Bible, …”.
These are just a few of the many, many Christian scientists through history. It continues today. Christian scientists work in virtually all fields, except evolution. Evolution has no verified history of being observed and has no evidence of occurring in modern times either. In conclusion, looking only at the evidence, ignoring the evolutionary bias of Mr Nye, we can see how much value, not harm, Christian scientists have brought to the people of the world.