Knowledge and Its Colonizers

SCIENCE: knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws

Derived from the Latin scientia, “knowledge,” the Old French science referred to the body of human knowledge. By the 14^th century, science was limited to knowledge of theology and philosophy. In fact, the word first appeared in a Middle English work entitled Apocalypse of St. John: A Version. By the 1800s, the definition shifted to apply to natural and physical science, knowledge of the material world. Today, the original application to theology seems completely foreign. For many that old definition is antithetical to science.

In the 13^th century, Albertus Magnus asserted a distinction between revelation and experimental science. Around the same time, Roger Bacon, a Franciscan friar, challenged unquestioning acceptance of Aristotle’s teachings which relied more on reasoning without physical evidence. The Renaissance scholar Francis Bacon articulated the scientific method that requires the application of inductive reasoning to careful observation of the world. Later, Isaac Newton applied mathematics to the process, inadvertently feeding the materialism that dominates scientific understanding today. However, these men were all devout Christians whose interest in science stemmed from their desire to understand God’s creation.

The scientific method involves the development of hypotheses, experimental inquiry, and revision of theories. Curious people have applied it to study every aspect of the world. Though some of their theories have become well-established through ongoing tests and observations, all are subject to challenge in light of new evidence that contradicts earlier conclusions.

Yet, materialists increasingly have begun to speak of “settled science,” Darwin’s theory of evolution claiming dominance among those so described. In the popular media, the word settled seems attributable to any statement by a scientist. However, the scientific method rests on a foundation of testing and retesting current understanding. As scientists have learned more and more about genetics and the finely-tuned universe, it is clear, for example, that Darwinian evolution is far from settled.

Ironically, many materialists hold certain scientific theories in the same regard as people of faith regard Scripture. Thus, science evolves into scientism, which Merriam-Webster defines as “an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of natural science applied to all areas of investigation (as in philosophy, the social sciences, and the humanities).” Such is the case with social Darwinism which applies Darwinian principles to social science. In The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis critiques scientism for asserting that scientific methods are the sole legitimate ways of understanding the world.

Scientism takes science from a method of expanding understanding to an ideology that limits it. For example, lawn signs that proclaim, “in this house we believe in science” actually bind scientism with political allegiances and anodynes that serve as a credo implying anyone who disagrees with one statement must disagree with all. This credo serves the false notion that science and faith are distinct and opposed to one another. Thus, the materialists who shun faith have – perhaps inadvertently, perhaps not – remade science into scientism which itself has become a false religion.

What Christians desiring to understand God’s handiwork created, materialists have applied to exclude the Creator. In contrast, in Light of the Mind, Light of the World, Spencer Klavan writes, “the world described by science increasingly looks like the world revealed by faith.” From the Big Bang to finely tuned forces to intricate microscopic bio-mechanisms, evidence of an intelligent designer has grown ever more persuasive. Though materialists resist any notion of an Intelligence greater than their own, science itself traces its roots to intellects who humbly sought to understand the Designer’s cosmos.